Socialist opposition to harm reduction and new nicotine products is very clear. Nevertheless, it is a strange opposition. Smoking is a class issue. It is the socio-economically disadvantaged who smoke the most - more educated Swedes sniff or vejpar. During Almedalen Week, Vejpkollen met Karin Sundin, the newly appointed spokesperson for the Swedish Social Democratic Party on health issues in the Social Affairs Committee. It went like that, you could say.
"You know you're bought by the tobacco industry, right?"
Karin Sundin is annoyed. "As always, I find it difficult to know whether it's personal or just political when a politician snaps at you. Some politicians are just like that, at least the first time you meet them. But there's no doubt that she has strong views on issues related to nicotine, tobacco, snus, e-cigarettes and tobacco companies. She has recently replaced Yasmine Bladelius as spokesperson on health issues for the Social Democrats in the Social Affairs Committee.
That's why I approached her after a debate in Almedalen, on this summer's day in a very hot Visby. Mostly to introduce myself, say hello and ask for contact details for possible future interviews.
An ideological dance
Just a few minutes earlier, she was on stage basically dissing the whole idea of harm reduction for smokers. She called snus and nicotine pouches deadly products that no one really needs. The rating for e-cigs was not very flattering either
"E-cigarettes are completely unnecessary products, they should not be sold at all," said Karin Sundin to applause from Helen Stjerna, Secretary General of Non Smoking Generation, and state-funded lobby group whose message is more or less the same as Karin Sundin's. Or perhaps the opposite; the influence of lobby groups is often entangled in an ideological dance where political commitment is based on a consensus between different interests on how to actually think about different issues. All to benefit each other. A bit like the chicken and the egg.
E-cigs are nonsense
Karin Sundin was to discuss "the Swedish nicotine model" together with a calm and slightly long-haired doctor from Linköping, a psychologist known from the podcast sphere and an environmentalist from, well, I don't really know. It went like that. To find Consensus on nicotine is probably impossible in today's Sweden.
"In my opinion, there is no Swedish nicotine model. It's just about managing unnecessary products whose only purpose is to entice children to become nicotine addicts." Karin Sundin said angrily.
"But young people will do a lot of shit regardless of what we think, and it's better that they get into snus and e-cigarettes than smoking, I think" said the psychologist in broad Scanian.
"Nicotine, especially in oral form, is actually quite mild on the body. Slightly higher cortisol levels, but nothing serious really, like caffeine," added the doctor who took the opportunity to check how nicotine affected a group of subjects who were going to test how alcohol affects appetite chemically. They alternated snuff with wine for a few hours in the lab and the doctor measured a lot.
An interesting report for those who want to read more about nicotine, perhaps?
Karin Sundin did not think so.
"It's just nonsense" she exclaimed and the Non Smoking Generation applauded again. Even cheered a little. Wohoo.
The disaster is spelled "snus"
Afterwards, Karin Sundin ended up on a bench in the shade. A bit symbolic, perhaps. Not only politically, as a majority in the Riksdag now supports behind a more damage-minimizing line in both the Social Affairs Committee and Parliament as a whole. The heatwave in Almedalen was soon followed by the news that the new government cuts taxes on snus and at the same time raises it for cigarettes. Karin Sundin was of course one of those who called the decision a "disaster".
"It's smarter to take a piece of gum instead, if you want to quit smoking," she said in a comment on her public Facebook page.
Pfizer or some other pharmaceutical company couldn't have phrased it better, I think. Quit smoking with a toy, as it were.
Vejpshop? What is it?
I asked her, there in Almedalen, if she knew anything about the lesser-known, but nonetheless widespread, one, independent part of the vejp market. Anyone who lives a life of their own beyond snuff and disposable models, in the form of local vejpshops, closed forums on social media and in newspapers like Vejpkollen?
It didn't really work out.
"What is a vejpshop?" Karin Sundin asked.
Instead, she asked if she had ever smoked herself?
"Oh," she said. "It was something you did a bit in your teens, maybe. No problem to stop" she said morosely.
The weak nicotinist
That particular attitude is very common among anti-tobacco activists, I have noted. That it is actually "quite easy to stop - if you want to". Those who do not succeed are simply not strong enough. Downright weak, perhaps?
This is an issue that has never really taken root in the ideologically motivated anti-tobacco movement. The idea of people as victims is very important. It fits into the picture of the fight against the "eternal enemy" - tobacco companies - the last hope on earth - luring the mob with dangerous pleasure at the cost of one's dirty soul.
HEROIN! KNARK! CHILD!
Now I sound like another Social Democrat, I realize. The editorial writer for the newspaper Sydöstran, Stig-Björn Ljunggren, summarized the Social Democratic opposition to nicotine in a similar way. An opposition that is almost religious.
"They basically say that nicotine is as addictive as HEROIN. That's the argument they live on. HEROIN! DRUGS! CHILD! Who would want to have a public discussion with someone who uses such arguments?" said the cigar-loving Stig-Björn Ljunggren during one of the discussions during the Almedalen week.
"You are feeding the tobacco companies"
That e-cigs does not contain tobacco is therefore quite irrelevant, for politicians like Karin Sundin. The fact that vejpshoppar sells e-cigs that help people quit smoking is just as bad as a drug dealer pushing methadone to a heroin addict. No matter that the basic business idea of the companies that live on e-cigarettes is to steal customers from the tobacco companies - by luring them with a rather good alternative to cigarettes.
Karin Sundin puts it quite concretely.
"But where does the nicotine come from? The tobacco companies, right! You, no YOU, are feeding them! You think that's ok, do you?"
Somewhere there the conversation became absurd. We were talking about synthetic nicotine I think. About user perspectives, my grandmother and her pointless nicotine gum that never worked. I don't know. I don't know. It was not a fruitful conversation.
Nicotinist = socialist voter?
The Social Democrats are a party where the attitude to harm reduction (i.e. "nonsense") is polished on the outside but very rough on the underside. And if you think about it: How many members of Metall do not snuff? How many social-democratic nurses stay smoke-free during breaks with the help of nicotine pouches? How many stressed-out home care workers have taken their last drag on a cigarette, having accidentally stumbled across a sugary-sweet disposable vejp in the convenience store? Not too damn few, I'd say. Not so damn few.
Cannon fodder in the debate
But according to Karin Sundin, it doesn't matter whether someone chooses to vejpa, snuff or smoke. It doesn't matter whether a nurse buys the nicotine in a small vejpshop in Borlänge or directly from Philip Morris IQOS shop in Östermalm. Everyone is a follower, and our life choices are worth about nothing, except as cannon fodder in the debate about nicotine use and the children as thievesvejpar.
This should of course make the issue of nicotine and nicotine use very relevant, and very personal, for all users across Sweden. Not least among social democrats.
The question is also how long interest groups such as Non Smoking Generation, Hjärt-Lungfonden and Tobaksfakta will manage to create new Social Democratic megaphones, which angrily convey their message of a nicotine-free (not just smoke-free) Sweden in the plenary chamber of the Social Affairs Committee. How long will it be before someone in the deeper ranks speaks out, seriously?
Who knows?
Karin Sundin is still sitting on the bench when I hurry on to the next meeting, somewhere in a narrow Visby alley, where some harm reduction enthusiasts have gathered to discuss the future of nicotine pouches and e-cigs at EU level. Karin Sundin is not invited, if I am to interpret the signals correctly.
Afterword
It is a balancing act to work journalistically on an issue that affects you as much as it affects thousands of people in this country. Interest groups on the right and left are lobbying like crazy, using journalists for one thing and another, just like in any economically important market. I am vejp myself, and perhaps above all a former smoker. I have my own view of how politics and debate in society affect other users. For me, and for the content of Vejpkollen, it is crucial that all voices are heard, not least from us users, i.e. those of us who actually no longer smoke.
And somewhere, I hope that Karin Sundin, at some point in the future, will take the time to listen, at least a little bit, to our version of what is happening, to listen to our stories. Because the nicotine debate is neither black nor white, and users have quite concrete ideas about how to deal with old and new nicotine products. We are who we are, even if Karin Sundin thinks our life choices are "silly".
That said.
