Forest in Europe

Forest has long history of working with smokers' rights groups throughout Europe. In the Nineties we were members of a loose coalition of smokers' rights groups called Smokepeace which organised international conferences in Amsterdam (1997) and Seville (1999).

Smokepeace, which included groups from Denmark, Holland, Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland, Italy and Greece, no longer exists, but Forest continues to take an active interest in European affairs and is often quoted by international news agencies such as Reuters.

In 2007 we submitted a written document to the EU Green Paper "Towards a Smoke-Free Europe", one of only four tobacco NGOs to do so.

In March 2008 Forest director Simon Clark attended a European Commission stakeholder meeting in Brussels to the discuss the impact of the Commission's smoke-free initiative.

Despite being invited to the meeting (organised by SANCO, the EU's Health and Consumer Protection Directorate), Clark was asked to leave the meeting following objections by other stakeholders, who included anti-smoking organisations and four of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies.

Forest has submitted a formal complaint to the Secretary-General of the European Commission and we are currently waiting for a reply. Watch this space.
Smoker 

"Tobacco is not an illegal substance yet the government is persecuting a minority. I think that's a disgrace in a social democracy."

Ronald Harwood
screenwriter
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