The Chairman of the Irish branch of the Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco, FOREST, has died at the age of 67 after a long battle with illness on Thursday the 28th of December.
John Mallon was born on the 25th of March 1956 and was appointed to lead FOREST Ireland upon its creation in 2010, the Irish branch of the British smokers’ rights group headquartered in Cambridge which was founded in 1979 and will be 45 years old this year.
During his living years John Mallon has been a sales executive for Apple Computer Inc. which he was during the 1990’s, a videographer, a laundrette operator and a jewellery salesman. Just six years into the stressing situation of the Irish smoking ban applied in 2004 first from the rest of the world, John Mallon became the leader of FOREST Ireland in 2010 and importantly contributed in speaking up against it and its counterproductive consequences of overpricing tobacco through deliberately high tobacco taxes.
John Mallon’s funeral took place on the 3rd of January 2024 in his local church in Mayfield, Cork, where Forest Ireland is also headquartered.
Simon Clark, the Chairman of FOREST UK, wrote about losing one of his closest friends and colleagues, “To say John was affable is an understatement, which is why people couldn’t help but like him. But he also had a stubborn streak, and it was the combination of the two that made him such a dogged and engaging campaigner. Over the years he became a frequent interviewee on Newstalk, Ireland’s leading independent radio station. He was a familiar voice too on many local radio stations and each year (before Covid struck), he would embark on a two-week media tour – starting (and finishing) in Cork, with stops in Limerick, Tipperary, Galway, Kilkenny, and Waterford, to name a few. Apart from keeping the flame of freedom alive in Ireland for 20 years, John’s greatest moment was arguably appearing before a parliamentary committee in February 2013. We were a bit nervous about the outcome but John charmed the committee to such an extent that after the meeting several members approached him for a convivial chat. In recent years John suffered increasingly from poor health but he remained remarkably stoic and resilient. He gave his last radio interview just two weeks ago, informing me that his voice was ‘weak’ but refusing to pass up the request. My commiserations to John’s wife Phil, his children (Michelle and Des), and the rest of his family.”.
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