F E AT U R E
Closing Statements
Fraser Cropper and others offer their thoughts as the IBVTA’s first conference draws to a close.
The IBVTA’s inaugural conference officially ended at six o’clock in the evening, and nobody was leaving early.
Members and visitors who had arrived already overflowing with ideas or questions and ready to share everything
they could, stayed in the Mezzanine Suite for at least another hour, edified and encouraged.
Both insiders and outsiders knew more about this business, had put some prejudices and misconceptions to rest,
internalising good advice and clearer knowledge on how they could help themselves and others improve it.
Fraser Cropper expressed satisfaction with the day’s results, and reminded us how much work
was ahead.
“Hopefully we’ve achieved everything we set out to achieve today. Not only that but we’ve
added to what I hope is our already emerging credibility. Our aim is to create firstly, a trade
association that good businesses want to be a part of, and then generate a credibility for that
trade association that allows us to influence the people who need to be influenced by good
business and knowledge. That was the agenda. I hope we’ve expanded those spaces today – for
both the potential members we have yet to welcome into the association, but just as importantly,
those influencers and stakeholders who need to understand that this is a credible industry which
can take responsibility and is willing to do so.”
“I think the biggest learning experience I can take from today is where the emphasis has been.
We set the agenda and understood what was going to be discussed, but the feedback and questions
from our invitees showed that there’s a great deal of concern for what could be done by certain
policies to harm our growth, such as increased taxation. Vaping is enjoying great success, but
it seems external influences could be a real inconvenience for that. It’s been really nice to see
influential people I look up to, like Helen Taylor, and we need more advocates like that, creating
sessions for politicians and other strong influencers to be able to share with us and for us to
converse with them and relay our concerns.”
Two of those figures were Lord Callanan of the Conservative Party and Lib Dem Councillor John
Leech, who took questions from the audience alongside Sarah Jakes of New Nicotine Alliance
on domestic and international policy and what it meant for vaping.
Lord Callanan restated his continual support after the event:
“I’ve been a longstanding advocate of vaping as a practice that is demonstrably safe – 95% more
than tobacco smoking. This is by far the best solution to the ongoing problem of cigarette smoking,
which can only be called a crisis; nine million people in this country still expose themselves to it.
Vaping is a wonderful new technology and product producing remarkable gains for public health
and it’s doing it at no cost to the taxpayer. We should be celebrating and promoting e-cigarettes.”
Councillor Leech said that the growing profile, capital and presence of vaping on the world stage
would bring opportunity aplenty, but also additional regulatory attention and even heavier tax.
“I know people who I would never have believed would give up change their ways due to
e-cigarettes, one of whom increased their lung capacity 55%. We’re all in agreement that it’s
a good thing, but the question is where we go from here, which front we fight the hardest on,
whether it be advertising, legislation on vaping in public sp aces, and the issues surrounding
research into safety. I suspect it’s even safer than the 95% figure, and we have to keep the
scientific research as up to date as possible, because ear-grabbing figures like that will have the
strongest influence on government and the general public. If there is still some danger involved
in vaping, bear in mind that the government will take that as a green light to tax it more. I’m
confident that there will be heavy changes coming, but we can’t be certain when.”
April 27th was a strong debut event for the IBVTA, hitting its targets and setting up new
ones. We would see them again at Vaper Expo: The Big Weekend, where they revealed
their next project – see our news section for details.
98 ISSUE 11 VAPOUROUND MAGAZINE