General

When I’m not working (or supposed to be working that is), I spend a fair chunk of my time surfing around in cyberspace. Not looking for anything in particular you know, just spending (alright wasting) time. On this occasion I ended up reading an article from down under and it got me thinking, which is always a worrying thing to happen.

This is the point where I normally write something along the lines of “the article in question is here” and provide a handy link for you to have a read of it yourself. Not going to do that as I really do not want to give the website any more traffic. Besides, the article itself is the main reason for this post.

Hmmm how to start this post. It is, or at least for me it is a bit of an upsetting topic but with the recent kerfuffle it needs to be addressed. Again.

For this post, I will be heavily referring to the brilliant postings from the lovely Lorien over on her blog. True, she hasn’t posted for a while but she has been incredibly active elsewhere and I simply cannot give enough credit to her, or any of the other advocates. Some of you may be wondering why I’m referencing older posts, well the answer is pretty straightforward in that nothing has changed.

Settle down folks this double posting isn’t going to become a regular thing. Sometimes something happens in the world of vaping that just requires a second post.

By now you should have seen the debacle that is the article from Vox. It is, to put none to fine a point on it, dire in the extreme. Terribly one-sided, and all of it in favor of a particular US Researcher’s point of view. I’ll be honest and state that I suspect the article may have been written by that researcher with only a few changes made by the author herself. Call me cynical if you like.

Oh to be a fly on the wall in the marketing department of the California Department of Public Health these days. They must have some really interesting discussions about how to spend taxpayer money on their latest campaign that specifically targets electronic cigarettes and vaping.

We know that the total budget for the next five years rolls in at $75 Million, thanks to Stan being so kind in posting the information on his public blog. We also know that the current campaign cost CADPH $7 Million. They have to spend even more of the taxpayers dollars in an effort to push their website up the Google Search rankings. Even went as far as buying ad placements.

I do try to post fairly regularly in order to rid my addled brain of the flotsam and jetsam that inevitably ends up in there. There has been a lot going on the last few days what with CDPH being completely useless. Expensively useless at that. Taking over from CDPH, the CDC are trying to do their own bit with a Twitter campaign.

How many times do we have to tell you folks, when trying to belittle ecigs on Twitter be prepared for one hell of a fight. Let me see, we had the SF “curbit”. Fail. CDPH and “stillblowingsmoke”. Big fail. Now we have “Tipstakeover”. EPIC FAIL.

It is no secret that the “much respected” Tobacco Control “expert” Stanton Glantz is to put it bluntly, widely despised by those of us in the vaping community. He hasn’t really got that many friends in the world of science either. Most, if not all of his “papers” have been analysed and pretty much discarded as junk science. He also doesn’t like us very much, but I couldn’t really give a damn about that.

The original post for tonight was going to be all about the FDA Deeming and what it means for our US Vaping brethren. That all changed a few moments ago.

Most of you should be aware of the idealistic moronic California Department of Public Health (CDPH) and their declaration that “electronic cigarettes are a public health threat”. If you aren’t, where have you been? Never mind that now, time enough for catch up later.

Try as I might, I couldn’t ignore this subject tonight. Spurred on by the UK’s Faculty of Public Health (FPH). Just in case you didn’t know, our benevolent friends at FPH call themselves “the standard setting body for specialists in public health in the United Kingdom.” I read that as purely bureaucratic.

Oh, I forgot to mention they are a registered charity. Of course they are, why is it that only charities have anything to say these days?

Just been playing a bit of catch up the last day or so to find a few little bits and pieces going on, both in the community and in the big wide world. There are some topics that I just won’t look at, not because they don’t interest me but, because I have opinions that I wish to keep to myself. That is all you are getting from me. For now.

As we all know, vaping and electronic cigarettes are under increasing scrutiny. Some of it is surprisingly the good kind of scrutiny, the majority of it is not. We all have our stories as to why we vape. Some of us wanted to reduce harm to our own bodies. Others were looking to give up tobacco cigarettes. Mostly it’s the former.

What doesn’t help us in the ongoing, slow fight against the various regulations and legislation being brought up in the various political arenas is when vendors do stupid stuff. You know. Like this.