Opinion

When I woke up this morning I wasn’t expecting a whole host of shenanigans to be floating around the media. I knew that something was coming at some point thanks to some very good friends in the know, all very secret squirrel like. What I didn’t expect was the sheer insanity of it all.

After listening to Simon Clark at Vapefest about the situation with proposed vaping bans coming simply because smoking has already been banned in public, it made perfect sense. The whole “denormalization” of smoking smokers began a long time ago, culminating with the situation we have now, like dominoes smoke-free laws were passed and now it’s “normal” to go into a pub, if you can find one that’s open and have a beer without being “engulfed in a fug”.

In the absence of any credible news based on, or loosely based on actual science there is a trend for opinion pieces where budding journalistic hacks seize the opportunity to make a name for themselves by cobbling together a mix of information, loosely based on other media stories upon which they base their own “informed opinion”. There was a time when “opinion pieces” were just that, actual opinions from properly informed investigative journalists, whilst now it’s all about driving traffic to a website and the associated click-throughs.

Let’s face it, there’s a whole world of industries out there that run quite happily on its own without interference from any kind of trade union, and even if they had a union they still don’t have a huge amount of power or influence. With some exceptions, most notably the British Medical Association.

You will of course remember that the Bloody Meddling Association held their Annual Representatives Meeting recently spread over the course of four and a half days, seriously how many times do you think someone said “any other business” only to have some cockweasel cough irritatingly with a “yes, there is just one more thing”.. Of course that’s a major exaggeration, as the entire ARM was scheduled with quite a lot of the schedule being specified as “if we have time”.

In the grand scheme of things much is said about how giant monolithic entities control and distort everything even when those entities have absolutely nothing to do with the subject. If that is the case, why then do many “public health” faux charities insist on blaming “Big Tobacco” for every fopar they have ever made?

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Three completely different media outlets, with three very similar and completely inaccurate headlines. So what exactly has these media buffoons so worked up? Well of course it is the defeat of SB140 where Senator Mark Leno “disassociated” himself from the Bill all because the committee voted to amend the definition of electronic cigarettes to not being tobacco products. Such a shame.

It is rare that I feel the need to blog when angry, I usually like to let my thoughts cool off so I can put them in some semblance of order to articulate exactly why I am angry. Though in this case anger doesn’t factor in to it, more like total disappointment.

Before I begin I need to be 200% clear and state an aspect of my past in black and white:

I’ve resisted writing about this for several reasons, not least of which I’m still somewhat concerned about my relationship with tobacco, but I’m also one of those that likes to try to see both sides of the argument then make up my own damn mind.

On the one hand we have an ardent supporter of smokers rights who occasionally supports vaping, or at least doesn’t support bans. On the other we have prominent figures in vaping advocacy. Both sides can be viewed as being both angels & demons.

There’s an awful lot going on in the world of vaping right now. Plenty of shiny new mods to look at, like the Sigelei temperature control mod, there’s a new one coming from VaporShark and so on. I’ll admit to keeping an eye on what is coming after all I did suffer extensively from shinyitus in the early stages of my journey into vaping so I know all too well the attraction of a new shiny.

Well, according to ‘science’ vape store owners and their staff members are likely to be far more effective and have more health information for current and potential new vapor product users.

Even more amusingly, our sociologist Simone Clapman who we all know can’t truly understand the science behind vapor products had this to say:

The poor benighted fool, he’s been so anti-ecig that he blocks anyone on Twitter that disagrees with his anti-ecig stance, or if you mention wind farms. No, just no. I am not going there. Yet. Let’s get back to Simone’s quoted study shall we?

We all know that reading scientific research can actually be a bit of a bore, long phrases and technical jargon litters the vast majority of studies. Heck, they even have their own terminology; as if doing that makes the research they produce not for us mere mortals.

You will of course remember two articles from Vox all those months ago which caused all sorts of twittery shenanigans (refresh your memory here, here and here) with the author of the original article coming under a lot of fire from us advocates. Quite rightly too, the first article was, in a word atrocious. Ill-balanced, poorly written and had some serious bias issues.

Let me introduce the players for this rumble. In the angry red corner we have, British American Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco, Altria and Japan Tobacco International. The four major players on a global scale in the tobacco industry.

In the cowardly yellow corner we have, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), California Department of Public Health, Faculty of Public Health, Cancer Council Australia, American Lung Foundation, American Heart Foundation, Tobacco Free Kids, British Medical Association and so on. Far too many to list out here.