Transcription:
Hello, Clive. Hello. It's great to see you again in Warsaw. Can you tell us what do you
think about this year's GFN conference? I'd say it's the best yet. The range of people
here, the range of discussions, the insights coming from both the panels and the presenters
and from the floor have been exceptional. I always find it moves on my knowledge and
my understanding of what we're dealing with. So yeah, great session. Very fitting for the
10th anniversary. Great tribute to the organizers, particularly Jerry and Paddy. And have you
had opportunity to be on the other sessions as well? I've been to a few other sessions.
I think they've been really interesting. I really love the one on publications. I like
the one on industry transformation. So and I think the quality of discussions very strong
and the knowledge of the people involved, both on the stage and in the audience really
make these discussions very rich indeed. This year's trapline is tobacco harm reduction
the next decade. What do you think needs to change within the next 10? Most of what needs
to change is the attitude of the tobacco control and public health community. Everything is
set now ultimately for the elimination of smoking and a huge suppression of the rates
of smoking related disease through the processes of diffusion of innovation and these new products
taking over from the old and driving out the most harmful products that we've ever seen.
The only thing that's really stopping that is anti-vaping, anti-harm reduction campaigning,
misinformation on a truly epic scale, excessive regulation that's causing perverse consequences
and essentially the people who should be charged with a public health mission are in fact holding
it back. And first and foremost, that is WHO, which is at the apex of this problem and is
actually doing more harm than good in the tobacco space now. So why is there so much
misinformation around vaping, around safety of a cigarette? I think there's a lot of misinformation
and a lot of hostility to vaping because it's a very threatening idea. If you've worked
in tobacco control, then you have a playbook that involves coercion, restrictions, punishments,
stigma, all designed to force you to quit smoking. And along comes a method which is
really about the interaction of private sector innovators and empowered consumers who can
switch to a safer product at their own initiative, at their own expense and without any involvement
from anyone in public health, essentially rendering them irrelevant and redundant. So it's a threat
to their interests, it's a threat to their way of doing things and their worldview and they are
reacting accordingly and they are trying to marginalize that strategy so that their own
preferred strategy will continue to be the dominant one. And I think that's why we're seeing
the confrontations that we see in this field. Right. Thank you so much for your comment. Thank you.