Back in the days when tobacco advertising was freely allowed, all manner of ads and characters associated with them cropped up. Some might, for example, remember the humorous Hamlet cigar ads, where the slogan “happiness is a cigar called Hamlet” followed someone lighting one up and enjoying a few puffs while everything around him was going wrong.
Cigarettes had their equivalent too and few more memorable to people of a certain age than the Marlborough Man, portrayed as a tough cowboy. The original actor in the role, Robert Norris, died at the age of 90 in 2019, which would have been a very notable age to live to were it not for the curious fact that he never actually smoked.
His son Bobby revealed that this contradiction led to him leaving the role after 12 years. He had told his sons he never wanted to see them smoking. That brought the obvious response from his sons: If he was so against cigarettes, why did he help promote them? There was no answer but to quit.
Of course, other actors succeeded Robert Norris in the role, but now, it seems, the leading Marlborough Man is once more hoping that the next generation won’t be seen smoking, only this time with the help of vape liquid.
The New Marlborough Man
The man in question is not a cowboy played by an actor in a TV ad, of course, such things having long been banned just about everywhere. Instead, it is Jacek Olczak, chief executive of Philip Morris International (PMI).
Speaking to the Daily Mail, he explained how his ambition is to bring an end to a world where any father like Robert Norris would even need to tell his sons not to smoke, because it will have been banned, with vaping playing a central role in helping to eliminate it.
PMI owns both Marlborough and rival Benson & Hedges, so this is no idle ambition. It is one Mr Olczak has been seeking to pursue since 2016, with PMI investing £8.5 million in research and product development to provide alternatives to smoking. Vapes and heated tobacco are now the way to go and Mr Olczak has used the latter to help quit his own 20-year smoking habit.
His vision is a similar one to that occurring in the motor industry, where the sector is gearing up to shift completely away from polluting petrol and diesel and to a future of electric vehicles. It is not something that can be achieved overnight, but it is something he believes can be managed with a target date set for a final complete ban on smoking, just as cars will have a deadline to go electric.
“Looking at what the UK is doing in the car industry, saying that as of a certain year you are not allowed to produce petrol cars, we could have this with tobacco too,“ Mr Olczak remarked.
It is an analogy with a lot of relevance too; just like the batteries used in electric vehicles, those found in vapes are made from lithium, now set to be one of the world’s most precious materials but one that, luckily, the UK seems to have a lot of, with both Cornwall and County Durham now known to offer viable supplies.
Seeing The Light
This is not the only analogy the Polish businessman used in his interview. The other he used was how the research into products like vapes can be compared with the studies that develop energy-saving lightbulbs. “In different countries they had a number of investment schemes to promote research and development to see whether you can produce light with much less energy,” he observed.
As the paper noted, the picture is not entirely one of virtue for PMI, which still sells large quantities of cigarettes in some parts of the world such as the Middle East, Africa, much of Asia and the Americas. But it is a far cry from past lawsuits when it fought against claims that it deliberately suppressed evidence of the health damage smoking could cause.
Perhaps ironically, vaping providers are now faced with similar claims now, despite the crucial difference that many governments and health organisations such as authorities in the UK have policies in place to encourage vaping as a healthier alternative to smoking and an effective way to quit.
Getting the message through
That could scarcely be a more relevant or significant distinction, but it appears lost on those desperate to find bad news about vaping.
In the Metro News – a paper that really is worth every penny you pay for it – Dr Deepa Panch, the expert asked about whether vaping can affect skin health, admitted that “we still don’t have enough information” to be sure of what long-term effects might arise.
Such a comment could be seen as a warning of unknown dangers, but can just as reasonably be seen as admitting that as yet proof of all sorts of alleged issues has not been found, which may be because they don’t exist.
Although some chemicals in vapes can cause irritation for a few with certain skin conditions, the main point Dr Deepa made was that nicotine is known to cause skin dryness and slow healing. But that is, of course, as much an issue with smoking as any other form of nicotine consumption.
The Daily Mirror may have done even worse, with dentist Dr Khaled Kasem saying vaping can cause oral dryness and bad breath. However, these are hardly insurmountable problems; the dentist recommended keeping teeth clean and drinking plenty of water. These are things anyone who cares about their oral and wider health should do anyway.
Dr Kasem also said nicotine is a stimulant that can cause tooth grinding, but once more that brings us back to the same reality; that this will equally apply to smoking, which can also lead to other problems like gum disease and throat cancer. The simple fact remains that vaping is better for oral health than smoking.
To assume that because vaping is not a silver bullet for all health issues it should be discarded as an alternative to smoking is to ignore real benefits acknowledged by health experts. However, with Marlborough Man on the case, maybe a more positive message will now get through.
