Journal Entry - What Is Within My Control Today?

One of the strange things about writing about tobacco harm reduction is that it has taught me as much about myself as it has about public policy.

There are days when I become frustrated by how slowly institutions change. I read another headline that oversimplifies the evidence, another political statement that ignores nuance, or another debate where ideology seems to matter more than data. It is easy to feel as though progress is impossible when the same arguments repeat themselves year after year.

On those days, I have to remind myself of something simple.

Not everything is within my control.

I cannot control how governments regulate nicotine. I cannot control how journalists frame a story, how advocacy groups respond to new evidence, or whether policymakers are willing to reconsider long-held assumptions. I cannot force people to read the research with an open mind, nor can I make institutions change before they are ready.

If I spend my energy trying to control those things, I will only become exhausted.

What I can control is how I contribute to the conversation.

I can write honestly. I can read widely, challenge my own assumptions, and remain willing to change my mind when better evidence emerges. I can resist the temptation to become as ideological as the people I sometimes criticise. I can remember that my responsibility is not to win arguments but to pursue the truth as faithfully as I can.

I can also choose to remember who this debate is really about.

Behind every statistic is a person who smoked for decades and is trying to find a way out. Behind every policy is someone wondering whether there is another chance after years of failed quit attempts. Behind every headline is someone making decisions about their own health, often with far less certainty than the people speaking on their behalf.

It is easy to become consumed by politics and forget the individual.

Yet tobacco harm reduction has always been about individuals. It is about the father who finally stopped smoking after thirty years because vaping succeeded where everything else failed. It is about the woman who no longer wakes each morning coughing. It is about the millions of ordinary people who did not wait for institutions to agree before making a decision they believed was better for their health.

Those stories remind me why this work matters.

That is why it is so important that you add your story to @thrglobal. It is a way of making the lived reality visible, of ensuring that the conversation is not only shaped by institutions and statistics but also by the people whose lives are actually changing. Individual experiences matter, and when they are shared, they help close the gap between narrative and reality.

They also remind me that change rarely begins with governments. More often, it begins with people. Consumers adapt before regulators do. Markets evolve before policies catch up. Reality moves first, and institutions eventually respond.

History suggests that this has always been true.

When I become discouraged, I try to remember that my role is not to control the pace of history. My role is simply to contribute, however modestly, to a conversation that I believe matters. Every thoughtful essay, every honest discussion, every reader who begins questioning their assumptions is something within my control.

Perhaps that is enough.

I often write about the gap between reality and the stories institutions tell themselves. Today I realise there is another gap I need to pay attention to: the gap between what I wish I could control and what I actually can.

I cannot make reality arrive any faster.

I cannot force acceptance of harm reduction.

I cannot persuade everyone.

But I can keep writing.

I can keep asking difficult questions.

I can continue to treat evidence with respect, even when it challenges my own beliefs.

And I can keep remembering that the purpose of this debate is not to defend an ideology but to reduce suffering.

That, at least, is within my control.

Perhaps that is where real influence begins, not with changing the entire system overnight, but with consistently choosing honesty over certainty, curiosity over outrage, and compassion over ideology. If enough people do that, institutions will eventually have no choice but to catch up.

Reality has a way of doing that.

All I have to do today is my small part.