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 š
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.
$75 Million for five years
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 mostly 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 for once, I’m going to be taking a break from my usual style of posts and am going to try and put my science type hat on.
Disclaimer: I am not a scientist of any type, so if there are any mistakes in my interpretations below, do feel free to correct me. Politely of course!
There have been a few studies published recently that are showing that the use of electronic cigarettes are far less harmful than traditional cigarettes. But we already know this I hear you say. Yes, we do know this. Rather than being dismissed as “anecdotes” by certain figures, the scientific fact is building and it is on our side, which of course leaves those against us looking all the more foolish. Unfortunately, it isn’t stopping them. Yet.
There has been a whole slew of reports in the media and on the various “Smoke Free” Twitter accounts recently all pertaining to the recent plain packs debacle. As you may know, Australia became the first to implement plain packs back in 2012. With that implementation, those rather pleasant insane folks over in Tobacco Control kept a very careful beady eye on the rate of smoking down under.
Despite there being very little evidence to show that it is having any effect on the actual rate of smoking, instead they try to view it from the perspective of falling sales indicates fewer smokers. The Guardian reported that plain packaging to thank for Australia’s decline in smoking. Well, to be honest it is pure hubris to assume that any decline is the result of a single policy, let alone one that is going to play right into the illicit markets hands.