Sunday 13 December 2009

Are Our Politicians As Stupid As American Ones?


I suppose we shall soon find out.

Listen, ASH have been lying for decades. It's what they do. But when such mendacity becomes as quite incredibly laughable as this, one has to worry about their sanity.

New Jersey is poised to become the second state to ban the use of e-cigarettes [e-cigs] in public places where smoking is already prohibited, with the New Jersey Senate set to vote today on a bill already passed unanimously by the Assembly.

A primary purpose, says Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), the antismoking organization which supplied a detailed report supporting the bill, is to protect bystanders who otherwise are at possible risk from heart attacks, just like those inhaling secondhand tobacco smoke.

More to the point, one must wonder what kind of raving lunatics the poor people of New Jersey are subjected to in their legislature that this law was passed unanimously.

It's not only demonstrably false, but so shot full of holes as an idea that it's difficult to understand how just one person paid by the public to look into such matters could have failed to notice. Let alone every single one of them.

An anti-smoker is appalled. And for good reason. After stating categorically how the ASH claim is physically impossible and rooted in fantasy, he delivers this exasperated plea.

This unscientific hysteria threatens the scientific credibility of the entire tobacco control movement.

I believe it is the responsibility of all anti-smoking groups to speak out against this inappropriate tactic, and publicly refute the claim that ASH is making. By being silent, anti-smoking groups are actually complicit in the deception of the public.

The problem is that the person making these claims is the very same one who kicked off the entire money-grubbing tobacco control exercise in the first place. An ambulance chaser called John Banzhaf who not only uses the most shameful methods in pursuing his own enrichment, but has also become so accustomed to wealth accrued by lying that he is branching out into new areas.

His latest crusade is against McDonalds ... plenty of bucks there for someone employing the correct dodgy science, one must assume.



So why this unsubstantiated attack on the e-cig? Well, he's got to stay true to his sponsors, hasn't he? And Pfizer, who haven't yet manufactured their own e-cig style nicotine delivery device, throw a mighty $100,000 per quarter his way.

Without wishing to be accused (again) of not knowing my subject matter, or of ignoring externalities, I have tended to suggest many times that Banzhaf and his UK-based ilk are merely shills for big pharmaceutical interests before. This is merely further incontrovertible proof that one cannot believe a word that ASH, or any smokefree body, says. It has always been the way, it's just that our current MPs have been too stupid to see it.

As the saying goes, follow the money.

Now, there is a possibility that UK politicians will finally prove themselves to be less gullible, less self-absorbed, and more questioning of the junk science, and motivations of those who promote it, on the e-cig question, but considering the fact that they seem as willing to grab as much cash as they can themselves when the opportunity presents itself, it's a remote one.

Are UK politicians as quite stunningly dense as those in New Jersey? We shall see, but secretly you know that I'm going to be back here very soon pointing out that they are, don't you?


13 comments:

handymanphil said...

Looks like 'sweet cigarettes' enjoyed by millions of kids will be the next one on the list then Dick?
Aren't they the single biggest cause of diabetes? - I'm sure we can find a junk(y) scientist willing to sell his soul to come up with the relevantly convincing crap!

manwiddicombe said...

The MSNBC presenter was doing so well with the ideas of personal freedom and responsibility until the last line of the video "the state should come and take their children away".

JPT said...

Yes.

Curmudgeon said...

Indeed. Yes, probably more so, is the answer to the question.

Mark Wadsworth said...

I'm not sure it's the right question.

What worries me is how stupid voters are, rather than how stupid politicians are. If voters learned to look beyond whichever bit of hype satisfies their own prejudices and learned to look at things like 'facts' and 'logic' and 'historical patterns', we'd all be the better off for it.

nannyknowsbest said...

As a former seller of e-fags and having done as much research on this matter as is available on the planet, I can categorically state that these do not even promote ANY risk to those who use them - let alone others in their vicinity. The science was published in New Zealand in 2008 that proved them safe (in any dose) to rats, humans and every carbon based life form.
Apart from water vapour, to the bystander, they produce NOTHING.
A Ventolin Inhaler "leaks" more "drugs" - mind you - they do LOOk like a fag - do that must be banning.

timbone said...

What I am about to say may be doom and gloom, but is the e-cig not the new 'safe cigarette'? As was pointed out in detail in the book 'Velvet GLove, Iron Fist' by Chris Snowdon, the forerunner in the 1970s was prevented, and all research destroyed.

Changes in global marketing and e-commerce have now made this technologically advanced 'safe cigarette' available. I believe however that it's days are numbered. The anti smoking forces would never allow something remotely like a real cigarette to deliver nicotine to a welcoming recipient.

Leg-iron said...

This isn't through an unbiased source but it does show that the risk of heart attack from actually smoking Electrofag is no greater than from coffee or Red Bull.

I'm inclined to encourage them in this 'trace amount is deadly' campaign. When it's widespread, we can then point out that by encouraging people to stick far higher concentrations to their bodies, they are in fact deliberately attempting to kill those people. Based on their own stated belief of the toxicity, it's the only logical conclusion.

I wonder how Pfizer will react when the patches and gum are banned? There really is no other logical course for those legislators to take.

The witch from Essex said...

Why don't the e-fag manufacturers make an e-fag that looks EXACTLY like an asthma pump.
What would the ASHITES do then.
Take the asthmatics pumps away for analysis while the sufferer chokes to death. That would be fun !!

Anonymous said...

I hope they do ban them everywhere as many pubs and clubs are full of e-cig users.
When these people start staying away as the smokers did then maybe the businesses will scream louder than they did when the smoking ban came in. Surely they will as the places will be even emptier than they are now.
Who in their right mind wants to suck a plastic tube ?
It makes people look really thick and 100% addicts.
These people look desperate for a fix and are laughed at by others.

Junican said...

I remember once taking a test with the Bank that I worked for. It was not exactly an intelligence test, and there is a name for these tests which I cannot remember, but it was intended to 'test' one's logicality.
One of the questions was something like this, "Would you prefer your local authority to spend money on art classes or on street lighting?"

Your actual answer was not important because, whichever answer you gave, subsequent questions lead you into into a deepening morass of uncertainty as to which of the two (art or street lighting) was best. It was all very clever.

It seems to me that our politicians are in the same sort of predicament. They chose to accept passive smoking as dangerous. Day after day, it becomes more and more obvious that this is not true, but they have chosen that path and cannot get out of it. They are committed. They are committed because they did not say, when the question was asked, "I need more information".

The same now applies to global warming. Regardless of how many green jobs may be created, it is essential that politicians say, "We need more information before we can decide".

Anonymous said...

That may be true, about not being a clear path out of it once the politicans mistakenly were led down the wrong path in the first place. It would be nice if there was some dignified manner for them to do an about-face turn-around whilst still saving face in public. If there was some way like that, then everything from the SHS Fraud to the AGW Fraud might have a chance of being stopped from doing anymore damage than it already has.

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