Clive Bates
Clive Bates is the director of Counterfactual Consulting and the former director of Action on Smoking and Health (U.K.). On this page we feature a selection of his contributions to Tobacco Reporter.
Nicotine 2040
The market for tobacco and nicotine is transforming—how could it look by 2040?
Realists and Idealists
Why we should celebrate ‘realists’ and beware of ‘idealists.’
Tobacco Control’s Nervous Breakdown
Innovation in the recreational nicotine market is disrupting not just the industry.
Organized Skepticism
How can the science of tobacco and nicotine serve the public good?
Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory?
Will the European Union enable or obstruct the market-based demise of the cigarette?
Eyes on the Ball
Officials should approach COP10 with clarity about their national goals and with tough questions about trade-offs, unintended consequences and evidence.
Clive Bates
Read the work of Tobacco Reporter’s special contributor Clive Bates.
Changing Gear
Clive Bates on how the tobacco industry can accelerate transformation
Beyond Tobacco Harm Reduction
To see clearly into the decades ahead, we need to rethink nicotine.
Surfing while Juggling
Five types of innovation
Bad Science
What is bad science, and why is there so much of it?
The Bullshit Asymmetry Principle
The idea that e-cigarette flavors hook kids is simple, compelling and false.
Transformation and Its Enemies
Explaining the opposition to the industry’s diversification.
How to Save 100 Million Lives
Innovation and creative destruction will render cigarettes obsolete—if we let it.
Nicotine And The Weirdness Of Harm
The availability of nicotine with minimal harm justifies a rethink of our approach to this drug.
Policy Masterstroke or Political Quagmire?
Rules to reduce nicotine in cigarettes are back on the agenda.
The Takeaways
What lessons should regulators learn from the United States?
Fighting The Wrong War
The automatic criticism of everything associated with tobacco is not merely misguided; it has the potential to do real harm.
The Evil Twins
Prohibition and illicit trade
Transformers Versus Abolitionists
The two camps in tobacco control
For the Long Haul
Sustainability, strategy and survival in the tobacco market
Fresh Thinking
The World Health Organization and tobacco policy: a seven-point reform agenda
Innovation and its Enemies
Why public health campaigners remain so vehemently opposed to vapor products.
The Irreconcilable Conflict Principle
Our contributor Clive Bates challenges the governing idea of tobacco control
The Endgame Revisited
It is time to confront the fundamental confusion about the public health aims for tobacco and nicotine policy.
The Unlikely Savior?
Smoking, nicotine and Covid-19: What is going on?
After the Split
What does Brexit mean for tobacco and vaping?
Merchants of Doubt
In the vaping debate, falsehood flies and the truth comes limping after it
A rhetorical gambit
The absence of long-term studies does not justify stifling potentially less harmful nicotine products.
Hold your fire
In debating the relative risks of nicotine products, one consideration trumps all others.
The principle of proportionality
How to regulate reduced-risk products
Mapping the future
Can there be an ethical tobacco company—and what would it do?
The duty of curiosity
GTNF—where the tobacco industry goes to think
