Vaping

Today was meant to be the day when something erupted from California. There were two options on what it could be, either the classical “e-cigs don’t aid cessation” stories where some pseudo-scientist deep in the bowels of UU pokes a few buttons on Hex, sends the antz scurrying to come up with a catchy click worthy headline.

That one did pop up briefly. It is still being touted around but not as loudly as the other “story”.

Who is the biggest liar of them all?

Pithy intro, must work on that. But this is a blog it’s meant to entertain (somewhat) and inform (kind of). Not to mention I am a completely random individual so don’t judge. Anyway I digress, and that’s before I start.

In case you missed it on twitter today, our mutual frenemy has penned another e-cig article. He has written a few, here, here, here, here, here, and his most recent one here. Unfortunately, the term investigative journalism seems to have escaped his notice as the vast majority of what he writes, and how he writes it comes across as decidedly negative. That is of course complete at odds with his claims of ‘balance’.

Today we saw the release of the manifesto for the Liberal Democrat Party. Oh my word. The manifesto is a delightfully dull read (that’s an hour of my life I’ll never see again), but the part that I want to take a closer look at is this bit.

Support effective public awareness campaigns like Be Clear on Cancer, working closely with charities to raise awareness of the signs and symptoms of killer diseases.

Seems to be a relatively benign introduction, doesn’t it? After all, we do have rights. Just as we had rights when we smoked. We are after all human beings with rights and privileges within our respective societies.

Trouble is, this particular ‘group’ are anything but benign.

Looks pretty enticing doesn’t it? The site goes over pretty much all the legislative bullshit ranging from taxation, through bans, marketing and sales, right up to regulation. The site encourages the user to sign a petition. Fortunately for me, I use a pretty large high-resolution monitor so I caught the site footer immediately.

Well come on in and have a seat folks we need to have a little chat. All the drinks are on the counter over there, sorry Dave, no home-brew cider, not after the last time.

This post is going to take a slightly different approach to my usual style, but first I’ve said this before and it seems I must needs say it again:

I have no affiliation with, nor do I work or receive payment from any vaping business or advocacy group.

Here we go again. It seems that a single day cannot go past without vaping hitting some headlines somewhere in some form. In this particular case, the ever inconsistent Beeb are the ones to publish an article in their online magazine. It is a bit on the weird side.

Let me start by saying that I personally look on vaping as part of normal everyday life. I don’t think that it is a ‘subculture’, not in the manner that is put across in the article.

Most of you will remember the post Misinformation vs Information I put up a less than a week ago. That post led to Thud!. Both of those posts originated from a questionable article in Vox.

Of course, the author of that article immediately came under fire from many within the vaping community. However, there is some (relatively) good news. The author, Julia Belluz has taken some time to speak to one of us vapers and put out an opposing view.

This is definitely a recurring theme recently isn’t it. First there was “stillblowingsmoke vs notblowingsmoke” then we had Vox spreading the same drivel. Wired picked up the story, as did many others. All in all, the public are reacting to what those in Public Health are trying to tell them, but not in the way you’d think.

I am of course talking about TobaccoFreeCA who really don’t seem to know quite what to say. For one, being a “Tobacco Free” entity you’d expect them to be fully behind whatever the delightful Department of Public Health says about smoking, and by extension vaping. Not quite.

Seems like my plan of taking a few days out have gone awry with some olds. There’s been an alarmist survey on teen e-cig use, covered in delightful depth by Clive Bates. By the way, the study that the news articles refers to hadn’t actually been published yet at time of print.

The piece of olds I’ve been looking at has gone a little unnoticed. All well and good, means I can write this in relative peace 😉

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.