Good Grief

It must be something about this time of year for all the idiotic anti-vaping, anti-nicotine or anti-anything, to crawl out from under whatever rock they’ve been hiding under and spout a tranche of utter bullshit before scuttling back to their safe space, complete with a shiny new grant to cook up more bullshit.

Today saw the on-line release of three, well two, actually - one of them was an opinion piece - papers in the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. It seems that AAP are ever so friendly with a certain rotund “professor” at UCSF, as one of these papers is his.

Stan is an idiot.

There. I’ve said it diplomatically. For once. Never again.

Starting with e-cigs triples odds of starting cigarettes among college students; the evidence just keeps piling up

The latest of his blog titles screams at you that starting the use of an e-cig will most definitely lead the crazy youth of today to take up smoking. Y’see, Stan is a firm believer in the whole gateway theory. That theory goes that should a young, impressionable youth (up to the age of 30) be taken in by the kiddie orientated marketing of e-cigarettes by “Big Tobacco” then sooner or later that impressionable youth is going to progress to cigarettes. It is inevitable. Resistance is futile.

There are times every once in a while where I do truly become completely speechless. Lunchtime today was one of those times. For those of you that aren’t aware, my access to social media is restricted during the working day - as it should be, I have work to focus on.

So imagine my surprise when I come across this post from one Dave Dorn and this tweet from Dick Puddlecote:

I guess it’s a case of “start as you mean to go on” regarding ‘scientific research’ on e-cigarettes. The very first paper I read in 2017 has this in its conclusion:

FDA is required to publicly display information about the quantities of chemicals in cigarettes and cigarette smoke in a way that is not misleading. This information, if paired with information from advertising or FDA disclosures indicating that e-cigarette aerosol contains lower amounts of those same chemicals, could have the unfortunate effect of encouraging smokers to become dual users or increase their existing dual use under the mistaken impression that they are significantly reducing their health risks.

Surveys. I’ve touched on the usual suspects upholding their own data as though it was the Holy Grail before. ASH is utterly remorseless when it comes to trumpeting their own data, usually for their own means, and they also heap scorn on data that contradicts their sacrosanct view of the populace. Typically, in the UK we have two primary sets of survey data on smoking - the ASH survey (hosted by YouGov) and of course the Smoking Toolkit Study.

Having only had a few hours notice that the US Surgeon General would be releasing his “first” report on the subject of e-cigarettes, it should come as no surprise how quickly the news has spread that “e-cigs are bad mmmkay”. Clive Bates eloquently put together three separate posts, two before the report and one after. Each delving deep into the minutiae of the US position on e-cigarettes.

The major issue with the release of this report is how easily it will be taken as gospel by a number of tobacco controllers and public health busybodies. Already Simon Chapman has gleefully tweeted:

In an all-too-familiar refrain, the Daily Fail has once again thrown journalistic integrity out of the window (as if they had any to begin with) to boldly tell the world that “e-cigs are bad mmkay”. Regular readers will of course remember a similar “study” - these things seem to come out at regular intervals - that claimed e-cigs have the potential to have severe adverse effects on the heart. It was a festering pile of fetid dingo kidneys then and, guess what, it still is.

Readers will remember the “guidance” issued by Public Health England in a vague attempt to convince business owners, and other individuals that vaping in the workplace is not, in reality, such a bad thing, nor is it actually illegal. Folks will of course remember this post from Vapers in Power about banning smoking AND vaping on a beach. There is of course, this one where Nottinghamshire went beyond insanity and banned smoking AND vaping on any and all council owned property - including outside. I had a few words to say about that too.

Among many things, this really does boggle the mind. Y’see, whenever ASH or their sock-puppet ilk wave their “statistics” under the noses of our ruling elite, they claim that it is “without bias” and of course “entirely independent” - among many other platitudes.

Y’see, ASH et al are entirely free of conflicts of interest aren’t they? So their surveys must be the Holy Grail. No question about it. When it comes to knowing the smoker, ASH has all the answers. Or so they’d like you to believe.

We all know that attitudes towards e-cigarettes are slowly being eroded in the UK by the near constant barrage of churnalism. That’s right The Sun I’m looking squarely at you, crass fuckwits that you are. I might even look towards The Telegraph too. Not for the usual reason of their “science” editor this time, though that could be considered one big reason.

Now we have an actual study, funded by the National Cancer Institute and the FDA CTP, and performed by some researchers deep in the bowels of Stanford. Well, we know how the last one turned out don’t we?