In the global war on nicotine, many are pushed to the margins. It’s not just smokers who no longer count. Adults who’ve already made the switch to safer nicotine no longer count. Independent vape retailers, consumer advocates and accomplished scientists and researchers are shunned and sometimes silenced. Even the proven real-world consequences of prohibition no longer count. Shot on location at the Global Forum on Nicotine in Warsaw, Poland, GFN organizer Paddy Costall reflects on 13 years of organized resistance to the moral crusade against safer nicotine.
Featuring:
PADDY COSTALL
Event Organizer, Global Forum on Nicotine
gfn.events
Transcription:
GFN interview — Paddy Costall on 13 years of GFN
Global Forum on Nicotine 2026
Brent Stafford 0:00:05
Paddy, the 13th year of the Global Forum on Nicotine.
Paddy Costall 0:00:09
13 years indeed. A lot's changed, not all of it for the best. Some of it good, some of it bad. And I think this year we've at last grasped the nettle of prohibition and public health. It's a very controversial and very important issue that needs to be addressed. We've covered a lot of things in the past.
we've been very focused on different issues but this is this is one that cuts across everything because whilst we still face ridiculous levels of interference regulation whatever you wish to call it um nothing can actually move on smoothly we have episodic victories here there and everywhere you know the most recent one in argentina But we also have lots of drawbacks.
There's no consistency across the piece. People who travel face a nightmare of different regulations, different penalties for even being in possession of something that they use to improve their health, etc. And what we need to see is we need to see an end to this. Nobody's saying that regulation is not necessary, but the fundamental point of regulation should be safety.
It should not be based on moral judgments, it should be based on science. And as Alex Wodak said in his lecture today, it should be something that's done with the consent of the population, not enforced or not forced upon the population. Let's hope that the discussion moves in that direction for the next few days. What happened in France?
I've given up trying to guess these days. I think that unfortunately it's become a power game and it's kind of who's got the ear of the government at any given time.
And it's almost as if the realities, the scientific reality of what is going on is ignored because Again, Alex today used that famous quote about when a man's wages depend on not understanding they're not going to understand. And I think that that's an issue that we need really to address.
What we really need is we need these people who are vehement opponents of tobacco harm reduction to come here and let's have the discussion. Let's do it in a polite, professional and proper manner. Let's not snipe at each other on social media or in various journals or whatever. And also let's stop the lies and the misinformation and the distortion. It doesn't help anybody.
And it certainly doesn't help the reputation of organisations such as the World Health Organisation if it endorses these kind of ridiculous claims. And to an extent it doesn't help people like Bloomberg whose money has done a lot of good in other areas but who has a complete blind spot when it comes to tobacco and vaping and pouches and everything else.
But I mean, to Mike, it's all tobacco, so it doesn't really matter. And I think that's one of the things that we need more than anything is we need an honest and open discussion and debate. I've invited them. I invite them again. Please do come. You know, we're not all monsters. We're not going to do anything to you. Just come and talk to us.
Brent Stafford 0:04:07
When you started, you and your team, the Global Forum on Nicotine, what was the state of affairs then and how is it different now?
Paddy Costall 0:04:18
Well, the state of affairs then was it was a very, very new area and people were finding their way through it. We were there at the beginning when, you know, the embryonic vaping organisations and consumer organisations were just starting to get together and talk to one another. There was a lot of activity in a number of places.
For example, there was a lot of activity in the UK. There was a lot of activity in France. There was some activity in other European countries. Some in the United States and some in Canada. But if you actually look at it now, there's representatives of the community, if you like, speaking up in so many different places, some of them at great personal risk.
I know it is just something I... It's to say, how could that be risky? Well, I think, you know, you are facing sanctions in some places for even, you know, for advocating for safer nicotine products, let alone selling them, using them, possessing them or whatever it may be. But, you know, just the sheer... Some regimes, as we know, just don't tolerate dissent.
Unfortunately, my own country is becoming one of them.
Brent Stafford 0:05:41
Yeah, and that is kind of interesting that the UK, which was once heralded as the best place for tobacco harm reduction, there's been a lot of steps backwards, no?
Paddy Costall 0:05:52
I think, again, it's... I come back to the same issue. I mean, politicians are very fickle people, as we know. And if the zeitgeist is like, well, you know, these things aren't very good and parents are getting upset about their kids using them, well, we ban them. Because the easiest thing to do is ban something.
and then hand it over to a criminal market and as you said earlier to me, you know, $49 billion a year worth of products being sold illicitly. The figures coming out from Australia today, 80% of the tobacco and vape market in Australia is illicit. There's been over 400 fire bombings. There's been murders. There's been...
People don't even look at that, but, you know, don't want my children vaping because these people are evil. It's crackers. It doesn't bear... It doesn't have any sense to it whatsoever. It's a manufactured argument based on political opportunism and sometimes a moral stance. I would say an immoral stance, but they would say a moral stance.
Brent Stafford 0:07:07
You come from the drugs harm reduction world, so do many of the people that are part of your team that created the Global Forum on Nicotine. You must be shocked to see this level of pushback against nicotine
Paddy Costall 0:07:23
Well, I think the thing I found most shocking, and my colleague Gerry Stimson has been in this business an awful lot longer than I have, and the thing that actually shocked him was how many people wouldn't talk to him from his previous life, where he was considered to be a leader and somebody who was at the forefront of harm reduction during the AIDS epidemic and everything else.
people suddenly didn't want to know him because you're in bed with this evil industry, the tobacco industry. These are people who are taking vast amounts of money from drug companies who I would venture to say have hardly got a pristine reputation for their way of dealing with people. But it's just some people have a block when it comes to tobacco.
Another example I would give with it is there is an accepted principle in the climate world of polluter pays. And they are very, very comfortable with fossil fuel industries contributing to cleaning up disasters, repairing environments, etc. I mean, Canada's had its own issues with that, with the pipelines and everything for a very long time.
What's the difference between the tobacco industry then saying, like Philip Morris did with the foundation for a smoke-free world, here's 960 million dollars, why not take that? At the last time I looked, money didn't have any morals. Money is money. It's what you do with it that counts.
And if it comes with no strings, and you can do the good things that you wish to do with it, which would, you know... To be quite honest, that was a life... Well, that was a game-changing amount of money, and it was just wasted. In my view, I mean, some of it has been put to good use, but...
People argued over the provenance of the funds rather than what you could do with the funds. And that was where the mistake was.
Brent Stafford 0:09:33
Yeah, I mean, certainly that whole issue, of course, Derek Yach, who's been on our show many times, and then Cliff Douglas, you know, who we just had on our show again. I mean, man, the beatings they've taken over it.
Paddy Costall 0:09:46
These are terrible people. They really are awful people, as we know. You know, Derek was one of the architects of the framework convention on tobacco control. At the second GFN, he gave the Michael Russell oration and basically said, FCTC is no longer fit for purpose. At which point, that was him... He's a non-person.
And Cliff Douglas, a very nice guy, genuine, wanted to make a difference, wanted to make a change. And he, I think like Gerry, although a much higher profile example of it because he was in the public eye much more, was absolutely slaughtered by his former colleagues. How could you do this?
And I think that there's been a lot of people who have entered this sphere and left it very quickly because it's just very, very dangerous to your own well-being.
Brent Stafford 0:10:53
And they're making some headway, aren't they? I mean, because it's hard to keep anything funded if you're in THR.
Paddy Costall 0:11:01
Well, who else is going to fund it? Public health do not take tobacco harm reduction seriously enough. They don't regard it as a legitimate method of dealing with a great public health menace. And it's so fickle because they're all falling over themselves to enable drug users to use drugs safely.
I don't at all disagree with that, but I don't understand why it's different when people want to stop doing something that's killing them. The last time I looked, the Hippocratic Oath said, first do no harm. And there's so many doctors who are absolutely impervious. I mean, we had the meeting here today of some medical practitioners for tobacco harm reduction.
And they are people who are getting fed up with their profession not being on the ball with this stuff.
Brent Stafford 0:12:07
They just ignore it. In an interview we just had with somebody from the National Harm Reduction Coalition, that exact issue was brought up, was that there's a hypocrisy when public health will do whatever they can to recognise the autonomy and dignity of a hard drug user while at the same time absolutely stigmatising a smoker or a safer nicotine user?
Paddy Costall 0:12:37
I think it's interesting, yes. There's an awful lot of investment gone into that. But that is the illicit market. That's an illicit, rightly or wrongly, drugs are criminalized, etc., etc.
But the people who are engaged in that kind of behaviour are much better thought of in a lot of ways than people who use legally available products, whether that be tobacco products or alcohol. They're people who bring it on themselves and are morally weak. It is a paradox. But, you know, these poor people are using drugs, you know, it's all to do with this.
And it is, yes, don't dispute that. But, you know, people who are smoking, They're going to die. Most of them, 50% of them are going to die as a result of a smoking-related disease. We can stop that. Or they can stop that. But they need help to do so. In fact, the only help they need is for the state to stay out of the way. Just get out of the way. Let people...
People are doing something which they're paying for. Not a single taxpayer has been harmed in this process. And it's... I can't get my head around it. After all these years, I still... I don't know why I'm doing it. I mean, it's... I have such a frustrating time with this. Because, you know, you do get the shoots of growth. Like, you know, Argentina was...
A shock, to be honest.
Brent Stafford 0:14:11
Explain for our audience what happened in Argentina.
Paddy Costall 0:14:13
I mean, Argentina took a decision, the Argentinian authorities took a decision to sensibly regulate the vaping market. They did it based on the economics, on the health, on everything else, on law enforcement, etc. And they've done it in a proper, organised fashion, and they've taken people with them. And it's a model. All right, it might not be perfect. Nothing is.
But it was like the UK model was moving in the right direction. And then the Secretary of State for Health suddenly says, I don't like these things. I don't smoke. I don't vape. I don't like it. Tragically, of course, he's now no longer the Secretary of State for Health, but the new one's as bad.
Brent Stafford 0:14:59
The EU commissioner, he's been making some headlines recently about his plan to eradicate nicotine. How doable is that?
Paddy Costall 0:15:11
It's pie in the sky. It's nonsense. Prohibition, oh God, if we go back through history, look at America in the 1920s and 30s. What did it achieve there? It produced a whole generation of psychotic gangsters like Capone and others who made a huge amount of money. Lots of people died. And where did we get to?
We got to the repeal of the Volstead Act and everybody started drinking again. That was a real... And the prohibition has never, ever... Prohibition's never worked.
Brent Stafford 0:15:48
Yeah, I mean, the conversation around hard drugs, right, is prohibition. There is a prohibition. But that seems to be, though, that it's lessened.
Paddy Costall 0:16:01
I think the thing with drugs is drugs is much more embedded into kind of cultural and political issues in the sense that people look at why people use heroin or use crack cocaine and they try to address the reasons for that. People look at tobacco in isolation, they look at it as smoking. No one asks why do people smoke? Nobody seems to care about any of that.
How could we make it so that it's less attractive and people won't do themselves as much damage? Well, there's a very easy way of doing that. Give them what they want without the danger. But it's not looked at in the same way as drugs. It's looked at as an isolated, standalone issue with no other factors influencing it.
Brent Stafford 0:16:56
We first met back in 2018 in Vancouver, and actually you're the one that introduced me to Dr. Mark Tyndall, who's been such a great person on this issue for all these years now. Back in 2018, what was amazing is there was this huge, vibrant, independent vape shop community, a business, a huge, massive business.
And what struck me so much about that was that it was like the only time in my life that I ever saw a brand new industry pop up that was not tied directly to big corporations, that independent people could open up a store and do something to help their fellow communities. And that has been systematically destroyed. Yes, everywhere.
Paddy Costall 0:17:46
I mean, it's criminal in a lot of ways. I mean, I remember the growth of vape shops in the UK. I mean, they still exist. Some of them have become much more corporate so that you've got big chains of vape stores. But it used to be that they were a stop smoking service. Because people went in there out of curiosity.
And the people behind the counter, selling them something was almost a secondary thing. Importance what they wanted to do is they wanted to talk to them about what would you like? What do you you know? What is it you want? Because obviously people think about vapes as it's just that it's not it's flavours.
It's everything else and They would have time to explain to people there were a number of them that opened up so that they had a coffee store with the vape shop and people go in and And people would vape in there. Now, if you didn't want to be in there, you didn't have to be in there. So why bother? You know, premises have to be vape-free. No. And it'll never do you any harm.
It's not, it's water vapour. The clue's in the name, but we used to have all of that and people just got disillusioned and couldn't make a living, places closed. And it was just... It's a shame. It's a real shame. And I think that, you know, how it's going to build back, I don't know.
Brent Stafford 0:19:23
It's almost as if authorities were trying to stamp out the growth of a consumer culture, a taste culture. Much like, you know, people who are foodies or people who are wine people. And, you know, by... killing the vape shops as a place in which the people could congregate around and experience, you know, a culture. That was, I think, a big part of what they were trying to do.
Paddy Costall 0:19:50
I think, I mean, there's a whole psychology behind why people oppose all of these things and people do it for different reasons, but There is a systematic attempt to destroy the burgeoning industry, the growing industry. And the way that they did it was they liked to do it with everything else, it was a guild by association.
Industry, the big industry, were never ever going to have a Kodak moment. They were always going to push back and get their share of the market. But then, of course, everything just became, it's big tobacco. Whereas there were a rather large number of independent manufacturers. They were buying their components from China and then putting the stuff together.
There was a lot of juice companies and things like that, but they weren't owned by any of the big industry, big tobacco companies. But you can successfully conflate all of this and just confuse people. You know, look at the gateway theory. You know, people will vape and then they will start smoking. Actually, it's the other way around.
But once we lose that argument, what about the children? What about the children? We don't know the long-term effects. Well, we don't know the long-term effects of most new drugs, but we do a bit of clinical testing and we give it a trial run. Now, we've had 15 years of people vaping. I don't know anybody who has on their death certificate vaping.
Brent Stafford 0:21:30
Well, and not only that too, but we have this, especially in the US, for instance, we have this massive cohort of 16, 17, 18 year olds that were vaping as a part of that massive vaping epidemic. Well, they're all now 23, 24, 25, and are they smoking? No.
Paddy Costall 0:21:48
And some of them probably won't be vaping. It's a phase people will go through and some will stay with it and some won't. But what's wrong with recreational nicotine? I don't think we should sell people coffee because that's just as dangerous and we should stop that. Let's ban coffee. Oh and tea's got tannin in it and that's not good for you.
It's interesting because if the coffee industry or the alcohol industry were actually to come along today and become a new kid on the block, they would be banned immediately. They'd be slaughtered. Absolutely. You're not going to allow that to happen. I mean, look, you know, the next, the next cab on the rank that's going to be driven off is sugar.
I mean, we're getting that already in the UK, you know, all these, I mean, I don't dispute, I have, I have a, I have diabetes. So, you know, sugar is an issue for me. It doesn't stop me eating it. But it's kind of, they've now become obsessed with this and the links between sugar and obesity and all the rest. Yes, it's fine, but don't go over the top on it.
Let's look at sensible ways of making this happen. You know, the whole thing, banning adverts on television before 9 o'clock. How many children go to bed at 9 o'clock these days? I don't know. Well, how many children are watching mainstream television anyhow anymore? And yes, sugary drinks, fatty foods and all the rest of it. What we should be doing is educating people.
If you do this, this will happen. Well, they're coming for your pint. Yeah, absolutely.
Brent Stafford 0:23:28
Paddy, all these years, to this day, everyone talks, rightly so, about the person who is still smoking and how do we serve them and help them make that switch. And When we look at the regulators and the restrictions and the bans, it's in relationship to that smoker. My question is, and I'll use U.S.
numbers as an example, there's 25 million Americans who have already switched or are in the process of switching to safer nicotine. Tens of millions. And so the restrictions and bans affect people who have switched years ago, but they still need to be able to access their vaping products. What about them?
Paddy Costall 0:24:13
Well, this is the big issue is that The most important cohort are those who are smoking, the older people who are smoking, because they are shortening their life expectancy by doing so. I mean, I know there's a calculation can be done on that. I'm not a statistician, so I won't even attempt it.
It's been discovered a long time ago that if people stop smoking in their 20s, by the time they're in their 40s, it's as if they've never smoked. The body will recover and all the rest of it. But what has happened is that the policy makers and the influences in the anti-THR camp have shifted the goalposts, so we've got to protect the children.
We could just ignore these people, they're written off, they're damaged goods, there's nothing we can do about that, but what about the children? And that's the whole focus of it, and that is where It's been shown it's a fallacy. It's been shown that, you know, the numbers of high school students vaping. Yes, you can manufacture the numbers, you know, they do it frequently.
Yeah, once a week. That's frequently. It depends how you define them. Or once a month, you know, or ever use. But it depends how you define it. And I think that's where the problem lies. These older people don't count. Because they don't fit the scenario. They don't fit what people want to.
They don't want to describe these older people who just sit there quietly and unobtrusively, stealth vape. They're not blowing clouds everywhere.
Sitting in sitting in a tattooist chair and having their heads shaved and dressing in leather all that kind of the Demonization of it all they're just ordinary people for our audience from one of the originators Of the global form on nicotine.
Brent Stafford 0:26:24
Why is an event like this important?
Paddy Costall 0:26:27
It's important for a number of reasons. It keeps the issue live It enthuses and energizes people who are advocates. One of the things we noticed very early on was that there were countries where there was a one man or a one woman band, but they came here and they went, wow, I am not alone. I'm not an alien, I'm not.
The other thing is that they brought so much knowledge and dedication. It's not just the scientists who come here and talk, it's people who talk about real stories, their life experience, etc.
think that if this wasn't here there are other organisations that organise events and that's fine and they all have a different focus but we're the only organisation that prioritizes that the consumer the customer now we've got We've got 13 years now behind us, this conference of the 13th.
And that experience now, we're looking at that and seeing what we need to do and how we need to do it going forward. GFN TV came about as part of the development of the Global Forum and that's something I would like to see grow.
I think that in this day and age, internet is where people get their information from and what we need to be doing is putting accurate information out there, despite the attempts by YouTube and others to prevent us doing so. We've got the NSP Daily Bulletin, which gives people information on new research, new thinking, etc. We want to keep that.
We now are looking at the prospect of doing a more regional approach. I have to say that travel costs and just the sheer awkwardness of trying to travel around the world these days is getting worse and worse. I mean, for this one, This week there's people not being able to get here on time because of flight difficulties, etc.
Half the world is at war with the other half of the world and you can't fly anywhere. All this sort of stuff. So we're looking at, rather than come to us, well, let's bring the event to you. But also by doing that... you can tailor it to the cultural, political, scientific, whatever environment that it's in. You can also do it in other people's languages.
We do try with our translation to cover what we can. But we're looking at how we might do that. We're also looking at more niche targeted and focused events. We call them dialogues, the global forum dialogues. And we did one in London not so long back.
But that one, for example, was looking at how can we work together with other fields and other professionals, drugs field, alcohol field, mental health, all those sort of things, and getting people talking. We work closely with Knowledge•Action•Change, who are much more involved in the production of information, research, etc.
And we're trying to work with other people in other places. Obviously all this takes time, effort and money. And that's, you know, yours truly's job is to try and find that. But it's important that we don't just once a year have a little party in Warsaw and then everyone goes home. It needs to be something that ends yours.
That was the whole rationale behind GFN TV, was to keep things live in the interim. And it's been very successful. I mean, I looked at the stats recently and it's looking good. We're not, you know, we're not CBS, thank God. We're not NBC, but, you know, we are getting an audience that's curious. And it's not all just people who we know who's watching it.
It's people who are looking for information. And, you know, my colleagues who are much more technically adept than I am can do all of this, the optimization of searches and things like that. I don't understand any of it. I just know it happens. But we do get a lot of inquiries now. We get people asking us about things.
We've got people who are attending for the first time here and we have had about 10% of the people who come are new people. So we're bringing a new audience in. And I do think the most important thing about the Global Forum is its inclusivity. We do not exclude anybody.
And some people don't like that and think that's terrible, you know, that we're letting all of these horrible people from... Big tobacco. Big tobacco in. But they are no different to anybody else. They have the same right to speak, they have the same right of access. I know a lot of other places where people would be allowed to go, but they wouldn't be allowed to speak. Why?
That's just nonsense. So there is a future. There is hope. There is hope. There is always hope. I mean, while you draw breath, there's always hope. And while that's the case, we'll keep going. I mean, I'm so delighted with it. We've developed a very, very skilled team of people. who live in all sorts of different places. We don't have an office. We don't have large overheads.
We are mobile. If we need to go somewhere, we go there. And the question now is maintaining that core team, but also using the experience and talents around the globe. We need people to come to us and say, I'd like to do this. Yeah, how are we going to do it? And then we have the discussion. I'm happy to talk to anybody from anywhere. You know, nowhere's off the map.
And I think that's the strength of the organisation. It's very adaptable.