Thoughts, Ramblings and Shtuff

Well, these are crazy times no? Practically every country worldwide has some kind of lockdown, either voluntary or enforced. Extreme authoritarian measures are rife (I’m looking at you Hungary) with police completely misinterpreting the law (I’m looking at you UK).

All the while, intensive care unit beds (ICU) are being filled at a rapid pace. Unlike previous pandemics, COVID-19 is a bastard. A right, real bastard. It is seemingly highly contagious for one and, if the various statistics are to be believed, a real killer - though I suspect that, in some countries, COVID-19 is simply being attributed as the cause of some deaths - just as smoking is attributed to cancer related deaths.

Settle down folks, this is going to be a long one.

I’ve recently had a few thoughts in my head about nicotine. The supposed “devil drug” that is “more addictive than heroin” (according to ASH Scotland from 2013, and debunked here - I know, debunked before ASH came up with that ‘FactSheet’; that’s just how inept they are), and how, in light of the US debacle, there are now circulating rumours of a nicotine cap.

There’s always something, isn’t there? Last year, back in March, there was a “bit of a kerfuffle” in the vaping community which led to a lot of name calling and general unpleasantness.

So much so that this post was needed. As was this one.

Sadly, nothing seems to have changed as it has all kicked off, once again. The only saving grace is that it doesn’t appear to have been as widespread. Yet.

When Theresa May became Prime Minister it was thought that the downward spiral of anti-lifestyle policies wouldn’t accelerate. Fast forward three years and we now have this:

Smoking must be stamped out in the UK within 11 years, according to timeline set out in ambitious new Government plan

Daily Mail headline July 8th 2019

The release of this plan was delayed, for various reasons, but is now published as Mrs May’s lasting “legacy”.

Last night I attended a private event in London called “How long until smoking is history?”. Now, aside from my initial reaction to the question of the event which many of my regular readers should be able to guess, I was curious about the event.

Especially given who was behind it. The New Statesman “in association with Philip Morris International”.

I say “private” as the event wasn"t listed on the EventBrite website, you could only get tickets via a special, password-protected link. Imagine my surprise when I was asked by the jewel robber extraordinaire Dick Puddlecote if I would like to go. Admittedly I was on my honeymoon at the time and didn"t realise exactly when this event was. I wasn"t even sure I"d be able to make it. Fortunately, I did.

Not to put too fine a point on it this week has been, quite frankly the shittiest week I have experienced as a vaper. We saw the resolution of the Totally Wicked challenge - overturned, as expected by many. We also saw the FDA release its final ruling on ’tobacco products'.

To say that those that clamoured for both outcomes were crowing their victories from the highest towers would be a monumental understatement. Of epic proportions.

I know. I’ve been terribly shoddy at posting recently. Fact of the matter is, work has been a royal pain and has subsequently kept me from doing what I do. There just aren’t enough hours in the day. Anyway, on to the point of this post. Following on from a previous post and various discussions on VapourTrails.tv and of course twitter, the ol’ grey matter started churning away.

See, the thing is one of the key arguments against vaping is all about the dreaded, super-evil Nick O’Teen. There are also some parties that would like to see vapour products used only for cessation - which, by the way, they can stuff where the sun shineth not - so when I combined those two “arguments” in my head, I asked myself what is wrong here?

Trouble is, they’ve not checked it twice. It must be a really slow day for the opponents of vaping, though you would hardly suspect that considering how often this article appears from a variety of seeming unrelated twitter accounts.

It is a common practice unfortunately. A body, be it Government, Education whatever buys a whole bunch of accounts, or engages with someone who can “spread the word”; either way it costs money, to share on social media an article, or a link or some other piece of information, and share it repeatedly throughout a given day or days. We saw it with the whole formaldehyde “study” (which turned out to just be a letter to the editor, not the actual study), it’s happened with the shenanigans on the daft arsed “sugar tax” (and no I don’t agree with that either) and it probably happens on a myriad of other subjects too.

What is this? Another brain dump? Well, yes it is in fact another brain dump. You see, for once I actually went out and got a bit social with some folks for a friend’s birthday (21 again). Interesting side-note, the birthday girl is married to my boss, and most of this brain dump stems from his & hers opinions on smoking, the smoking ban and vaping. There’s also follow-up commentary from my last brain dump.

Most of my regular readers are aware that from time to time I’ll just put some random thoughts into some kind of (relatively) coherent form. These thoughts are not generally specific to a particular piece of research or media article, they also contain expletives as it is written precisely how I’m thinking it.

Today the Office of National Statistics released a report from the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey on adult smoking habits in Great Britain for 2014.