Scott has a background in adult social care and public health and has been a Councillor for Sherwood Forest since 2021, where he continues to take an active role in looking to better the health and wellbeing of Nottinghamshire’s population.
Scott smoked until as recently as 2023 and describes his journey to quitting and how he views the ‘politics of smoking’ alongside his own lived experiences.
Within his role a County Councillor, Scott believes it is important not to look at smoking in isolation, but as a piece of the wider, interconnected wellbeing picture. This means looking at someone’s smoking and their perceived barriers to quitting within the context of their lives and, when offering support, considering why they started smoking in the first place.
I think certainly with a number of the subject matters within public health - whether it's mental health, suicide prevention, tobacco control etc. - we need to take a step back for a moment, actually realising that there's a number of these subject areas that do significantly overlap, there are a lot of these community issues, if you like, that are so interwoven.
He believes this wider view approach to support in the local area is starting to bring about positive change, although he acknowledges the challenges of finding something that works both across very urban and rural communities. Above all, he believes in the importance of honesty and avoiding judgement within any approaches or policies around smoking.
He knows that people need to want to stop smoking for themselves, but hopes that speaking openly about his own experiences might help others. Equally, he feels that it is vital for others to inspire their community by sharing meaningful conversations about their own quitting journeys.
Be brutally honest, say this isn’t going to be an easy process, but actually, even by thinking about quitting you've taken the first step.
Scott speaks openly about his struggles with mental health. These began in his 20s, when he went from hating the idea of smoking to becoming dependent on cigarettes.
As a Councillor, Scott found it increasingly hard to discuss the negative impacts of smoking within his community whilst continuing to smoke himself.
The enjoyment had started to fall out of it. It started to feel, to coin a phrase, like a dirty habit. I would sit in meetings with health partners, or dentistry, and start to see some of the impacts. I've been very open and honest with the public health team here when they've asked me to sign off on smoking related reports and I said part of me sits here and feels like a bit of a hypocrite. I started to use that political journey as a way of sort of tagging in my own personal situation.
He started to think seriously about the reasons for quitting smoking and setting himself goals. He knew that going cold-turkey wouldn’t work for him, so made a gradual switch to vapes.
Although he admits he didn’t find it easy, diary-keeping helped to motivate him, focusing on the small steps forwards and not getting derailed by slip ups.
You can see it in black and white and start to track it, and think, actually, you’re doing it. You can keep building that behaviour, and obviously, as each day, week, months goes past, it just gets a little easier. You start to look back and think, why did I smoke in the first place?
From your perspective as a Councillor, what are your thoughts on smoking?
You know, it's an incredibly complex area. There’s not a magic switch that you can just turn on and off.
I think it needs an open and transparent conversation, having it in a non stigmatised way. There are reasons why people sometimes do what they do, and is it your place to judge? Or, actually, would you prefer to provide a guiding hand to say have you ever thought about the consequences of this? Whether that's monetary, health, or other parts of your life.
Ultimately, we can lay out facts for you and offer opportunities, but there still has to be a degree of acceptance, to decide to agree to take that help.