When Theresa May became Prime Minister it was thought that the downward spiral of anti-lifestyle policies wouldn’t accelerate. Fast forward three years and we now have this:
Smoking must be stamped out in the UK within 11 years, according to timeline set out in ambitious new Government plan
Daily Mail headline July 8th 2019
The release of this plan was delayed, for various reasons, but is now published as Mrs May’s lasting “legacy”.
On Monday, the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World released the findings of a global survey about smokers. Most surveys claim to seek a “better understanding” of the target audience - in this case, smokers - and this one is no different.
Arguably, the methodology behind this particular survey; the “Worldwide State of Smoking Survey”, appears to be very robust in its approach by researching existing surveys such as the Eurobarometer, the Global Audit Tobacco Survey and the Global Youth Tobacco Survey, among others. In essence, looking at how other surveys are constructed and selecting the most relevant questions for inclusion in the “Worldwide State of Smoking Survey”.
As part of the implementation of the Tobacco Products Directive - 2014/40/EU - and specifically Article 20, the section that relates specifically to e-cigarettes the European Regulatory Science on Tobacco (EUREST - what can I say, the EU does alphabet soup better than the Americans) - the EU wanted a report on the “potential risks” of the product. To be fair, that is a laudable goal considering the use of the product. The problem, of course is the implementation. Not to mention the cost.
It isn’t particularly uncommon for government agencies to bend the truth. What is thoroughly disingenuous is how they decide to bend the truth. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll have noticed a bit of a trend. Wherever the use of e-cigarettes is prevalent, the overall combustible use declines. It is kind of hard to see how one equals the other, but that is exactly what the CDC have done.
Overall tobacco use by middle and high school students has not changed since 2011, according to new data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Tobacco Products in today’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).
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 😉
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 pretty much discarded as junk science. He also doesn’t like us very much, but I couldn’t really give a damn about that.