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Board of Trustees

Since leaving school 'a very long time ago' Sarah Jakes has worked in the shipping industry, the foreign exchange market and now runs her own business in property management.

A smoker of some 35 years Sarah switched to vaping in April 2013, only to find that the choice of this safer alternative for smokers was under threat from excessive and ill founded regulation. Having joined forces with other consumers in the battle against over regulation in the EU parliament Sarah is convinced that a better understanding of e-cigarettes and other harm reduced products among key influencers and decision makers is required if these products are ever to reach their full potential for public health gains.

Kevin has worked in Substance Misuse for over 30 years. He has worked in all settings, including residential rehabilitation, crisis intervention, harm reduction services, recovery oriented services, detoxification services, social enterprise development, and prison and other criminal justice services.
He was Director of Operations at Addaction and at KCA, and was Drug Action Team Co-ordinator for the Medway Towns. He was a board member of Kent Probation Area, Coca, BUBIC, the Princedale Trust and the Conference Consortium. He was also a member of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Drugs, Alcohol and Criminal Justice chaired by Lord Ramsbotham. Prior to working in the field he was a service user himself for many years.
More recently he has become involved in developing veterans’ substance misuse services with Combat Stress, piloting case management models in nine areas across England and Scotland.

He is an ex smoker and current vaper.

Knowledge•Action•Change

Since graduating with a degree in Politics and Government in 1978, Paddy Costall has worked within the social care sector, mainly for NGOs, spent four years working in the probation service and is a qualified social work practice teacher. As Director of Services for Cranstoun Drug Services (1995-2005) he developed and directed community and prison-based substance misuse treatment services. In addition he developed and delivered a programme of national and international conferences and events, and managed international networks supported through funding from the European Commission. He has directed over 70 conferences, ranging from 50 to 1,500 delegates, including in Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Thailand and the UK.

Paddy has also worked as an independent consultant and trainer and has produced a number of reports on substance misuse treatment within criminal justice systems in Europe. He was the founder and Managing Director of the Conference Consortium, until May 2011, where he directed five editions of the International Conference on the Reduction of Drug Related Harm, as well as many other national and European events.

Martin Cullip is a transport company director who uses e-cigarettes and other reduced risk nicotine products and has seen positives from his staff members quitting or reducing their smoking through vaping. He is a passionate consumer advocate for all forms of tobacco harm reduction and is an adviser to the Freedom Association’s Freedom to Vape campaign. He has a keen interest in the rapidly-evolving nicotine market and the politics surrounding it, and has taken part in consumer, industry and political events on the subject from Bournemouth to Brussels and beyond. Martin has also written and blogged for a decade on a diverse range of lifestyle and free market issues for a number of media outlets such as Spiked, International Business Times, The Free Society, advocacy websites and others.

Vaper of over five years who presents and researches on ecigs for one of the most popular ecig-centric televisual services on the Internet.

Bernice switched to electronic cigarettes several years ago and since not smoking, she has returned to a normal blood pressure level, after being on a maximum medication dosage for several years and suffering a transient ischemic attack.

Having had a varied career, she has now just returned to Probation and Offender Management. Through her previous work in the electronic cigarette sector she supported many hundreds of smokers in their journey to stop using combustible tobacco.

Bernice previously stood as a candidate for South Wales Central in the 2016 General Election for Vapers in Power and continues to take an active role in advocacy regarding electronic cigarettes.

David has worked in various aspects of drug and alcohol policy for many years and held posts in  national, regional and local government sectors.  He also has considerable experience of the voluntary sector.  He has a particular interest in prevention and harm reduction approaches.  He has been a witness to some successes as well as some unintended consequences of well-intentioned policy and law- making.  He finds the issues surrounding tobacco harm reduction fascinating but also, occasionally, frustrating.

Louise worked in learning disabilities for over 30 years, both in nursing and managing a care home, before taking on a second career in tobacco control/smoking cessation in 2004. Excited by the potential of vaping to accelerate quit rates, she coined the phrase 'ecig-friendly stop smoking service' and has worked ever since to encourage other services, commissioners and healthcare workers to adopt this approach.

She retired in March 2018 and now works as a freelance clinical consultant for the National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training.

I finished my training as a health psychologist in 2002 and became a stop smoking specialist in 2003, for Wiltshire Primary Care Trust. I have set up community, hospital and workplace clinics and have led on secondary care, workplace, training and e-cig strategies. I currently work for Bristol Public Health on the cancer work stream and also for an independent company as their workplace stop smoking specialist.

My main goal has always been to prevent premature death; in 2015 I jumped aboard the ecig harm reduction train and I have not got off it since. Since our service went e-cig friendly in 2015 two things became very apparent: 1) smokers were really enjoying their quit attempts and 2) smokers were stopping for more than three months at a time. I have clients who have been smokefree for over two years now.

Nicotine delivered by technology that reduces the harm by at least 95% can save the majority of the world's health problems in an efficient and, more importantly, a pleasurable way.

Knowledge•Action•Change

A public health sociologist with over 40 years’ experience of public health research and advocacy in the field of psychoactive substance use, and with over 220 scientific publications and several books. Gerry Stimson is committed to working to reduce the harms from psychoactive substance use, improving public health through social and health policy and working internationally to reduce harms from drugs, alcohol and tobacco. He was one of the founders of harm reduction and instrumental in the development and evaluation of harm reduction in the UK as a response to HIV/AIDS. He has advised the UK Government, World Health Organization, UNAIDS, UNODC, World Bank and numerous working groups on issues relating to drugs, hepatitis, HIV infection and AIDS, alcohol and tobacco.

He is Honorary Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Emeritus Professor at Imperial College London, and the Editor of the International Journal of Drug Policy. From 1990 to 2004, he was Director of the Centre for Research on Drugs and Health Behaviour. He founded the Department of Social Science and Medicine at Imperial College, delivering postgraduate courses in the UK and internationally, and a programme of social science and public health research. He was Executive Director of the International Harm Reduction Association from 2004 to 2010.

Jessica became NNA’s first administrator in December 2016.  She is passionate about the potential for tobacco harm reduction products to improve lives and has devoted much her time and energy to vaping consumer activism. She helped establish Vapers in Power, and helped to get ViP registered as a political party. Her primary role in NNA is fundraising, external communications, helping NNA campaigns, and supporting the work and development of NNA.  Before having children she worked as an English teacher, in the UK and abroad.

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