Going Places

If you follow me on Twitter, you'll have noticed that I've been doing some travelling of late.

This weekend me and my 16 year old boy flew to Rome for the England 6 Nations rugby match at the Stadio Olimpico. It was a whistle stop affair, arriving late Saturday and leaving early Monday, and considering my son had never been there before it was an effort fitting sightseeing in before the 4pm kick off on the Sunday. A fantastic weekend but incredibly draining.

Now, the reason I'm writing about this is that, yet again, being in another country was very revealing as to the amount of freedom we have lost in the UK. I have spoken about it before with regards to Prague, but the state-imposed shackles fell away with every minute spent in Rome too.

For example, on the Saturday night we arrived at the hotel and went to the bar. It was a pretty sparse affair (booking hotels for a 6 Nations matchday is a nightmare, so I took what I could get) and so we decided to get some snacks and drinks and enjoy them in the room where I could vape without a care. Looking at the bar prices I could see my Euros would not last long except for the price of wine. It was just £11 a bottle! So I ordered one and, with the boy next to me, the barmaid asked "with two glasses?". Just like that. No suspicious look at him, nothing. I said no just the one and off we went.

What's more, there was a similar experience next day at the match. The Stadio Olimpico has a chaotic queuing system for drinks. You have to queue in long lines to buy beer vouchers, then join another long queue to exchange the vouchers for drinks. I couldn't be arsed with that so we decided just to go in and find our seats. As we reached our section, there was a bar with almost no-one at it, but it was clear that wouldn't last long so I ordered two beers expecting some kind of comment about age or ID for the boy. Nope, not a word. Just served them up with a smile. Now, on more than one occasion at sports venues here I have had to explain to the person serving me that the boy has his own Powerade in his bag when they tell me they can't serve him because he's too young. None of that in Italy. None of it in the Carrefour supermarket later on either when we'd bussed it back from the match. Buying crisps and a bottle of wine, the cashier didn't even raise an eyebrow when I put them in the boy's backpack.

Oh yeah, and the (very palatable) wine was €1.55 because - as The Nanny State Index points out - there is no duty on wine in Italy.

The experience at the stadium was a revelation too. You see - as I've written before - thanks to the loathsome cheesedicks at Healthy Stadia feeding scaremongering bullshit to sports organisations, you are not allowed to smoke or vape in any ground in the Aviva Premiership and football Premiership either. And that includes outside, on the concourse, in the open air. Not so at the Stadio Olimpico.

There I was, stealth vaping in my seat but it wasn't till half time that I noticed there were smoking areas. Not outside, but within view of the pitch. Complete with comfy chairs and tables. It was such a lovely sight I took a picture of it, but as I did - stood at the top of a staircase - I also noticed that people were smoking there too. Not clandestinely either, they were smoking while talking to the stewards! And you know what? No-one cared.

No-one cared in Brussels either when Chris Snowdon and I visited a pub in the city centre in 2016 which boasted a smoking room. A fully enclosed smoking room so smokers could drink their beer and enjoy their tobacco in the warm.

Now, contrast all that with the barked orders that greet you as you walk outside the terminal building at Glasgow airport, where I went the previous weekend for the Glasgow School of Vape.

Click to enlarge

Yep, no smoking or vaping outdoors anywhere except a shed in the central reservation where the buses pick up. You know, buses that spew out diesel fumes. It was strictly enforced too, with a large guy in a hi-viz jacket booming "Hey! You cannae do that here!" in a thick Scottish accent to anyone who trangressed their stupid and pointless rule.

It's not just Czech Republic, Belgium and Italy, most other countries are far more liberal than the UK where we have now developed into a nasty officious society where one just assumes things are not allowed - because they mostly aren't - and vile jobsworths have been encouraged to wag their finger at you in every place the public gathers, as sadly happened to me at an event in London on the Monday night when I was spotted using an e-cig which gives off almost no vapour whatsoever. Apparently, he said, it would set off the smoke alarm ... which he pointed to on the ceiling about 10 metres above our heads. The idea that a modicum of common sense might be employed is an alien one these days, the whole country has become vindictive, petty and indoctrinated.

We are constantly ripped off in this country by government taxes - on the premise that our behaviour must be controlled - but at the same time we are herded, prodded, cajoled and badgered for just wanting to enjoy the products we pay over the odds to consume. The British are now in a new age of intolerance. Now, I'm sure the anti-fun brigade abroad will be lobbying their own governments for the same kind of panopticon conditions we are fated to suffer over here, but even if they get their rules in place I expect they will be either enforced lightly or ignored (like in Greece).

The UK has experienced, as Brenda O'Neill observed last year:

A shift from a politics concerned with improving people’s living conditions to a politics obsessed with policing people’s behaviour. ‘The politics of behaviour’, as New Labour scarily but aptly called it. It speaks most strikingly to a redefinition of what it means to be left or progressive. Once, that meant ensuring the less well-off had more opportunities, more comfort, more pleasure. Now, as made clear by the mad leftist cheering of the [smoking] ban and other nanny-state initiatives, it means saving people from themselves. It means depriving people of pleasure for their own good. It means using the law to socially re-engineer the masses so that they’re more like ‘us’: fitter, slimmer, smokefree.

It's vile. And the people who have moulded a country which fought so hard for freedom into one of the most restrictive in the world when it comes to lifestyle choices should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. 

Slow Handclap For The TPD

It's been another hectic week for your humble host. Quite apart from business pressures, I've found myself variously in Norwich, Brighton, rural Essex and Shrewsbury in the past few days. I will write about the Norwich leg later in the week but the Shrewsbury jaunt was for a weekend at Vapefest 2017.

It's kinda like this at Vapefest (photo from here)

I stayed in a marvellous three-bedroom house with some friends who will be known to you if you follow on Twitter, and a good time was had by all. But I think it's worth commenting on the remarkable difference between previous events (this was my third) and the 2017 version.

On the journey up the M1, my travelling companion and I had discussed how this year's Vapefest might handle the imposition of the TPD on May 20th this year. When we arrived, it instantly became very clear because it has fundamentally changed the nature of the place.

Previously, vendors would be giving out small free samplers - mostly with no nicotine although sometimes with - but these were noticeably absent this year. The TPD has put paid to that little avenue of pleasure.

There was also very little buzz around stalls selling new hardware. There were mods and new batteries but why would anyone wish to purchase a new piece of kit now the ignorant hysterical fuckspanners in tobacco control have persuaded the EU to demand limiting tank size to a risible 2ml? A lot of focus at Vapefest is sub-ohm devices running at high wattage to maximise flavour at a low nicotine level, which means that 2ml will last about the time it takes to read the stories of any interest in your free local newspaper; you'd be filling the thing every half hour or so.

However, what was most striking is that the stall-holders had almost abandoned selling pre-mixed nicotine-containing e-liquid altogether! Yes, you could buy 10ml TPD-compliant bottles but I didn't see many people doing that. In previous years 30ml, 60ml, and even 100ml bottles of ready-to-vape liquids were available at advantageous festival prices, but - of course - the TPD has ensured that those size bottles are now banned.

So the upshot is that the industry has moved to selling the concentrates (flavours) instead, to be mixed by vapers themselves. Just think about that for a moment. By observing their absurd 'precautionary principle' to supposedly protect vapers and children from the overblown dangers of nicotine in e-liquid, tedious shroud-waving tobacco controllers and their dim weasel-headed EU pals have created a situation whereby liquids are not mixed in a clean environment by professionals, but instead in kitchens up and down the country by vapers buying illicit nicotine base from China ... because you can't get that in anything over 10ml bottles either.

Really noticeable trend towards DIY flavour concentrates at #vapefest this year, wot TPD? pic.twitter.com/gSv0j3rykU

— Sarah J (@Twigolet) August 6, 2017

Instead of pharma-grade nicotine being mixed in sterile conditions with professional equipment, it is now being mixed in houses and flats using a Kenwood Chef and nicotine stored in domestic freezers, in whatever bottles are available, by people with varying levels of competence at mixing DIY juice.

Still, regulation is always a good thing, some would say. It's for safety, innit.

The government is looking for easy 'wins' following Brexit, there's one for them, right there in the TPD. What a clusterfuck. 

Reflections On Warsaw: Pissing On Chips Edition

I thought some here may be interested in a few thoughts on my few days away in Warsaw for the fourth Global Forum on Nicotine (GFN) ... which I nearly didn't make at all thanks to a car fire on the motorway on the Wednesday afternoon.

I can faithfully report that watching kids playing football on the carriageway amongst stationary traffic when you have a plane to catch in less than an hour is a deeply depressing experience. As it happens the blockage - a car which had quite literally melted by the time it had been extinguished and dragged to the hard shoulder - was cleared just in time for me to catch the flight with minutes to spare. My gallant cabbie floored it for the rest of the way and, after jumping out at the terminal while he was still travelling (I doubt he got out of second gear), managed to sprint to the gate in time for priority boarding.

As for the conference itself, I detected an atmosphere which was subtlely different this year. In the past there has always seemed to be an undercurrent of mistrust, with industry and NGOs distancing themselves from each other and barbed comments being flung from those who were on panels being afforded the use of a microphone, but if it was there this year I certainly didn't notice it. Everyone appeared far more relaxed as if this type of conference - where both sides of the debate are welcomed without prejudice - is now becoming more normal.

David O'Reilly of BAT was represented on one of the panels and there was no theatrical gayness of a staged walk-out as in previous GFNs, while some 'public health' types even turned up to the welcome night booze up!

It was, I believe, this more enlightened and mature approach which Louise Ross may have been referring to when she offered up what was, for me, the best quote of the conference.

Quote of #GFN17: "We should stop pissing on each other's chips", @grannylouisa

— Dick Puddlecote (@Dick_Puddlecote) June 18, 2017

That's not to say there wasn't the occasional frisson of controversy. Clive Bates fired the odd searching question to panellists while the idea that cigarettes should be "phased out" advanced by one 'public health' contributor was met with a brilliantly-delivered put-down from VTTV's David Dorn. Plus, my accommodation-sharer, Fergus Mason, managed to ask the question he had travelled all the way from Germany for.

At #GFN17, @FergusMason1 asks Debs Arnott why @ASH_LDN won't leave us alone pic.twitter.com/KgiWpxwgyx

— Dick Puddlecote (@Dick_Puddlecote) June 16, 2017

It was, predictably, dodged with Arnott referring to the whole of the TPD rather than the regulations on e-cigs - which Fergus quite obviously meant - but he tried to correct this later in the lobby by clarifying it and asking the same question again. Arnott's response was to angrily say "why don't you leave me alone?!?" and swiftly vacate the area.

However, credit where it's due, at one point during her presentation, Arnott spoke in almost derogatory terms about Simple Simon Chapman by stating that "even he" had got things wrong about vaping. This was compounded by a plenary session (everyone in the same room) which followed breaking out in laughter when US advocate Cynthia Cabrera placed the name Stanton Glantz and "scientist" in the same sentence ... it was quite revealing to look around the room and see some tobacco control types chuckling along with the rest.

Along with Irish fraud Mountain McKee, it's starting to look like - as scientific evidence piles up against dangerous prohibition of safer products - tobacco control can see the charlatans in their midst over tobacco harm reduction and kinda wish they would shut the fuck up and stop being such dicks.

On a personal level, I spoke with a few on the dark side myself and was decently-received. Had an immensely entertaining discussion with an e-cig researcher from Kent who surprisingly regaled us with tales of her rag and bone man Dad, and found myself next to Linda Bauld at one point, so asked about her recent blocking of me on Twitter when I thought we had an agreement that I like her stance on e-cigs but reserve the right to pull her up on other subjects. To be precise, it went "Oi! You blocked me!", at which she laughed and replied she'd had a bad day that day and promised to unblock, which has now happened, before having a conversation about how my business is going (very well, by the way, thanks for asking).

Oh, that reminds me. Business. Prior to the conference, there was a new departure in the ISonTech day (Thursday) focussing on innovations in harm reduction from industry. Introduced by Hon Lik who brought a replica of his original guy-in-garden-shed 'invention' with him (see below), it was largely occupied by the tobacco industry and I heard a few bemoaning the fact that e-cig businesses hadn't taken the chance to be similarly involved. I hadn't originally planned to turn up to it but Fergus wanted to go along so we did and I'm glad of it as it was very interesting.

Hon Lik's e-cig

PMI exhibited their four platforms of risk reduced products, sadly with prototype platform 2 which I want to try being hermetically-sealed in a perspex box, while BAT educated attendees about their heat not burn product Glo and JTI promoted their expansion of Ploomtech.

My personal favourite on display though was the tobacco free snus which Swedish Match quite literally brought to the table.

Named Zyn, I thought it was a great product and so was extremely happy to find in the pub later that full pods of the Citrus, Mint and Cinnamon flavours had accidentally fallen into my jacket pocket. How lucky was that for the flight home, eh?

The ISonTech part of GFN, I thought, was a brave thing for the conference organisers to arrange, but a worthwhile one. They could have been given a hard time for daring to embrace industry innovation, but hopefully that will not have happened seeing as I witnessed a few well-known 'public health' NGOs there as interested as the rest of us.

As for the rest of the trip, I met fellow jewel robbing commenter Roberto S and also occasional visitor Brian Carter from the US who said he thought I was really funny. Nice to know I'm not regarded as some kind of lifestyle issue Gardener's Weekly or something, I suppose.

All this and I still got to catch the cricket, see Old Town with some immense friends, and enjoy some beer-fuelled late nights before touching down at Heathrow, being whisked home (fortunately without incident) and crashing asleep post-nosebag like a morphine-addled Tom cat after having its knackers removed.

Next stop is Forest's Smoke on the Water boat trip tomorrow, a different crowd entirely where - to borrow a phrase - I also hope no chips will be pissed on. 

Oh Bournemouth Freedom, Shine On Me

OK, Bournemouth doesn't quite scan for the title like Philadelphia does, but Twitter followers may have noticed that I've just returned from the seaside town after a weekend spent at the fourth annual Freedom Festival hosted by The Freedom Association.

If you don't know of the Freedom Association, it is a non-partisan group funded by public donations established in the 1970s which boasts around 30 MPs amongst its paid-up membership. This was evident from the weekend where the speakers list was peppered with MPs, MEPs, prominent political commentators and even a cabinet minister in the form of Priti Patel. The panels focussed on current issues but always - as it says on the tin - with an eye on freedom.

To go through them all in detail would take this into essay territory, but there were discussions on Brexit and Trump, free trade, students unions and safe spaces, council tax and social care, robot technology and driverless cars, vaping and the nanny state. This, along with two "in conversation" interviews including one delving into Priti Patel's ascent to the cabinet - billed as "more a Piers Morgan Life Stories than Daily Politics interrogation" - hosted by Grant Tucker of The Times, and a BBC Question Time style debate with elected local, national, and European politicians chaired by Mark Wallace of Conservative Home. There was also a powerfully shocking account of how the European arrest warrant serves to prop up corrupt Eastern European judicial practices and drag the UK's proud tradition of legal fairness into the gutter from Alexander Adamescu.

Very interesting, too, was a Saturday lunchtime speech by Conor Burns MP on how he knew that the referendum would return a Brexit result when he had reports from his Bournemouth constituency at 10:30 in the morning that voters were turning up with their own pens. So worried were they that the establishment might erase their choice, it was clear from the areas the reports were coming from that these were people who had never voted before and wanted to make absolutely sure their view was logged.

The event was attended by 130 very politically-knowledgeable people who passionately believe in freedom, which was clear from the questions directed at panellists from the floor. The panel on the nanny state, for example seeing as we talk of such things here, saw two members of the audience suggest different descriptions for those who want to deny us just about any pleasurable product on specious grounds. "Nanny State is too woolly, it should be called the Bully State", said one, while another described the word nanny as "a bit Mary Poppins, I prefer the term Medical Gestapo".

The most encouraging panel of the weekend though, for me, was the one that closed the event on the subject of "Freedom: Why it's important and why we need to fight for it every day".

Panel discussing fighting for freedom

Lawyer and columnist Donal Blaney spoke about the regulatory state and how it is growing to frightening levels, enabling government departments to now steal money directly from bank accounts for alleged tax arrears without the necessity of proving the debt in court, while Mark Littlewood of the IEA reminded us - as if you hadn't noticed - that "the main enemy of freedom is the state" and that it is well past time that economic policy focussed on what is good for consumers and not producers.

However, quote of the weekend was from Bill Etheridge. Some may remember that he spoke at our little protest in Stony Stratford in 2011 when he was a Freedom Association activist, but he has come a long way since then and is now a UKIP MEP. He began by describing how, even though he is an elected member of the EU parliament, he is banned from speaking at universities up and down the UK. He was, however, afforded a slot at a university in Israel recently where they were staggered to hear about the 'safe spaces' that have sprung up to deny free speech in our higher education institutions.

He argued that if we want to see real freedom in the UK "politicians should inject the concept of freedom into every area of policy". This is an extremely laudable goal and one which is the direct opposite of what the Medical Gestapo public health nanny statists want to see. Groups like the FCTC and other health harpies regularly talk about placing health at the heart of every policy area above and beyond anything else, so much so that local licensing decisions on pubs, for example, must now pass a public health test instead of being decided on by a judge weighing up all evidence.

As you can imagine, if you look at every policy through the lens of health and health only, our rights as individuals to make choices based on informed assessment of our own risk is going to be impossible; freedom of choice hasn't got a chance. Etheridge is absolutely correct that freedom should be at least considered each and every time politicians sit down to debate any issue. If a health threat is compelling, yes freedom should take a back seat, but it's gone so far into extremism from health lobbyists that there needs to be a drastic re-balance of priorities. To take just one example, when we have a situation where tobacco controllers have no evidence worthy of the name that plain packs will make any impact to smoking rates whatsoever, and yet one of their main planks to enforce the policy is that it will harm the freedom of smokers to express their social identity with branding, it's clear that tobacco control has perverted policy in a ghastly way and that freedom should be given far more prominence by legislators.

The weekend wasn't all heavy political discussion, mind, and it won't surprise you that amongst such freedom-loving people the (vape-friendly) bars thrived until well into the early hours. I crashed about 2am on both evenings and felt like a bit of a lightweight by comparison with some others!

There was also fun and games with the fund-raising side of the weekend. Top prize on the Friday night was a copy of the Brexit Bill signed by Theresa May, something I coveted greatly so eagerly threw in my £10 entry. The entrants were whittled down with a toss of a coin as we stood holding our heads or our backsides to display our choices at each round, not that I got further than the first hurdle after finding out that the mantra "tails never fails" is demonstrably incorrect.

More entertaining still was the Saturday night raffle where the top prize was a full size cardboard cut-out of Donald Trump which humorously greeted everyone at the registration desk. I entered in the hope that it would turn heads on my drive back up the M3 sitting in the passenger seat, but it was won by a triumphant Mark Littlewood who subsequently took it home on the train back to London to be exhibited, it was suggested, on the roof of the IEA in Lord North Street.

"No need for a ticket, he'll sit on my lap"

All in all, it was a weekend bracing both in the face of a brisk cold coastal wind and for the rigorous and encouraging debate which emphasised freedom issues in a current policy environment where you could be forgiven for thinking such concepts are no longer considered.

I'll be back next year for a bit more Bournemouth Freedom, keep an eye out for it if you think it's something for you too and I'll see you at the bar (at least until 2am anyway). 

A Night At The Pleasure Zone (part 2) - The Balloon Debate

On Thursday I commented on an excellent presentation by Neil McKegany full of thoughtful insight and philosophy on the issue of smoking. As an academic, you'd think he would not be unusual in being able to deliver profound analysis like that, but then tobacco control is an abnormal discipline full of grifters, chancers and snake oil salesmen which, I suppose, is why it came as such a delightful surprise.

I promised that I'd also write up the balloon debate that followed which was sumptuously-ladelled with levity and brought peals of laughter out of the room. So here's a quick rundown of what I took from it.

The format was three minutes for each advocate to extol the virtues of why they consider their chosen nicotine delivery device to be the most pleasurable. In front of a well-oiled audience, they all did their best and raised many a chuckle.

First up was Andrew Stewart who made the case for pipe smoking.

Andrew Stewart makes the case for pipe smoking at #PleasureZone, says he has 50 pipes & RCP once said pipes safer than *not* smoking pic.twitter.com/FYFvTVYDOP

— Dick Puddlecote (@Dick_Puddlecote) February 22, 2017

He was extremely affable, a calming voice who almost made me want to try a pipe myself. Almost. I found his description of a lifelong love affair with pipes quite charming, and it was great to see him reminding those assembled that the RCP did once say that pipe smoking (like moderate alcohol consumption today) was found to be less harmful than no tobacco use at all. This would, of course, be heresy in these days of tobacco control extremist hyperbole, but considering tobacco control now lies more than the tobacco industry ever did, I'd take the RCP's word for it, frankly.

Next at the mike was Chris Snowdon who gave a barnstorming performance in favour of snus.

"Snus is Swedish so cool, won't kill you, and is banned by the EU", @cjsnowdon makes a compelling case #PleasureZone at @Forest_Smoking

— Dick Puddlecote (@Dick_Puddlecote) February 22, 2017

His three minutes was funny, roped in topical references to Trump, the Champions League and Brexit, and was everything a balloon debate contribution should be. I have to admit that his presentation won my vote for the night if only for the line "only an idiot would not accept snus has been good for public health, so therefore public health idiots don't accept it".

After such a frenetic presentation, Ranald McDonald of Boisdale then chose a more louche tone to champion cigars. In a relaxed, almost Barry White-esque voice, he took the aesthetic and arty line (he was later to claim that cigars enhanced sexual relations!) and almost dribbled in his appreciation of the Cuban mastery of cigar-making.

"A cigar is pure tobacco, nothing added, nothing taken away, there is no better pleasure in the world", Ranald of @Boisdale #PleasureZone pic.twitter.com/aHyAVg5ZwI

— Dick Puddlecote (@Dick_Puddlecote) February 22, 2017

Mark Littlewood then rose to speak of his love of 'Heat not Burn' or heated tobacco (which I tried for the first time in December).  He boldly declared that he was there to "advocate the future", and enthusiastically waxed lyrical about the the science behind it.

"Join the innovation revolution" says @MarkJLittlewood advocating heat not burn at @Forest_Smoking's #PleasureZone at @iealondon pic.twitter.com/0u6pjOub9r

— Dick Puddlecote (@Dick_Puddlecote) February 22, 2017

He had a playful straw man dig at Simon Clark for not wanting brands to be advertised, suggesting that this was a new departure into endorsing plain packaging, but finished on a roll by dismissing Communist Cuba and boring Sweden for their choices of tobacco products.

He was followed by Angela Harbutt who took the seductive approach. A faux pas whereby a couple of misplaced vowels led to her mis-speaking Volvo to indicate she was talking about something completely different made the room erupt, but considering the rest of her presentation seemed designed to ooze finery and sensual appeal I'm still not sure it wasn't deliberate.

"The snick of the lighter, the crackle of the tobacco, the pleasure", @AngelaHarbutt1 on cigs at @iealondon #PleasureZone pic.twitter.com/DzfSl0aNJR

— Dick Puddlecote (@Dick_Puddlecote) February 22, 2017

Angela was later to be crowned winner on the night after invoking Audrey Hepburn, more fast cars, and Champagne in the three-way run-off. Not, maybe, a surprise at a Forest event but it still had to be a good presentation to get that far, which it very much was.

Last up was Judy Gibson of INNCO, who had told me beforehand she had coveted the last position so as to be fresh in the voter mind.

"I had a love affair with cigarettes for 50 years but #ecigs are my pleasure now" @JoodiG at @iealondon @Forest_Smoking #PleasureZone pic.twitter.com/Vq3jE5CmPN

— Dick Puddlecote (@Dick_Puddlecote) February 22, 2017

She emphasised that vapers really understand that pleasure is part of enjoying nicotine, but admitted - via a reference to masochism which raised some giggles - that we all make our own choices as to what we enjoy. Armed with an impressive array of devices, she spoke from nearly five decades of experience but had decided to embrace the electronic kind of nicotine delivery rather than what vaping consumers sometimes call 'analogue'.

All in all, it was a wonderful debate (but then I'm biased cos I love the balloon type and I'm pretty keen on nicotine however it's delivered) and all should be congratulated for their willingness to get up there and speak for their cause. It also made a perfect foil for Nel McKegany's prior cerebral academic contribution to the debate about smoking, nicotine and pleasure.

I could say more but why when you can watch it yourself here. I recommend you do as it is very amusing.

A Night At The Pleasure Zone (part 1)

Last week I advised anyone able to do so that they should consider attending the IEA yesterday for Forest's Pleasure Zone event. I knew it was going to be an enjoyable evening - these things invariably are - but this one exceeded even my optimistic expectations.

I met up for drinks beforehand with good friends including the affable and always entertaining multi-culti mish-mash Afghan Dave, but there were so many excellent people there when we arrived that it would take a few hundred words to name check them all.

The evening was scheduled to feature a presentation by Neil McKegany on his Pleasure of Smoking report that was published around Christmas time (see my thoughts here) followed by a balloon debate on the best nicotine delivery device. I'm a big fan of balloon debates, which if you've never encountered one start with the premise that all contenders are in a rapidly-deflating hot air balloon, with passengers necessarily having to be ejected to leave just the one who has articulated the merits for remaining in the basket most eloquently.

I had been looking forward to the debate but thought - since I'd read the research and written about it - that Professor McKegany's presentation might be a trifle dry. I couldn't have been more wrong.

I actually bumped into him at the table where the wine was being served at the start of the evening and had a quick chat seeing as I'd seen him speaking at a City Health event in September last year. Apparently, that was about the time the research he was commissioned to conduct for Forest had been announced and I learned that he had received condemnation about embarking on it from academics - which you'd expect, of course - but also from some vapers, which was disappointing. He was refreshingly unfazed, though, saying that the people criticising were "unimportant" and that if he was receiving criticism he felt that he was doing a good job.

McKegany expanded on this during his presentation which, in my opinion anyway, was quite excellent.

Neil McKegany commenting on his survey research

I understand that the whole thing was filmed so if you get to see what he said, I'd highly recommend you do so. It was a very illuminating address in which he pointed out some of the interesting conclusions in his survey results, but also reflected philosophically on the tobacco control movement as a whole.

To give you a few examples, he began by explaining that he came from a background of talking about illegal drugs and how policies to reduce harm can be good for public health, but that he was very surprised once transferring that approach to legal drugs that there seemed to be an almost religious hegemony dictating matters. He noted that he was taken aback by the "stranglehold" 'public health' exerts over research in these areas and - harking back to what he'd told me at the drinks reception - said that he had been told by colleagues that studying why smokers smoke was "unacceptable".

Having come up against a mindset which had set itself to believe that smoking can never, ever, be pleasurable, he spoke of an "intellectual refusal" to ever consider such a concept. In his view, this was a two-way thing designed to come to only one conclusion amongst tobacco controllers. If you express a wish to quit, you are acting rationally and it's addiction which is stopping you; if, however, you like smoking and have no wish to quit, you are then acting irrationally and are not experiencing pleasure, merely addiction.

This pervasive way of looking at the subject matter had, in McKegany's view, perverted scientific and political discourse on the subject of tobacco and nicotine. To highlight this, he gave the example of how a British court (as reported by the FT here) has been hoodwinked into believing that there is a "causal" relationship between plain packaging and smoking, which is absolute nonsense.

The argument that plain packaging was ineffectual was largely dismissed by the UK appeal court judge, who noted that “research found that the designs and branding upon cigarette packaging and upon the tobacco products themselves exerted a causal effect upon consumer behaviour and encouraged smoking.”

There may be reason to believe there is an association (and that's heroic in itself based on the shit science - DP) but there is, McKegany rightly maintains, absolutely no way anyone can ever say it is even remotely causal. Yet a court, which is supposed to deal in cold hard evidence, has actually bought into anti-scientific tobacco control fantasy.

He also touched on the interesting revelation that, even amongst dedicated smokers, there was still a willingness to try harm reduced products like e-cigs. He said that the technology might not be there just yet to satisfy them, but expressed optimism that in time products might be available which replicate the smoking experience closely enough to tempt even the most ardent smoker away from combustion.

McKegany appears to me to be a rare thing in the academic community; someone who actually understands smokers and their motivation, as well as understanding vapers. The tobacco control industry doesn't understand either, which is a real problem. If you wish to solve what you see as a public health failure, it is first necessary to understand the people you are seeking to help. McKegany has proved that he really gets us, whereas ASH and their trouser-stuffing, policy-driven, evidence-manufacturing mates at the Department of Health, WHO and beyond simply don't (or don't want to). If it's about health, that should be their priority, but it's quite clearly not.

There was a lot to carry one's interest at this event and if I wrote about the extremely entertaining balloon debate now too it would send this article into essay territory, so I'll come back to that in part 2. Watch this space.

UPDATE

The presentation by Neil McKegany has now been posted on YouTube, do get yourself a brew or a scoop to last half an hour or so and have a watch.

What Is 'The Best Nicotine Delivery Device in the World'?

Now there's a question, huh?

If you weren't already aware, there is an event at the IEA on Wednesday 22nd February which will attempt to answer that question via the medium of an entertaining balloon debate. The evening will also feature a short presentation on ‘The Pleasure of Smoking: The Views of Confirmed Smokers’ by Dr Neil McKeganey, director of the Centre for Substance Use Research, which I wrote about over the Christmas period.

It promises to be an interesting night out, featuring these speakers battling it out for supremacy in favour of their favourite nicotine product.

•    Judy Gibson, International Network of Nicotine Consumer Organisations (INNCO) advocating e-cigarettes
•    Mark Littlewood, director-general of the Institute of Economic Affairs, advocating heated tobacco
•    Angela Harbutt, founder of Liberal Vision, advocating cigarettes
•    Ranald Macdonald, managing director, Boisdale Restaurants, advocating cigars
•    Chris Snowdon, head of the Lifestyle Economics Unit, advocating snus
•    Andrew Stewart, Pipe Club of London, advocating pipes

There is a (free) drinks reception from 6.15pm, with the debate beginning at 7.00pm.

As I've mentioned before, the IEA's hospitality is always warm (courtesy of Forest and Boisdale for this event), so it's a date you should consider for your diary.  I'll be going along on the night and, I expect, on to a local boozer for a bit of post-debate banter afterwards. The debate lasts about an hour and a half, is completely free, the venue has a pleasant smoking area and is vape-friendly. What's not to like?

I'm sure there are many differing opinions as to which is the best nicotine device, but considering the audience is the judge in this type of debate, why not come along and support your personal favourite? To get on the guest list, drop an email to events@forestonline.org and maybe I'll see you there. 

Vape, Nic, Caffeine, Beer And Chips

As days go, yesterday was quite a busy one and definitely well deserving of the 'Dick Out And About' tag.

It began (quite literally after a few too many Xmas beers the night before) at 2pm with a trip to Committee Room 9 at the House of Commons where the APPG on e-cigs was taking place. Those of you who follow me on Twitter will have seen some quotes from those who were invited to speak but it's still worth writing a few up here. 

First up was Public Health England's Kevin Fenton who set out his organisation's priorities on vaping for the future. Now, PHE irritates me greatly because it is a huge bureaucracy eating up a monumental half a billion pounds a year of our taxes to basically treat us all like children - offering 'advice' such as wrapping up warm when it is winter, for example, is laughable - but Fenton himself appears to be an extremely genuine guy so it's hard not to like him. I suppose you could argue that we would all be very genuine on a £177k salary, but he does always come across as someone who believes in what he says. 

Most interesting was his response to a question from Andrew Allison of the Freedom to Vape campaign on what he intends to do about the wholesale ignorance on display from lazy local authority 'public health' departments on the issue of vaping. 

In answer to a Q from @VapingFreedom, @ProfKevinFenton says "it is a priority" of @PHE_uk to educate local councils on #ecigs in coming year

— Dick Puddlecote (@Dick_Puddlecote) December 6, 2016

This came just a few minutes after the MP for Basildon and East Thurrock, Stephen Metcalfe, had also spoken about challenging pubs and other venues which take "the lazy option" of banning e-cigs for no good reason whatsoever.

As I've mentioned many times before, it's no good organisations such as PHE, ASH etc just saying they are supportive of e-cigs when they sit idly and silent as ban after ban is put into place, each one effectively telling the public that vaping is dangerous.

Professor Peter Hajek then spoke about the methods anti-vaping 'public health' bodies are using to ensure negative stories continue to appear in the press. He even used the term 'dirty tricks' about people who I presume are colleagues in his profession. It's nice that they are being noted as charlatans now, but then they've had many years' experience of being just that, so hardly a surprise.

Cancer Research UK's George Butterworth spoke next. You may remember him as the guy whose naive loose talk to a journalist dropped The Times (and his own organisation) in a lot of hot water earlier this year. He wasn't any more inspiring yesterday either, beginning by banging on about (yawn) Article 5.3 and the involvement of tobacco companies in the e-cig industry and then saying nothing much of note afterwards. Of all six speakers he was the only one from whom I couldn't glean a single interesting quote to tweet.

It was then the turn of three representing "the industry" to speak, a description which I'm sure grated on Sarah Jakes of the NNA who APPG Chair Mark Pawsey seemed not to realise has nothing to do with any business.

Charlie Hamshaw-Thomas spoke on behalf of the UKVIA, seemingly addressing Butterworth's concerns by saying, quite rightly, "of course the tobacco industry is involved in vaping now, they are in the business of selling nicotine, why wouldn't they?". That such a statement needs to be made says more about the warped priorities of the tobacco control industry nowadays than the behaviour of tobacco companies (more on that later).

The IBVTA also spoke with Ian Green reinforcing their current campaign to make sure TPD regulations are enforced properly. This is an incredibly interesting development because, obviously, vaping consumers would prefer that the MHRA and trading standards just sat on their hands and ignored the whole car crash. But at the same time, IBVTA businesses have shelled out to be compliant and would now like to see the regulations they have complied with being adhered to. As a business owner and also a consumer I can see both sides, and can see that there could be a lot of friction on the subject in coming months. Might be worth buying in the popcorn early, I reckon.

Lastly on the "industry" side was the NNA's Jakes. She mentioned that ASH's briefing in May was very misleading and that as a result of bad press (which, as previously discussed is not being tackled by 'vape-friendly' health lobbyists) vapers are beginning to be questioned and stigmatised about the products by friends, family and co-workers. The PHE's Kevin Fenton nodded along sagely so should have got that message, the same can't be said about Debs Arnott because she failed to turn up.

Anyway, that finished at 3pm and Sarah Jakes and I were at a loose end for a couple of hours before the Freedom Association's Christmas Quiz at 6pm, so we schlepped on over to Soho to have a gander at the new iQos store on Wardour Street.

We were greeted by some very hipsterish types who asked about our current nicotine usage. Replying that we were both e-cig users, they tried to put us off and advised that we should stick with what we've got. We explained that we were there for research and wanted to try the things out but had no intention of buying, so were offered a tea or coffee and introduced to someone who would give us a tutorial.

On two levels, the place seems more like a marketing exercise than a profit-making shop to me, and we learned that you can only buy the devices and the sticks to go with them if you are inside TfL's London travel zones 1 to 4. No chance of buying online and if you're outside London you have to travel in to sample it. So not the flooding of the market some would expect, more a tentative toe in the water after much-reported success in other countries.

Sitting in a very comfy 'cave' in the basement, we tried the first of the three flavours they offer (all are apparently the same nicotine strength). I had shunned the coffee that was offered because my annual intake of hot drinks is about 2 or 3 per year but once I started using it I had a hankering for one, it felt very much like being in a comfy but ostentatious cafe.

It's also worth noting that despite there being rumours that 'heat not burn' technology might be 90%ish safer than traditional smoking, this factoid was never mentioned during the time we were there. Not that it matters how safe the products are, because - as I accurately predicted - ASH and their tedious satellites will only have bad things to say about them simply because they're not made by their pharma pals. In fact, Scottish belly-acher Sheila Duffy was first out of the blocks this week to declare that, yes, they will indeed demand that iQos is included in the smoking ban despite no evidence whatsoever that they are harmful to bystanders.

But then we know very well now that it was never about protecting staff anyway.

I'd say it's an interesting addition to the market although not something I'd shell out for myself. The cost is quite prohibitive at £89 for the device and £8 per pack of heatsticks or whatever they're called. This is tempered if you sign up to the 7 day trial where they will let you have it for £45 instead and if you opt to buy a pack of 200 sticks the per pack price drops to only £7, but now being used to buying e-liquid for pennies and cigarettes from places with far cheaper tobacco duty, it's not an option I'd want to go for simply because I don't think I'd use it enough to make it worth the outlay.

I'm absolutely certain that some smokers would really enjoy it though, and it would seem to fill a gap in the market in that respect. Apparently, the day before a Labour MP sat in the same seats as us and bought an iQos and a big supply of sticks to go with it. I can't tell you who it was, not for reasons of privacy, but because the lady who gave us the demonstration was French and didn't know the name and I forgot to ask as I sailed out the door on a delicious tide of nic and caffeine.

So it was then off to the Xmas quiz with the hugely entertaining Jake Rees-Mogg as question master.

Our table of six vapers never quite reached the full complement, we got to five at one point but one bailed last minute so it was up to just the four of us to try to put a brave face on coming last. Fortunately, there was one other team who also didn't cheat and only had three on their table so we manged to triumph by coming second last out of eleven. We mashed their arses with a maginificent final score of 15 out of 45, comfortably eclipsing the 13.5 of our naturally inferior rivals. The winners scored 41 but if they did that without Google they're not worth knowing anyway. Bah!

And that was my day yesterday. I travelled back on the tube; fell asleep as usual; and got back to Puddlecote Towers to a sausage and chips supper; fully believing I'd squeezed every ounce of enjoyment from the day ... only to find a free beer token (which was, deliciously, in the form of a casino chip) still in my back pocket.

Still, none of us angels is perfect, eh? 

Holidays Are Coming

It's been quiet on these pages since COP7, mainly through my having to catch up at Puddlecote Inc after a week away in India, only then to jet off again to a small picturesque town near Hannover for a somewhat hedonistic weekend with a couple of friends. I'm not going to write a lot about the trip; I could justify it by declaring that what happens in Germany stays in Germany but it's more accurate to say that I've forgotten large chunks of it.

I do, however, recall a very pleasant early lunchtime on the Saturday in a small pub containing the welcome sight of ashtrays on the bar. Yes there is a smoking ban but - like a lot of places in Europe - this particular historic pub is one of many in the country to quite rightly ignore it. We didn't have any tobacco on us at the time but the barman was in possession of a large packet of red Pall Mall, so we asked if we could buy a cigarette off of him. He brusquely refused, replying that, no, he won't sell one to us ... he will give it to us to complement our incredibly frothy German liquid lunch.

Whiling away a few hours in good company whilst discussing the hideous personalities in 'public health' was fun, but back in the UK those self same miseries were just beginning their annual Christmas dronefest.

For example, this charmless nerk has been banging on about the Coca-Cola Christmas truck tour for three days straight now.

If you find this promoted tweet as unacceptable as me, please sign @food_active letter to object to this tour in NW https://t.co/3sxXXjVFzl https://t.co/qxdUFAxKxU

— Robin Ireland (@robinHEG) November 20, 2016

Now, this festive roadshow has become something of a staple this time of year and is enjoyed massively by adults and children up and down the country, yet joyless extremists like Ireland would happily see the tour banned and revel in childrens' tears. Yes, they really are that incredibly miserable, the child catcher and Grinch rolled up into one revolting fun-be-damned package.

Meanwhile, capslock-clunking business-hating fanatic Simon Capewell has also been spitting his usual bile at this seasonal treat in The Times.

Councils are being accused of “utter hypocrisy” for promoting a Coca-Cola Christmas lorry tour of the country while calling for curbs on junk food advertising. 

The tour, based on the drinks company’s Christmas advertisement, is visiting 44 sites around Britain and handing out free cans of Coca-Cola, Diet Coke and Coca-Cola Zero Sugar. 

Stops include Harlow, Essex, where the council says on its website that seeing the lorry is an “incredible” experience and urges families to “soak up the festive spirit with seasonal music [and] a free Coca-Cola”. 

Southend-on-Sea, also in Essex, says on its website: “For many, Christmas doesn’t start until the Coca-Cola Christmas truck appears on our television screens and in our towns.”

Yep, a welcome bit of happiness as the nights draw in, what's not to like? Well, for obsessive lunatics like Capewell, quite a lot.

Simon Capewell, vice-president of the Faculty of Public Health charity, said: “It is utter hypocrisy that councils [are] complicit in the marketing of sugary drinks to children while complaining about the burden of obesity.”

Good point. The solution, of course, is for councils to stop complaining about obesity since it's none of their business. Job done, and Capewell could then fuck off; keep fucking off; and when finished all the fucking off he can muster, could put some extra seasonal effort in and fuck off some more.

Coca-Cola said the tour “provides a moment of fun for friends and families in the build-up to Christmas”.

They're correct. It is always worth remembering that Ireland and Capewell are in a vanishingly tiny minority, hurling overwrought hyperbole at Coca-Cola like baboons fling their shit. This pathetic annual screech from their ilk also betrays their insistence that they don't pursue prohibition of sugary drinks, merely moderation. Because if you can't relax and enjoy a Coke and a smile once a year at Christmas when the Coca-Cola truck rolls into town, when the hell can you? There is quite simply no role for 'public health' here, instead it's a perfect example of why they should be cut off without a penny and sent cap-in-hand to JobCentre Plus ... preferably to be forced into litter-picking for McDonald's.

Or, as Simon Cooke put it yesterday on the subject of the Food Active campaign - which attacks the Coca-Cola tour - being funded out of local authority budgets.

What is truly offensive here is that your and my taxes are being used to mount an ill-informed and misleading attack on a private business. Hardly a day passes without one or other story about local councils being forced by budget cuts into closing and reducing services. All of the money for 'Food Active' comes from local council budgets in the North West and they are using it for the express purpose of lobbying for national government to change the law (as well as wanting to ban Coca-Cola's "Happy Holidays" promotion). 

So next time Manchester or Liverpool council leaders wring their hands about shutting down a library or cutting funding for a community centre ask them how they can justify spending money on astroturf political campaigns like 'Food Active'.

Quite. The very last thing councils should be spending their money on is lunatics like Capewell and Ireland to spout their niche hatred of a benign but tasty product and a wildly-successful family day out. If they want to recreate a scene from Scrooge's gloom emporium, they should be doing it with their own cash, not ours.

Fortunately, they're howling at the moon because no-one is taking their shit seriously.

Southend-on-Sea said it did not think promotion of the tour would overshadow its public health work while Harlow said it was up to parents to decide whether to accept a free drink for their children.

Never a truer word said.

You can see the tour schedule of the Coca-Cola truck here ... and since it upsets such bleak, dreary, anti-social cretins, here's a bit of Christmas glitter which will pass them by in their sad, cheerless, miserable lives. Enjoy, and don't waste too much pity on them.

COP7 Delegates Smoked Nearly Half A Million Fags

You may remember that last weekend I wrote about the WHO's finest elite anti-smokers turning up in New Delhi, just in time to see what a real public health crisis looks like.

A researcher was quoted by the New York Times as equating the pollution in terms we can understand.

Sustained exposure to that concentration of PM 2.5 is equivalent to smoking 40 cigarettes a day, said Sarath Guttikunda, the director of Urban Emissions, an independent research group.

On this basis, I did some calculations.

There were 180 countries in attendance, each comprising three delegates, and with other accredited attendees it is reported that around 1,500 were there. Over 8 days that means that the COP7 contingent 'smoked' between them the equivalent of around 480,000 fags!

Yet while waiting for three and a half hours for my pass to enter the venue, I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of delegates - you know, the ones who panic about a few wisps of smoke or vapour - worried enough about the danger to take precautions in the form of a mask or other prevention measure. Just saying.

I took some video and pictures while I was there and the boy P has edited it into a concise one minute film. It's a taste of the city under the smog; enjoy.

Dateline 2018: A Storm Is Coming

I've been home for just a couple of hours after a particularly revealing week in India for the COP7 conference, and I have to say I'm feeling quite smug.

Long-term readers here will remember that I've been writing for seven years now about how e-cigs have the capacity to show up the tobacco control industry for the corrupt, self-perpetuating, anti-social, health-be-damned gravy train that it has been since the early 1970s. This week has proved that hypothesis 100% correct. 

Trading only on prejudice and the pursuit of power and tax-funding, this gargantuan enterprise has been perverted to such an extent that it is now incapable - due to a tangled web of prior deceit and funding arrangements - to cope adequately with a nimble breakthrough technology such as vaping. The FCTC has spent so much time setting itself up to be untouchable on tobacco, parroting junk science at every opportunity and routinely exploiting children, that it is now so heavily bureaucratic and conflicted that it finds itself totally stuffed and flailing now they have decided (wrongly) that they should deal with e-cigs. 

So what we have seen this week is their usual disingenuous tactics fail miserably, so much so that when the light of publicity is shone in their direction, they scuttle like cockroaches muttering the same old canards they have managed to get away with before, but which simply won't wash anymore. 

Let's list the main ones, eh?

1) Everyone who objects is a shill. 

Perfectly exhibited by this clown, although he is only one of many to have tried this utterly pathetic defence in the past few days.

Delegates attending #COP7FCTC : #Vape "advocates" are the same as #BigTobacco mercenaries. Do not get distracted! Protect your people!

— Jaime Arcila Sierra (@arcilasierra) November 10, 2016

I don't know why such idiots seem to think that accusing perfectly normal, everyday people of being shills is going to help them? It won't make vapers go away, instead it just reinforces the injustice that he and his colleagues are inflicting on them and makes it more likely that they will be active in the future. He is in a political arena but seems incapable of understanding this.

This dismissal of opposing opinions has been a central tactic of anti-tobacco frauds for decades, but it used to be just one of their tools for misleading the public; with e-cigs is has become almost the only one, simply because they don't know how to handle the public they claim to understand because they've never had to before. Therefore it doesn't work, because the storm of social media outrage was overwhelmingly from members of the public who are appalled at the disgusting behaviour of the FCTC in New Delhi.

The FCTC has installed article 5.3 to purposely silence debate; it is its only purpose. But this goes out the window when private citizens get involved. Clinging to such a stupid policy when real people are trying to send messages their way just shows what charlatans tobacco control execs are.

2) Junk science

Debate at the venue in Noida this week has been based entirely on a fabricated fantasy in the form of the laughable COP7 report on e-cigs. It includes every pile of shit that its pharma-conflicted buddies have concocted to try to quell this inconvenient fly in their ointment, and refuses to consider any science - however rigorous and weighty - that might derail their pre-conceived judgement.

I read the documents that were put to the COP7 meeting this week on the subject, and nowhere was it mentioned that the COP7 report had been ripped to shreds by more honest colleagues in their profession. The science on e-cigs only points one way, but the delegates at COP7 think that - just as they did with tobacco - if they just keep lying for long enough, it will all go away and they don't have to change course. They will have to in the end or continue to be mortally embarrassed as they have been this week. But here we are, over a decade since e-cigs arrived on the scene, with their still being incapable of recognising how their reputation is being trashed by their own incompetence.

And talking of incompetence ...

3) Manipulation of the media

The tobacco control industry has relied for many years on the "science by press release" approach whereby a pliant media just parrots what they're told without asking any questions. This just doesn't work when the world can see what tobacco controllers refuse to; that e-cigs are quite obviously a remarkable invention.

The huge uptake of vaping around the world is something the press are now very interested in, and they are asking questions themselves. Apart from a few very lazy hacks, the ears of journalists have been pricked by the visibly accelerating prevalence of vaping and they are curious, especially since vapers tend to be engaged and hunger for news stories about the subject. The upsurge in vaping is a rich seam of visitor clicks for the new online media

In the past the FCTC hasn't needed to be bothered about such things so just trundle out bland - and almost invariably inaccurate - messages to the media before retiring to their state-funded hotels to get pissed and plan their next jamboree.

It doesn't work with vaping and leads to crashingly embarrassing occasions such as this where their spokesperson not only has no clue about the subject matter, but also seems not to understand how their own processes work.

Do watch this, because it highlights how extremely incompetent the organisers of COP7 really are.

5) David fighting Goliath

This deliberately constructed fallacy is one which has served the tobacco control industry well for many years. They tap into the public's mistrust of big businesses - the ones who make cigarettes in particular - and portray themselves as poor, marginalised, under-funded philanthropists fighting against an incomparably-funded enemy.

But the vast majority of e-cig manufacturers are small independent businesses, which the Goliath of tobacco control is putting to the sword at every opportunity worldwide. There were around a thousand activists at COP7, almost exclusively funded by global governments and with the added bonus of patronage from multi-national pharmaceutical companies.

When you have government representatives on all your delegations; are funded generously by one of the most lucrative transnational sectors of big business; spend a week calling unpaid citizen vapers shills and encouraging governments to put small independent start-ups out of business with impossible regulations and state-sanctioned bans; and have the power to ban the press from reporting on what you are doing, you are no longer the fucking David you like to pretend to be!

The tobacco control industry has never been the poor underfunded underdog, and the FCTC's approach to e-cigs proves this fact categorically.

So what now?

Now, I might be wrong but I believe I was the only vaping consumer to be afforded one of the restricted 30 public places to attend COP7 in India (see report of the day here). I was, of course, then banned from observing further detailed proceedings about vaping along with the press and any other interested parties.

However, I'm already hearing that vapers are so consumed with anger at the way COP7 has treated the subject that the next conference in Geneva in 2018 will be attended by many hundreds more. The FCTC now has a two year period of warning to stop being so lazy and to develop some understanding of the products and the people who make and consume them. Personally I hope they don't, because just following the same idle and mendacious lines as they've done for decades with tobacco is working very well for someone like me who just wants to see their total destruction.

I don't believe I'll be disappointed, either, simply for the fact that the FCTC is not fit for purpose. I will write up the quite ridiculous procedure tomorrow on how COP7 debated vaping for 5 days but ended up with exactly the same ill-researched crap that they had produced in Moscow in 2014. The only teaser I'll give is that it's hardly surprising when you allow third world nations the ability to display their ignorant opinons with the full backing of a UN-backed and unelected global quango Goliath.

Those organising COP8 now have two years to start learning about vaping while the science has another two years to further show up their stupidity. If the FCTC thought this year was a trifle uncomfortable, that will be nothing compared with when hundreds of the vapers  they have insulted this past week - and hopefully unnecessarily-impoverished manfacturers and vendors too - turn up on their doorstep in 2018.

New Delhi will look like a maiden aunt's garden party by comparison. 

A Billion Lives Reaches India

I travelled down to the Ojas Art Gallery last night for the much talked about Indian screening of A Billion Lives, scheduled to coincide with the FCTC's COP7.

For Delhi, it was a rather plush venue, but the journey there was quite incredible. On Tuesday evening, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced a shock policy which declared that 500 and 1000 rupee notes (about £6 and £12 respectively) cease to be legal tender in 72 hours; the result here has been chaos. India's economy is overwhelmingly a cash one and - although banks will accept the notes for another 50 days - most people don't have a bank account or even ID and the banks were shut yesterday anyway because they had no new notes to give out. So shops and traders have been refusing to take the notes for fear of being left with obsolete cash, and ATMs have been limited to giving out the equivalent of £24 per day. Tourists have also suffered, I was speaking to an Australian last night whose travel cash is now unwanted by restaurants and bars, most of which don't take cards.

One of the only ways of locals being able to get the notes accepted, then, has been through ticket machines and petrol pumps which are programmed to take them, and there just happened to be three large petrol stations on the route I had to take, all of which had massive queues out onto the road as people scrambled to get something for their soon-to-be redundant money.

Fortunately, one of the Indian vapers I met in the afternoon had warned me that although the journey should take 30 minutes, I should leave an hour, so I got there in time after a 50 minute taxi ride from hell. If you've ever been to India you'll know that the roads are anything but ordered, in fact it is every man for himself; it's not so much traffic as a stampede. Well just add in travelling in rush hour with panicking citizens, in the dark, and you can imagine the experience.

After almost an hour in a chaotic, unordered melee of bumper to bumper, wing to wing travel accompanied by a cacophony of vehicle horns, what a welcoming sight the calm red carpet approach was for the screening.

It was beautifully laid out, with flower petal arrangements on the fringes of the carpet, flickering candles lighting the way, and a big sign saying "INDIA" in case you had forgotten where you were.

This led us up to the venue for the evening, the outdoor cinema specially-built for the screening. It was to be A Billion Lives al fresco which was a trifle irritating since I'd not brought a jacket. Ordinarily that wouldn't be much of a problem in India at this time of year, but what with the sun being blocked out by the smog, there was no warm air around and it was quite chilly at times.

The art centre does have a cinema as I understand it but, according to Director Aaron Biebert, Indian rules mean that a film has to be approved a full 12 weeks beforehand, so a privately-built cinema was the only way to get it shown. Still, it meant that vaping was permitted throughout which made the many vapers in attendance very happy.

After a bit of mingling and a drinks reception with spicy hors d'eouvres (which they all are over here, I'm gagging for a bland burger!), the film screening began in front of an attendance of around 70 by my estimation. Most of whom were local vapers or otherwise interested Indians.

Much to the irritation of many vapers who have only seen trailers, I expect, this is the second time I've seen A Billion Lives and I'm by far it's biggest fan. So I don't need to say much about the film itself because I've already done so; you can read my review from the Warsaw showing here. I had heard that a few edits had been made but I didn't notice them, and I felt I enjoyed the film more on this occasion, but that could have been due to the far more salubrious surroundings this time rather than being hemmed in at a Polish cinema with only one entrance/exit.

It was followed by a Q&A with Director Aaron Biebert and Julian Morris of The Reason Foundation while most attendees listened from the bar at the back of the seating area.

Oh, and that isn't a vape cloud you can see in the picture, by the way, the fog was from a smoke machine you may be able to spot to the left of the screen.

Then, finally, to top off a rather top notch presentation, the post-screening entertainment by Indian song and dance band Rajasthan Josh struck up (see teaser taster below) as guests chatted and networked.

However - much as in life generally - just as everyone was enjoying themselves, the dark cloud of 'public health' interference came in and wrecked it. Because this was the day that the regulations on e-cigs were being debated at COP7 and word had reached us that an unholy alliance of India, Kenya, Thailand and Nigeria were demanding that the WHO recommend a global ban on the manufacture and sale of all vaping devices and liquids.

In fact, at time of writing, the horse trading and negotiations are still going on at the COP7 venue, and a lot of it is quite shocking stuff. Maybe that'll be my next article from India, who knows? Stay tuned. 

Meeting Asian Vapers

Following on from yesterday's article about the bizarre chaos at COP7, I mentioned that I had later attended an extremely useful event designed for vapers from a number of countries in Asia.

The first thing to note is that I finally saw an Indian vaper! His name was Nikhil, and a very personable young lad he was too. 

When I say finally, I mean that prior to that event I had not seen a single vaper in Delhi - and apart from Monday night's gathering, still haven't. In short, they just don't seem to exist. I quizzed Nikhil as to why this was the case and he told me that the police often arrest vapers if they vape in public, primarily on the grounds that they believe that the devices are being used to inhale cannabis juice. 

This is most likely because general awareness of vaping is scant. To give you an example, when I arrived at the airport at the weekend, the hotel had forgotten to send the car I requested to pick me up. Two representatives of the hotel - suited and booted - were apologetic and called another which could be with me in 15 minutes (it was a bit longer than that in the end). They took me to the road outside with my luggage and I got my e-cig out for the first time since Heathrow; that's when the questions started. 

I tried as best I could to answer them but it was clear they were unfamiliar with the products and they both admitted they had never even heard of an e-cig let alone seen one. In fact, as I vaped and let out a small cloud on a low-powered device, one of my helpful shepherds actually stepped back in astonishment. That gives you a clue as to how much work Indian vapers have to do get established in the country. So it was immense that quite a few determined vaping afficionados turned up to discuss what can be done about it, especially in the shadow of COP7. 

It was a very successful networking session which also included vapers from The Philippines, Hong Kong and Malaysia that I know of.

It was a whole new world for me and emphasised that - although vapers in the UK have their problems - the difficulties we face pale into insgnificance compared with these guys.

Having said that, many of the problems are identical to the ones UK vapers have come up against and, in many areas, still do. The most prominent being, of course, an inability to properly get the message out that vaping is all but harmless because there exist repellent tobacco control dinosaurs failing to live with the times and instead producing junk science and pinheaded ideological reasons to object to vaping.

And the interests of the Asian vapers will be instantly recognisable by those who vape in the UK. Very sociable, these vapers were talking devices, juice and regulations before we had even received our first cup of tea. The e-liquid testing scene below, for example, doesn't look dissimilar to one you might see in a vape-friendly UK venue too. 

Anyone who watches VTTV will know that I recorded some interviews on the night as a pre-arranged exclusive for Dave Dorn and the gang (you can watch the whole show here). They went remarkably well, especially the one with Tom Pinloc of The Philippines who gave his thoughts on how he saw the future of vaping under the rule of murderous dictator - and COP7's best friend - Ricardo Duterte. What also surprised me about his tale is that there are apparently around 100,000 vapers in the Philippines, served by a number of different consumer groups. That is quite a force to be reckoned with, but it will have to be while extreme prohibitionist Duterte is in charge down there.

Indian vapers boasted of the same kind of high numbers as the Philippines, so I also interviewed two Indian vapers and a representative of the newly-formed Association of Vapers India. These short video stories (on average about 5 mins each) were received very warmly in the chat area of VTTV and I've had requests to make them available widely. I always meant to do so anyway, so embedded below (in the order I filmed them) are the thoughts of vapers living far away in hostile environments but still fighting their corner admirably. They are well worth viewing to get an idea of the challenges being met in that area of the world. 

It's been a very busy week so far out here, but check back for the next blog which will be discussing a very special award for the WHO and the night I met A Bilion Lives Director Aaron Biebert. Oh yes I did, and have pics to prove it!