2015/05

WHO says, sit down. WHO says, stop smoking. WHO says, vaping is bad. Vaping is good.

They haven’t actually said the last one and that’s because they seem to think that vapour products are made from tobacco. Idiots. “We don’t know what’s in them” they cry. “It’s just another addiction”. Oh my word.

Today is of course “World No Tobacco Day 2015” and there has been an awful lot of spiel emanating from the WHO twitter feed as you would expect when they consider tobacco to be the world’s most lethal pandemic. Uh huh. A pandemic is an epidemic of infectious disease that has spread through human populations across a large-scale, maybe worldwide. Thing is, last time I checked tobacco is not infectious. Dependence building maybe, but not infectious. You can’t catch tobacco through the ’normal’ disease vectors.

For some reason many elements of regulatory bodies and public health are determined to bundle electronic cigarettes up with tobacco rulings. Of course, they claim it is all in the name of public health, denormalising smoking, protecting the children, or some other inane reason.

Most of those reasons are of course, founded in ideology rather than actual facts but they are determined to put vaping in the same pigeon-hole as tobacco and smoking.

It seems that insanity reigns supreme pretty much everywhere you look these days. From the incredibly bizarre rulings down under to the outrageous propaganda emanating from the US. Nothing in the realms of tobacco harm reduction or e-cigarettes is left alone.

So you’d be forgiven for thinking that the insanity couldn’t get much worse. But it has.

You’d think from this headline that the recently passed legislation would actually be a good thing wouldn’t you? Well, you’d be way off course. Not particularly surprising really.

In a break from the norm, it seems that the main news story being shared about today is actually a positive one. The story starts on the counterweight continent where some mad scientists came up with an idea to peer over the edge.

These mad scientists, taking their idea from the island of four ecks used a device way beyond its limits. As with anything like that, the demons inhabiting this device complained. Loudly. Some of them even tried to form a union to protest. Trouble is, the name didn’t really inspire confidence; Demons Against Mad Nutcases - D.A.M.N. The result of this union caused a lot of trouble with many inhabitants of the counterweight continent inadvertently using the name in everyday life.

It seems that when there is a slow news day various entities resort to conjuring up the weirdest of headlines, almost to the point of actually making stuff up.

Although in this case the studies do actually exist and have come out of the American Thoracic Society conference, which is pretty unbalanced towards any and all negative attitudes towards personal vaporisers.

Using e-cigarettes suppresses your ability to cough

It is very rare for me to post something whilst I’m still incredibly angry after reading an article. But in this case, I’m going to make a bloody big exception.

For a while now the anti-vapor organisations have been setting a pretty dismal standard in their attempts to either discredit vapers or the vapor market. It seems that there is nothing they won’t do, no low they won’t stoop to.

In a rare display of self-restraint, I decided to hold off putting my thoughts down on this one, not because I didn’t want to. I held off mainly because I’ve had a lot of other advocacy stuff to do locally along with my usual 9-5. More on that in another post I think. I digress, in the first sentence too!

New South Wales, Australia. Come with me on a little journey, if you will, and let’s see what insanity awaits.

“When you tell somebody somethin’, it depends on what part of the country you’re standin’ in… as to just how dumb you are.”

Nobody could say that except Burt Reynolds, but we know a few folks that are dumb no matter what part of the country they are in.

Good grief. Somebody really doesn’t like smoking do they? Let me see, out of the God knows how many films I’ve watched since the age of about 13, there must have been hundreds of scenes that included someone either sparking up a ciggie, cigar or just generally having a ball tooting on one. Do I find that disturbing in any way shape or form? No siree.

For the first time in a long time, I actually spent some me time last night and watched some actual live broadcast television. Nothing in particular, just had the TV on and channel hopped for a while before settling in with a beer or three.

As I was watching “live TV” on my Sky box and not a recorded show I endured the adverts that litter the shows and it got me thinking, as stuff often does. What makes a good advert?

Well now it has been over a week since I last posted anything, and there’s a reason for that. I went on holiday. The first actual “going away from home for longer than a weekend” type holiday in almost twenty years. Gah, saying it like that makes me sound like some crazy hermit that only stays at home. I’m not by the way.

By now, you’re probably backing away from this post slowly and to be fair, I can’t really blame you. I’m still on that holiday buzz which will probably end with a crash when my alarm goes off in the morning to get my sorry ass back to work.