The Chaser Report - REPEAT: John Safran on why a tobacco company wants to help people give up cigarettes

Episode Date: December 3, 2021

We take a look back at our chat with comedy legend John Safran, as he asks when is a cigarette not a cigarette? John Safran tells Charles and Dom about his latest book ‘Puff Piece’, which looks at the clever language and new products that the cigarette-making behemoth Philip Morris is adopting to try and retain its profits while also convincing its global audience of smokers to give up their ciggies – but potentially replace them with another product where instead of smoking tobacco, you… heat it. In typical fashion, the story’s funny, circuitous and thought-provoking – and involves multiple visits to Father Bob. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report. Dom Knight here. And for this afternoon slash weekend, we thought we'd look back on one of our favorite conversations of this year. From back before we did the special afternoon editions with the longer interviews, Charles Firth and I sat down with John Safran, one of our favorite comedians and satirists, an all-round brilliant guy. Talk about his book, Puff Piece, which came out a few months ago.

it's about the way that the tobacco industry is reinventing itself and bringing out new fancy gadgets that aren't quite the same as cigarettes as we know them traditionally, but they still have some of the same problems and how they're even trying to rebrand themselves as health conscious. How on earth can a tobacco company be health conscious? You'll have to listen to the episode to find out it'll begin right after this. The Chaser Report, news you know you can't trust. When we welcome John of the show, I put it out that he's publisher had sponsored the podcast recently, but we would have talked to him anyway, as long-term

fans, et cetera. And being John Safran, he sniffed out potential corruption. Well, it sounds like there's going to be like a media watch kind of knockdown of this about how podcast watch is not a thing like that. I like to think that it's part of the theme that your book has as well, like the compromise that we all have. Yeah. We accepted money from you to advertise your book. in the same way that, you know, Philip Morris sort of compromises people, but it's just, it's part of life. Well, that was what was so cool about looking at Philip Morris because it's such a high-stakes example of this

because pretty much anything short of Philip Morris, you can kind of go, well, you know, like really, like, I'm really finding it hard to get worked up about how PuffPice sponsored the Chaser podcast. I mean, I'm even finding it hard to do on anyone. Yeah, I know. But I'm even finding it hard to get worked up that, like, McDonald's says they've got a healthy meal, because we kind of all know that they don't or whatever. But this Philip Morris in general, and particularly their brand new shenanigan, which no one knows about up until this book, is like such a, the most high stakes version of this, that it's like hard to kind of go, well, does it really matter that they're continuing to kill eight million people a year? That was certainly a surprise for me was that all the way through the book, people are going, why are you so, what's your issue with Philip Morris? They're just, they're just corporate citizens just trying to make a buck in this difficult world.

What is your issue, Saffron? The, well, I think part of the reason that people think that is because there's just something about cigarettes, that it's the most un-zitegeist issue, sounding issue. It sounds like something from the 1970s or whatever, like, oh, great. good on you john cigarettes are bad small round of applause corporations like oh god john thank god you're here to tell us all this right except even though it's like seems like such an unzyck-guide issue compared to like issues which of course are important so i'm not like um ragging on people forever you know like you have issues like black lives matter you've got things like me too you've got things like trans rights

you've got all these things and they just sound like of the moment issues And then you've got cigarettes, which sounds like, yeah, it sounds like a 1970s type thing. I say in the book, like it seems like the kind of issue, like it's like a yellowing faded windfield ad in a women's weekly magazine from the 70s that's like in a box in your garage that you kind of forgotten about. But here's the thing. It's still the number one health crisis in the world. it's out of 52 million people

who die of everything 8 million die of cigarette related issues so those it's really zike dicey for the like the cancer cells kind of like growing in your body it is quite interesting it couldn't be more topical for the cancer cells yeah it's immediate for them

but it is a bizarre isn't it that we've spent the past year and a half turning the world upside down to prevent one public health problem while we've forgotten about the other which is killed you know also killed millions. Yeah. But my particular interest in this, because I'm a sociopath, people would go, hang on, isn't John a sociopath? I don't understand why he cares about, like,

public health or whatever. But my entry point to it was more, I was just so confused and curious because I read this full page ad in the newspaper, maybe two world no tobacco days ago, because once a year there's a world no tobacco day put on by the United Nations. And on the eve of that, Philip Morris took out a full page ad and they're saying, oh, we're going to close down as a cigarette company and we're going to relaunch as a health enterprise and we're going to be trying to get the one, the one billion smokers a year to stop smoking, including all our own customers. I was like, wow. That's very impressive. Well done, Philip Morris. What's your problem with that?

Well, I don't have a problem. I, like, I first gave them the benefit of the doubt. I remember reading that paper. I was going, this is so interesting. Is this like when apartheid ended and the government just decided in South Africa, I'll listen, we just have to, we can't do this, and it's all over. So I was open-minded about it all. And then I started poking around, and I realized, I cannot believe it.

But, Philip, they're the people, they're the Melbourne people, by the way, that I couldn't take what they were saying at face. face mate uh at face oh my god really so what they're doing and it's so clever what they're doing and it's so filled with and it's also like so 10 steps ahead of us and everyone and so i'm like running after them trying to kind of understand all this so so what this is what they say they've got this they've been working on a new device and to make this very complicated thing a bit easier to understand. Let's nip this in the bud. This isn't a vape. So they've got this, they've been working on this new device for years and they're releasing it. And they say

it's not a cigarette. Right. So what is this? Not a vape, not a cigarette. So what is it? Well, one big thing, the European Union, their parliament, they decided, like, because they don't like cigarettes. And they want to ban all cigarettes, but they've got to start somewhere. So they did like this incredible thing last year, which was ban menthol cigarettes all across Europe. So you can't manufacture them and you can't buy them. And they chose menthol because you have to start somewhere and that's the cigarette that young people who don't yet smoke and also people who just don't smoke in general that they're most likely to start with that because it's nice and smooth on the minty fresh throat yeah minty fresh practically a health food and uh so anyway so it's getting banned

it's like how wilds that all across europe so probably the most consequential pushback against uh cigarettes ever that is and and philip morris they go okay fine cool okay we will we won't produce menthol cigarettes anymore we'll go along with it good on you or whatever and then they said oh by the way we've got this new product and uh god knows it's not a cigarette and then they show it and look at this look at that are you it's a white cylinder that looks exactly it's kind of like if a cigarette and a tampon had a baby so it's like a short cigarette it's like a it's like a cheap cigarette fun size cigarette so it's like they say listen we've got this new product and uh it's Tobacco rolled in paper with a filter at one end that you plant between your lips,

inhaling nicotine and tobacco into your lungs. But God knows it's not a cigarette. It's a heat stick. It's a heat stick, right? And you might think, how are they going to get away with this? Like, because you just hold it up to anyone, you don't have to say anything, and they're like... It looks amazingly cigarette like. It's a cigarette.

Like, it doesn't look at anything like a vapor or anything like that. It's a cigarette. Right, right. And then, but the most amazing thing is that the European Union, even though they had all those like wise lawmakers working on this legislation for years to ban menthol cigarettes, they did not factor in. What happens is Philip Morris just says, oh, this is a heat stick. It's not a cigarette. And it worked. So menthol cigarettes are banned all across Europe, but they can still sell menthol heat sticks. And I just could not believe that. And it was galling, wasn't it? Because they actually launched their menthol... It's called ICOS, isn't it? Their menthol-I-Cost cigarettes across Europe on the same day that menthol cigarettes were banned.

Yes. So can we just ask how does that work, though? So you've got that cigarette. What do you do with it? So this is what they... I mean, I can... Oh my God, I've got my heatstick cord in my ICOS. This is like...

I feel bad. Oh, wait a minute. So is it not an ICOS? No, no, no. You see, this is where, this is where, like, part of all their misdirection. Just a sec. Why won't that come out? Hey, can I go off and get a skewer?

ICOS even sounds like iPod or iPhone. They even put an eye on the front of it. Yeah, yeah, that's right. So then, so what happens is a heat stick, instead of being lit by a lighter, instead, what happens is you've got this little device here, and it looks like a spaceman's, an astronaut. pen or something like that looks pretty cool and what what you do is here i'm holding this up you insert the heat stick into that and then you press this and it heats it up to an incredible degree

uh the tobacco in the heat stick uh yeah so the device is called the icos but it never actually catches a light according to philip morris so they say that even though the heat is creating a discharge that looks like smoke, and at the very least is filled with tobacco and nicotine that you inhale into your lungs, they say because it hasn't caught on fire, therefore it hasn't combusted, therefore, and they say smoke is caused by combustion, therefore this thing that kind of seems a lot like smoke containing nicotine and tobacco that you're inhaling into your lungs isn't technically speaking smoke. Therefore, they use the word, and it's a very clever word, better. They say it's better than a cigarette, and they're very careful with that because like better's not safer or healthier, is it? Or less risky, really. You can't sue over better, can you?

Yeah, it's better. So, but the way they present it, the way your ears are going to take it, is that this is safer or healthier than a cigarette. But the way I just explained this to you is not the way Philip Morris would. And it just shows their ingenious misdirection at every step of the way. Because I introduced a whole heat stick to you. I said, this is a heat stick. It looks like a cigarette.

They kind of park that to one side. And they like to talk about the ICOS, which is this metallic-looking device that heats the cigarette. So therefore, already you're kind of not looking at the thing that looks exactly like a cigarette. And they're discussing the technology of it and how it heats and how you plug it in. It's got a little light and everything. So that's like the first major misdirection. They're sort of making out this is the thing, the ICOS, when really, no, this is the thing, the heat stick.

But they're just like, oh, yeah, anyway, you just stick this kind of tobacco unit in a way, but like that. And so because they don't want you to like concentrate on the heat stick. They want to concentrate on this thing called the ICOS, which just makes it even more confusing because you plug this icos into a wall to charge it. So therefore, I guess it's an e-cigarette, an electronic cigarette. And then you've also got vapes that you plug into a wall. So I guess they're an e-cigarette. So suddenly you've got this e-cigarette thing,

even though a vape and a heat stick are very different in the most consequential way, which isn't saying that there's not questions to be asked or dangers, or even worse with vapes. I'm just saying that this is all part of the confusion that Philip Morris manages to leverage or whatever. So this is why this and a vape are so meaningfully different is because in a conventional cigarette, they contain tobacco leaf,

and tobacco leaf generates tar, and tar is the thing that kills you. It's like the main danger in a cigarette. Whilst a vape doesn't contain tobacco leaf, therefore it doesn't generate tar, therefore people who support vaping, they can say, and it's totally the truth, they can say the most dangerous thing in a cigarette, tar isn't in a vape. But in a heat stick, there's tobacco and therefore there's tar. But they don't call it tar anymore, do they? No, no, no. everything's

I just because we kind of hear and we don't really ruminate over it this whole thing of like oh language is so important and you can manipulate people with language and but this is like the most

high stakes modern example of doing this and the consequences of doing this of sort of like changing words and evaporating meaning out of words so first of all this isn't a cigarette

for some reason then on top of that they say it's not generating smoke it's generating aerosol and all this stuff i just went along with because like what do i know right and then one day i'm just looking up the dictionary and i'm looking up i'm going well what is aerosol actually because i don't know anything and i look at aerosol it gives its definition and then it's giving examples of aerosols and one of them is smoke so so the fact that it's an aerosol doesn't necessarily mean it's not also smoke but that's controversial oh not controversial, that's complicated.

But then on top... It's ironic, given that aerosols are the thing that we now all fear because of COVID. But anyway, that's a whole other thing. And then the other thing is, if you go and you want to research into this, because and you know that it's tar,

that is the deadly thing in a cigarette, and then even years after like Philip Morris was taken to court, because they, this is the olden days, because they were promoting low tar cigarettes as being a are alternative and healthier, and then the court's found, and Philip Morris had to concede it.

No, no, no, tar's just bad, whether it's low tar or regular tar, and low tar. So tar is the deadly thing in a cigarette. So then you look at the ingredients in this, and there's no tar in it, right? And that's because I've changed a word from tar. They've changed it to nicotine-free, dry particulate matter. So if you're looking at the... And they're so clever at it. that I was reading this

in either a science or a medical journal and these scientists and they hate Philip Morris they're trying to take down Philip Morris and take down the heat stick and the icos and even they got juped by this and confused by this new word for tar

nicotine free dry particulate matter but it's even like this is how clever they are because I was always being suckered in and then it's like I'm driving my car three weeks later and realize damn they got me again. And this is how good they are. Even though I was writing a book all about this,

trying to expose all the trickery, after the book was published, so what I'm saying now is not in the book, I'm driving along and I'm going, oh my God, they got me on another thing that I didn't notice. And what it was is that just look how audacious they are. Not only they change the word tar to nicotine-free dry particulate matter, they put in the expression, in that, nicotine free. So, but they don't deny that there's nicotine in a heatstick as there is in a cigarette. It's just not in the particular matter. Yeah, so they've taken the most infamous nicotine product in the world,

and they've isolated the bit of the nicotine product that doesn't have the nicotine in it, and then they stamp on the expression nicotine-free. So now when they're talking about the heatstick and the Icos, They can use the expression nicotine free, even though it's a cigarette and the most infamous nicotine product on the planet. Very clever. Or maybe I'm just very stupid.

Who knows? Oh my God. So is this going to work? I mean, Dave, it's got all these fancy plans and whatever. Is this going to mean that people still smoke but just with these far more expensive? Because this reminds me of the whole thing of with inkjet printers where you get the printer cheaply

but then you've got to pay for the cartridges. Is this another situation? like that, have they won through the ICOS? Well, they're on their way to winning. It's hard to tell if they have won because you can't, you know, there's that joke. I think it's the start of one book or something and it's like, hello, she lied. And it's like with Philip Morris, everything they say is like, you don't even get to through the hello, it's like, huh, they lied.

It's like everything they say you can't take it face value. And one of the things you can't even take on face value. is because they, they promote how this has been quite successful in countries like Japan. But, like, for instance, they say about Japan, they go, since we've introduced the heatstick and the Icos, 30% of smokers in Japan or something like that, they've moved on to heat sticks. But there's been shareholders who have started legal action against Philip Morris saying, you misled us.

You haven't actually, we don't think. that's actually true you you've like overhyped it to try to you know get us to buy your shares and we don't actually believe it so it's like it's very difficult to uh work out how successful is he so far but it but it is successful in that they've laid the groundwork for getting around the menthol cigarette ban in uh europe and now they've laid they've laid the groundwork in a similar sense in america because there's major parts of america where i think I don't know if it's gone ahead yet, but in California, is it California?

I don't know where it is. Anyway, one major state in America, they have proposed to ban menthol cigarettes, and they either have or they haven't, but it's the same thing. They've managed to kind of wiggle around and lay the groundwork that when cigarettes are banned, they're going to be able to say,

da-da, look at this, this isn't a cigarette. So they have been that really successful. And also, the other thing I've, really I learned is that I don't know how to tell you this guys but I think us in our little arty community I think we might live in a bubble and and I think we might see the world through a certain lens and other people in other bubbles see it through different lenses so one of the things that really struck me is I bought shares in Philip Morris oh wow which meant I could get access so which meant I could get access to their shareholders meetings and things and because of COVID

and everything, they'll all have it, they'll happen on conference calls and everything. And it really struck me straight away that, because the people in Philip Morris, when they're talking to the shareholders, you know, they really have to sell the story of how successful it is, and we've got this much more profit, this much more sales and everything. And I just thought, like, we live in this bubble where, like, Twitter's everything and being dissed on Twitter and being told you're bad on Twitter is like, that's the worst thing that could happen or whatever. So we might think that everyone's what everyone's consideration is. But if you're like work for Philip Morris, what you're really scared senseless of is going to

these shareholder meetings and having to say, oh, yeah, this hasn't worked or we haven't sold as many. And so Philip Morris are just like desperate. There's a limit to how much they care that people are saying that they're jerks and they're killing people because what they're really worried about is not that they're going to be dissed on Twitter. They're worried that they're going to upset the shareholders. And that's also part of the reason for the ICOS and one of the reasons why it can have a slow build and it's still very successful because they have to tell the shareholders a story of why they're going to still be around in five years, 10 years, 15 years when when it seems like the world is against cigarettes. You know, they're being banned

everywhere. And so ICOS is like a, is part of a storytelling campaign to their shareholders of we've gotcha. We're looking to the future. We've got something here for when cigarettes are banned. So yeah, it's been remarkably successful in that sense too. And another one, and the other way it's really successful is because lots of people don't like cigarettes. And so, for instance, I'll find it hard to even hire top-notch people. because people don't want to work in a product like this, because it's like, what do you tell your friends at dinner parties,

that you work for a cigarette company? So this is how ingenious they are, because I've got this product, which looks like a cigarette, but they say isn't a cigarette, and they say this is our future, this is our flagship product, and we want this,

we want our conventional cigarette business to die off and be replaced with this. They get to tell a story to themselves, and to their staff that you're not working for a cigarette company. You're working for a company that's trying to end cigarettes and move people on to these better, healthier, like, better alternative. And so that's another, like, ingenious way that, like, just playing with words, you can just bend the world to, like, this totally new reality.

And because I met people from Philip Morris, and they're total believers. They're not like, I'm sure like there's all sorts of layers of people, so there are people who are just like, oh, yeah, we know we're bullshitting people. But you have like younger people working for Philip Morris, and they really see this, as strangers that might sound to us outside their bubble, they really think this is like a social justice thing, where it's like cigarettes kill people, we've got to get people off cigarettes, and this is going to help people. And the people of Philip Morris, as crazy as his sounds, they see themselves in some ways in the same world as like Quit Victoria or the World Health Organization is trying to get people of cigarettes because they're saying we are an other, we are another organ of society that's trying to get people off cigarettes, just like the Quit Victoria people. And then it gets even insaner than that where they say that they're actually better than the Quit Victoria people because quit Victoria people. because quit Victoria and groups like that and whatever the different states and different countries, their version of quit Victoria is,

they say they're being unrealistic, they're demanding people, they're letting people die, quit Victoria because they're just saying quit cigarettes totally or just continue smoking. And people aren't just going to quit cigarettes, so they're going to continue to smoke. So quit Victoria is actually like a bad

because they're not giving people these sort of like baby step options like the heat stick and the iCosts so they and they sincerely there's people in philip morris they sincerely think not only are they in the anti-cigarette business but they're they're better than the people from quit victoria but john you know in some ways your book launches the icos in i know i know it's it's kind of i i had to write this book because like i had to be the person because i'm the person who's like such a sociopath and so attracted to the tangles and so

on to sort of like dive into the tangles that I loved all the I love all the stuff that I have to do to get the story so if I was like working for four corners it's like I can't buy shares in Philip Morris just just so I can like weasel into the thing like that's that's problematic

but for me not only is it maybe it is problematic it's like I love it I love that I have to put myself into these situations and I have to do things that you're not meant to do to get the story. I mean, the other big thing that... Well, part of the delight of the book, John, is your description of that journey

and the compromises you make along the way. It's such a rollicking tale, especially when Philip Morris actually offers you a free trip to Switzerland. Yeah, yep, yep, yep. So that was like, yeah, that's why I'm so good. this is why I'm the man for this job because anyone else would either try to hide it.

Everyone would either like compromise and hide it or they'd just be going I have to get this story some other way besides accepting a bribe from Philip Morris or I shouldn't say bribe accepting a junket from Philip Morris and whilst I'm like oh my God I can't believe how lucky I am

I'm working on this book and I'm getting I'm going to get a junket which just makes the story so much more confusing and he's going to mess with the reader's head and they're going oh my god i can't believe john's doing this i'm so confused is john bad for doing this and because i'm just such a dead because my my dedication is like being a storyteller as opposed to being uh i don't know what an activist or a journalist or whatever like i or even i'll pay it i just love it i can't i could

not believe my luck when i was like writing this book about how philip morris kind of use their money to manipulate people and try to bend their story away. And then when it ends up that they take me out to lunch and try to do it to me. I couldn't believe it. And like imagine and then what

I mean then what happened was unfortunately obviously for the world COVID and then lockdown which meant I'd kind of, not a kind of, I definitely accepted this compromising thing of the junket but then I couldn't go because it was in lockdown. We couldn't go in lockdown

or whatever so but then afterwards i was thinking because again i'm just so driven by the whole storyteller thing and so afterwards i was thinking because anyone else would think oh that that's a bummer because it would have been great to go to switzerland and get to the philip morris factory or whatever right but then i was thinking to myself just say just say they said oh yes you can come to switzerland and but i'd done it on my own bat you know what i mean like i just got bought the ticket myself and went there or whatever and got into the Philip Morris headquarters or whatever, that's not half as awesome as being offered the junket and accepting the junket. Like, that's the killer. You've already compromised. That's a solid gold material. And I'm like so much happier

that I was given a junket and accepted the junket and didn't end up in the headquarters in Switzerland, rather than I would have ended up in the headquarters in Switzerland, but like, in a kind of journalistically ethical way? You're accidentally ethical. Yes. Yes. No, no. I think it's the opposite, though, because you accepted the jungle.

You were completely compromised, but you didn't get the benefit of the compromise. I know. It was even worse. Like, the stuff that, because it was so much material, like, you just can't put everything in the book. But I promise you, I promise you, I'm not hiding it. If there was anything worse, I absolutely would have put it in the book. But it was really funny how after the junk it was offered, like the conversations I was having

with friends, because no one was like, how very dare you? Everyone was like, so what do you reckon? Do you reckon it's going to be like a first-class flight? Or are they just going to put you in economy? None of the medical advice contained in the Chaser report should legally be considered medical advice. The Chaser Report. But John, without wanting to spoil at the end of the book, you do, you actually end up with a bit of a scoop.

Oh, yeah. That was, um, that was pretty amazing. Like, when you say scoop, you mean like, it's like front page of the age scoop. Yes, totally. Like, because it actually goes into the harder, without wanting to reveal exactly. It's about how Philip Morris actually orchestrated things in the political system in Australia. Yeah, like stuff that's like never been. revealed before.

So it's not, yeah, it's so, I was so excited. But to do that, to get that scoop, you sort of betrayed a kind of friend slash contact. Yeah, I know, I know. And it was all sort of accidental as well. You didn't even mean to. But don't call it betrayal. Call it friendship 2.0 or I friendship.

Well, to be fair. You just rename it. To be fair to me, like, it wasn't my fault. And also, the person who I quote unquote betrayed, like they were very high up in an organiser. So I wasn't like I was kicking a puppy or whatever. And also, it was totally newsworthy and everything like that. But what's his, what's his reaction being?

Um, I know that he likes the book. Right. Yeah. Because I think it's a sympathetic portrayal of him. Yeah. And it kind of doesn't make him look bad or anything like that. It just makes me look, well, it doesn't make me look bad either.

It's just like a thing. But we know, it'll be very interesting. Because it's early days, like the book hasn't been out for even a week, and I'm not that cocky that I don't think there's not going to be some sort of blowback, which I can't expect. I don't even know what to expect. And how hard was the legling on it? Like, was there a lot of legaling? Well, I got pre-briefed before I went out on my adventure. Because this is my third book with Penguin. And usually, usually Penguin just like I go off and, you know, like they, you know i give them the idea and they might like it or not and you know toss up a few other ideas but then once we agree on the idea then i just sort of pack my backpack and go off on my adventure go and see father bob go see father bob go hang around in the forest in mississippi

go do tequila shots with no nazis depending on what the book is and then like i come back whatever it is 12 months later and more scratched and dirty and and then I hand in the manuscript and then that's when we start looking at the legals but then with this there was like a pre this is the first book where there was like a pre-meeting about dues and don'ts obviously because it's like a big corporation

but then Philip Morris litigious no but then very fortunately because I was so ethical and so on and so forth it was actually a lot smoother than a person might expect. And also, whenever I get in kind of like legal,

I have legal issues with my work, it's always so anticlimactic, or at the very least, not what a person would think they would be. So, for instance, like on, like my TV shows where I'm doing like all this outrageous stuff, what the legal note will be, it's like, yeah, like when I go undercover, when I send people undercover pretending to be slip-knot, so they can get,

get into a nightclub or whatever, then the thing isn't that, oh, you falsely impersonated Slipknot, and it's not that, oh, you filmed this in this nightclub and they didn't give you permission or anything like that. It's never anything like...

That sounds familiar. When you showed the Slipknot album cover on screen, it was for about seven seconds, and that goes over the copyright acceptable use quota. So we're wondering if you could carve off two of the seconds and only show the Slipknot album cover on for five seconds, not seven.

So it's always like something like that. And same with this book. I think people would be surprised that everything was pretty smooth sailing. And there was a few legal things, but they just weren't melodramatic things or whatever. So I was very lucky, but partly that was because of the very fine, very good legal briefing by the good people at Penguin Random House. So if you're listening to this and working out with it as Sue, just Sue them. and not John, that's the tip. It's been fascinating, John.

I kind of want to delve down the rabbit hole of vaping just because it's so morally complicated. I'm really torn about vaping because I'm really against products that hurt people's health, but then I also think adults are better to do what they want as long as they don't hurt others via passive smoking, which has been the problem with cigarettes per se. You delved into this issue a lot,

and you met some of the key advocates in the industry. Where did you end up? So just looking into from a health perspective And because like the books Because the book's so much about Philip Morris It's sort of like about Philip Morris Elbowing their way into the world of vaping More than like it's not this really hectoring thing

Wagging my finger at vapors or anything like that No that's my fan is so interesting Because they were kind of allies at various points and and so on Yeah I mean because I mean that that is another reason Philip Morris are introducing this heatstick And this ICOS is because they're at war with vaping because vaping is going to fill the hole in the marketplace

when cigarettes are banned and so they want to come out with their own thing and so they're very much in a war against vaping and the vaping industry as much as they're in a war against Quit Victoria. So just looking at purely from a health perspective and obviously I'm a comedian and you need to listen to scientists and doctors

and all that kind of stuff and experts but this is like a real... general stuff. And one of the things we have covered, we've already covered, but I'll quickly say it again, is like, so the difference between a vape and a heatstick or a vape is that vapes, you are steaming, it's steaming up a juice, and the juice is filled with nicotine, and it's got propylene glycerol, and it's got flavorings in it. But it doesn't actually have tobacco leaf, and because it doesn't have tobacco leaf, it doesn't generate tar. Tars the deadly thing in a cigarette. So vapors can say the most deadly thing,

in a cigarette isn't in a vape. But then you're still inhaling all that stuff I just said. You're like these propylene glycerol, these flavorings. And so that's going to have, in all likelihood, going to have like respiratory consequences, even though they might be different to the respiratory consequences of a cigarette. But it's all early days. So there's a lot of people can like cherry pick

this and that to support their argument. But this is, so that's what you've got to keep in mind, that it doesn't have that danger of a cigarette of tar, but you're still inhaling things that ideally your body shouldn't, and that could have really have their own consequences. But the other thing is, I think what makes it a confusing when talking about it from a health perspective, is I reckon, well, not I reckon,

other people reckon, like the National Health Service of the British Government. So that if you're addicted to cigarettes, and I'm only talking purely from a health perspective, not any other perspective, if you're addicted to cigarettes and you spent like six months, nine months, even a year or whatever, weaning yourself off cigarettes using a vape device, and then maybe you lower the nicotine rate as you go along, and then at the end of that six months or nine months or a year, you put to one side both the cigarettes and you're not somebody in the cigarettes anymore, but you're also not vaping anymore. I reckon in that context, there's an argument that it's a tool, it's a public health tool, or it's a tool for helping

you out because it's got you off cigarettes. But then if you're just huffing on a vape for all hours, seven days a week, and you're going to do it for the next 10 years, I reckon that's a pretty big roll of the dice that you're not going to find out that that's going to have respiratory health consequences that could be really dire because your lungs aren't meant to take in like things like that. Like your lungs aren't even meant to take in like steamed water for instance for such a sustained period of time.

So that's where I reckon it's a real role of the dice and there might be, and so people who vape that much, there just might be some bad news that even though the research is early at the moment of, yeah, it could be bad news. So that's why it becomes confusing. as a health argument about whether they're healthy or not

because it's kind of like depends how you look at it. And it's all through the high schools as well. Like my son who's 13. Yeah. Has already, like several of his friends have been called in the toilets vaping. And they're in year seven. Is it going, oh God.

And every parent knows that the nightmare is going to be, everyone's going to vape in high school. And you're just going, oh, this is like, it's just another sort of cigarette thing. But they're not marketed to kids with all the candy flavors, no way. No, exactly. But I mean, the other confusing thing, and I don't really have a end point to this, but it just explains why it's such a confusing matter to talk about,

is that nicotine in both a cigarette and also in a vape and also in a heat stick, like the nicotine, the agent that keeps you addicted to the danger, whilst in and of itself, and there's an asterisk after this, but generally speaking, in and of itself, the nicotine isn't the deadly thing. It's not the danger, it's the thing that addicks you to the danger. So then that just becomes so confusing because, yeah, because in the case of the cigarette,

the nicotine's addicting you to the danger of the tar, whilst in a vape, the nicotine's addicting you to the danger of whatever the danger of inhaling this steam is. So nicotine's both the central point and also not the point depending on how you look at it. So, for instance, if you have, go to Chemist Warehouse, you can just buy nicotine gum

without a prescription. I don't think you even have to be 18. And like, we live in a pretty strict country in Australia. So clearly the authorities are going, well, it's not nicotine in and of itself because therefore, how come you're allowed to buy nicotine without a prescription from Chemist Warehouse? um especially when when irresponsible people invent new ways to use nicorette yeah well in this book

obviously i mean anyone who's familiar with my work will not be surprised to know that as soon as as anything was presented to me from heat stick to vape to cigarettes to whatever to shisha pipes i was like yeah i'm going to try this i'm definitely not only am i going to try this because i'm a storyteller. I'm kind of secretly hoping I would get addicted to it, because that's going to be better for the story. But I, of course... You've always been your own guinea pig, John. Yeah, I have. So, I got... I started

taking nicotine gum, and because it was such a pure form of nicotine, I was so, like, mildly getting addicted to it, I think. I mean, it's really hard to measure these things, but it's like, so disgusting. Like, it's kind of plain and, but also disgusting. or whatever. And then I had this

eureka moment because I was thinking, because the whole thing with the whole way that vapes are marketed is they're always like fun and flavoured. So it's like bubbly custard vape juice and raspberry pie vape juice. And so I was going

oh my God, why don't I do this with this gum that I'm liking but I don't like the taste and it's all like it's just whatever. I'll go why don't I just like go down to the 7-Eleven, I'll buy Hubababa, and I'll buy a watermelon extra, and I'll start kind of, like, blending it myself.

And I'll sort of like, and I looked up on the internet, I'm going, surely someone's thought of this before, and no one had. There was nothing on the internet about it. And it's like, I'd invent, and I realized I'd invented this new form of, like, drug taking, which I call juicy fruiting.

So it's like, so it's like where you get a Nicorette or a Nicobate or whatever. Oh, God. We all had to broadcast the method. Oh, fuck. And then you try different ways, like, of flavoring. So I did it, like, is it called like pig in a poke?

Is that what it's called? Like, where you wrap a, or I don't know what it is. But, yeah, so you wrap a bit of watermelon extra around the nicobate capsule, and you chew on it, and you're like, you're juicy fruiting. So it's like, yeah, so it's like, and I kind of haven't, anyway, I don't want to be irresponsible, so I'll end that story, unsatisfactorily here. Don't try this at home, kids. Yeah.

Oh, God. It's such a great story. And I remember 20 years ago, I was like that, you were, they had this amazing article in a thing called The Eye about how they tried to recruit you to host a kid show. And it ended up that it was a cigarette company that was behind the whole thing. I don't think it was quite a kid show. A youth show. A youth show. Amazingly, that story.

And it ends up being Philip Morris trying to do it. I know this sounds weird because when I'm writing the book because it's like I mean you've read it enough with the book where it's like this forward propelling thing where

so it just put all these limitations on like diversions and like it just just for like writing reasons it makes sense so there were things that you just go my God how can that not be in the book and yeah

that story didn't make it in the book was it in the pitch of the book no there's other things there's other things in the book there's in the book about me uh seeing philip morris four-wheel drive like a melbro drive into like this little village in uh west africa when i was on race around the world and oh my god it's like mud huts and it's all that no electricity and this bright melbro SUV driving in so i put that in there. Another thing that I'm kind of, I didn't put in... I put in the thing about how I got in, I got taken to court, taken for court to court

for putting, trying to get Shane worn to smoke because he'd taken up, it was Nicorette, a contract where, he'd taken up a contract where I think it was worth a million dollars, but a lot of money, and to endorse Nicorette. And the one condition was he wasn't allowed to smoke, definitely not publicly. So, this is like one of those things that probably didn't have enough intelligent subtext to it but you know come on you're the chaser guys you know it's half an out of field we've seen how that right so even though this didn't really have probably enough like intelligent subtext to it i thought i'd try to um lure Shane warn back into smoking so he could uh uh void his Nicorette um contract so one of the things I did is I went down to the

MCG when he was playing and I got a I got a stuff Seagull and I shoved it on a remote control car and stuck a cigarette between the Seagull's lips and I sent it out onto the field to Shane Warren and then I was arrested by the police for pitch invasion and then I was taking a court. It was so humiliating because I've done stuff in my career where there's like some good sort of like, yeah, John stuck it to the system kind of subtext. Like, you know, if I went to court for like the Ray Martin thing or even like for this, for this film. At least it'd be like, yeah, it's the little guy against it.

But it was like so humiliating having to be in court and like, say, um, A Seagull. Anyway, so I put it like a remote condo seagal and all, like everyone's sniggering in the court. And, uh, yeah, so that, that story's made it to it. This other story, because I couldn't figure, because I thought it was too anticlimactic and I didn't put it in. And it's only since the book, I thought, damn, I could have put that in or whatever.

It's because I worked, did work experience at an ad agency called Mojo and Partners. And they had the Philip Morris account, but it was like, I never worked on it. But I do remember one afternoon, the account director for Philip Morris came by our desk and said, oh, listen, we're wondering if you can get some slogans together and some product names together for this new Philip Morris product because we're going to be testing it with a focus group. And I'll get a brief few later this afternoon. And then, like, it just didn't happen. It was like one of the dozens of things each week at an ad agency that, like,

someone says something and then it doesn't happen so i didn't put that in the book because i just thought it was like anticlimactic it's like it seemed a bit desperate of me trying to like make myself complicit but now i realize i could have so anyway i don't know second bottom line is philip morris is your mariati it's not going to be a second edition there's going to be another book yeah i know i'm absolutely certain this battle's going to span for decades well you've got to go to the cube in switzerland yeah i know i haven't burnt myself with Philip Morris that they're not going to like now let me go to the queue. They want to win

you over and then they'll offer you a fat contract with the face of the ICOS in Australia. I was shooting I hope it makes it to TV because I was shooting a thing for the project which are going to cut together and I was smoking the ICOS in the thing because no one knows what the ICOS

is so I have to do that thing where I'm like I'm basically the new Price is Right model who's sort of like slowly opened that and showing how to put in so Philip Morris must be happy on that level because they're totally de-platform by everyone they're de-platform by it no one wants to talk to them and one of the interesting things and it's like it's a bit of a tangle about how philip morris aren't getting enough focus on this new product which they should be a bit of focus

is that the kind of people who would be against who are against this product are also just against vaping so so for instance quit victoria will just go vaping's awful and and the blah, you shouldn't do it, and it's all just bundled in together, which is like, that's fine, that's their perspective. But it kind of in this tangled way means Philip Morris is getting away with people not understanding what's going on. Whilst, yeah, so, yeah, it'd be pretty cool if I'm the first person to smoke an ICOS on Australian TV.

I'm just imagining an ad, John, where you're at the MCG and you get an ICOS and you put it on a remote control car between the list of a pigeon, and you send it out to Shane Warren, and he picks it. up and goes, this is better. Yeah, yeah. But not safer. No, no. It's a fascinating story, John.

Thank you for telling us all about it. And good luck with the addiction. Yeah, yeah, for sure. No. And, yeah, I'll set up a Facebook group or something where we can all juicy fruit and explain all our different methods of juicy fruiting. Can we invest in it? John Safran's new book is called Puff Piece.

It's available everywhere right now. and on e-book, regular book. That's if you want to use the pages for Rowley, but also audio book with me squeaking, because I know a lot of people like to hear audio books, and people miss my show with Father Bob. Father Bob's big in this book, by the way. I do Father Bob's voice, though, so manage your expectations.

But, you know, so it's going to fill that emotional hole of, oh, I really miss John squeaking in my ears with his insufferable whining. So buy it in every format is what I'm here. Yeah, excellent. Thanks, John The Chaser Report Now with extra whispers So there you have it

Our chat with John Safran Charles and I enjoyed that enormously From earlier in the year As always our gears Remote microphones And we're part of the ACAST Creator Network And we'll return on Monday morning

With a brand new episode for you. Catch you then