Opinion

Last week, the Irish Cancer Society released an article under their ‘News’ section detailing some ‘alarming’ findings about who uses electronic cigarettes. After reading this article two or three times, I noted a few items that were a little odd. So I sent them a pretty lengthy e-mail and waited, not expecting a response.

Imagine my total surprise when I checked my inbox this morning to find that my email actually had a response from an ICS Advocacy Officer. I’ll say this now, I do appreciate it when my e-mails get a response however short. This one, was pretty detailed, if a little wishy-washy in places.

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.

This blog is generally, by and large aimed at picking apart press releases, poking fun at the anti brigade, and of course my own muddled thoughts. I also like to try to entertain my readers when I can.

I’ve thought long and hard about this post. Ever since putting up my thoughts on the TPD and what it means for me personally as well as what it will mean for everyone.

Ah social media. Both a boon and a burden. I had the dubious pleasure to be introduced to another anti group yesterday which set me to headbutting my desk repeatedly. I posted a (relatively) short blog yesterday which covered some of their tactics.

Unfortunately for them, the ever lovely big*sparkles*Shannon, found this little gem buried in the rough.

Cue more head/desk action on my part. Given the diabolical nature of @sacstand I just had to have a nose around, just to see what other mischief these folks were up to. It does seem that the entire site went up in November 2013, so it is pretty old and doesn’t appear to have had any updates to it. Either that means they can’t be bothered to maintain it, or they believe that the information contained on the site is sufficient to secure more funding.

Within the realms of the so-called ‘public health’ arena, there is always an agenda. More often than not, those agendas may actually prove to be beneficial to the actual public. But that’s in terms of actual medical professionals, the boots on the ground. When it comes to the other entities claiming ‘public health’ agendas. Not so much.

For years, smokers have been a target for a whole variety of campaigns to try to get them to quit smoking, but the smokers weren’t the original target. When it became clear that smoking was actually causing a relatively substantial amount of harm, those in gubmint decided to try to do something about smoking. Getting folks to cut down or give up the habit entirely seemed to be the whole idea. Anti-smoking. Cue a myriad of campaigns aimed at informing the public of the dangers of smoking. To be fair, the initial thrust did have a pretty big impact as the general public didn’t really know what potential harms smoking caused. Well and good, the Anti campaign worked, smoking rates dropped, uptake dropped. But not significantly.

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.