However, even I am astonished at how eager prohibitionist and statist groups are to destroy their façade of integrity.
The latest to expose themselves as a bunch of petty interfering tools is the TUC in updated advice given to their shop stewards.
The TUC strongly recommends that unions should ensure that electronic cigarettes are subject to the same restrictions in the workplace as tobacco. They should not be used in any indoor place. This is because the risk to others is unknown, but also because it can be confusing if people are seen to be smoking what can look like tobacco. This undermines the smoking ban.So, because the 'risk to others' of water vapour produced by safe propylene glycol, safe vegetable glycerine and safe flavourings reacting with heat is unknown, they should be banned? Is this some kind of never before encountered chemical alchemy they are promoting here?
And it looks like smoking so ban it anyway? Hmm, there was me thinking that the state only made the very reluctant decision to restrict freedoms and trample on property rights following overwhelming evidence of harm from undisputed studies by impartial scientists (yes, I am being sarcastic).
However employers and health campaigners may wish to promote the use of electronic cigarettes for existing smokers to help them give up, on the understanding that they only use them when they would normally smoke a cigarette and not anywhere that smoking is restricted.Oh, I see. So it's still OK to let the comrades use them, but only where they might as well have a fag anyway, even though there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever - nor will there ever be - that passive vapour is a thing. It's never been about health, has it?
Personally, I welcome this weapons grade idiocy in the wider scheme of things.
You see, we jewel robbers know very well that second hand smoke is hogwash created by a tobacco control industry from the Godber Blueprint, named after the man who ordered the junk science to be created in 1975.
Nowadays, it's difficult to convince others of this; they have been told over decades that passive smoke is dangerous and believe it. After all, why would the 'benevolent' state and 'experts' tell them lies, eh? You can point out that the science is bunkum and the 'experts' self-installed to provide the myth they have swallowed, but they're still sceptical and believe that they can smell it so it must be harmful. They s'pose.
But with e-cigs it's a different matter entirely. As a walking advert for them myself, even Puddlecote Inc's evangelist ex-smoker turned anti-smoker is thrilled with them. People are curious to start with; then interested in how they work; followed by impressed that innovation seems to be solving a perceived problem to the benefit of all concerned.
No smell, everyone is happy and the world is a better place. That is, until the tobacco control industry started pressuring institutions and legislators to begin banning their use. The general reaction is disbelief and often hilarity. How can they possibly ban that? It doesn't smell and it's a quite brilliant device if even Dick P is replacing tobacco with it during the day. How stupid must the people be who want it banned?
Of course, I usually just gently remind them that the whole second hand smoke scare was a scam all along and where before there was scepticism, they are now far more receptive to the idea. Even if these kneejerk e-cig bans are one day backed up by {cough} scientific studies, the public simply won't believe it - well, I expect some will but they'd be the Mary Whitehouse types who just don't like people - and in their quieter moments they'll question their previous beliefs about second hand smoke too.
So thank you TUC and every other misinformed statist and authoritarian body - public or private - which jumps to ban e-cigs. You're supplying ammunition for the likes of me to prove that it has never been about health.
What a tangled web we weave and all that.
16 comments:
The TUC directive may well have been straight from the pen of that clueless Labourite Linda McAvan. It sounds almost word for word what she was spouting.
These people are normalising fuckwittery. Can I have a tax-funded £90k p/a job trying to have them banned from existing in public places?
The TUC attitude is very, very disappointing. I didn't know that the TUC had a Tobacco Control Industry Department. That is the only possibility. No real union would see it as their job to support employers when it comes backing their members, especially when they are 'doing the right thing' by trying to stop smoking.
Only the other day, I suggested that smokers should keep out of the arguments about employers banning ecigs. Input from smokers would be tainted. The answer is for employees who use ecigs to complain to their unions.
How naive of me! I ought to have known that the TUC would have already been trussed up.
Perhaps e-cig users should still approach their own unions. The TCI cannot have infiltrated every union in the land - can they?
The TUC are just saying what the BMA have told them to say. Still amazed that the BMA has not been sued yet.
Yes, they've certainly been advised by the wrong people. Isn't it funny how ASH have been the go-to advisory authority for years but now they don't think workplace bans are a good idea, they are ignored?
My thoughts exactly on reading it. There is also a part about how it is not illegal to smoke outside ... but if the company doesn't like it, the union should be in support of the company over the worker. WTF?
TCI don't seem to have gotten to Unite during the plain packs campaign as the union opposed it. Boy did they get some abuse though.
It is sad that the TUC do not seem to have looked into e-cigs themselves to form their own opinion. They seemed to have relied on half truths from others.
e-cig chemistry is very simple. Many can see that they are not a problem to users or bystanders. The biggest issue with e-cigs, as you say, is the undermining of the tobacco control industry. That is very unfortunate :)
1.
The term “Godber Blueprint” is the name given by the author at this web site – http://www.rampant-antismoking.com - to a collection of archival information concerning antismoking activity. It’s detailed information that’s only come to light in the last few years. It’s assumed that the “Blueprint” was associated with Godber’s name because, at the time, he was the most vocal and rabid zealot at the World Conferences on Smoking & Health that the other zealots in attendance looked up to. But, in antismoking terms, there was nothing peculiar about Godber. He was a typical rabid antismoking fanatic/zealot reminiscent of his ilk of the previous few centuries.
The World Conferences occurred through the sponsorship of the World Health Organization. Godber was a WHO representative. Godber has long
since died and the WHO continues the de facto prohibition crusade, now administering the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control that most countries are signed up to. The “Godber Blueprint” could now be referred
to as the “WHO Blueprint”.
Important to note is that the rabid antismoking zealots were making numerous inflammatory claims, e.g., passive smoke “harm” and “social
cost” years before any “evidence”, contrived as it eventually was. For example, the first “study” on secondhand smoke was in 1981 by the antismoker, Hirayama – an entirely forced line of enquiry (e.g., there was no epidemic of lung cancer among nonsmokers), and 18 years before the flawed, agenda-driven EPA Report (1993) that declared SHS a “danger” to nonsmokers. Also, Godber was referring to smokers as “addicts” in 1975 although tobacco smoking was [reasonably] not considered an addiction at the time. Smoking was incoherently redefined as an “addiction” (a throwback to 1800s America) in 1988 by the Office of the Surgeon-General that by then had been hijacked by the same antismoking zealots. What we’ve witnessed over the last 30 years is the trash thinking of zealots later “legitimized” by their own trash “research” and peddled through zealot-hijacked organizations – manipulation through “appeal to authority”, e.g., Office of the Surgeon-General, Centers for Disease Control.
The problem seems to be that the TUC has its in-built 'untouchable', being all things tobacco related. I wonder what union looks after the affairs of people who work in tobacco companies? And what about people who work in e-cig companies? I doubt that any union would touch them with a barge-poll.
But WHY? WHY are vapers 'untouchables'?
2.
This is why the information in the Godber Blueprint is critical. It highlights that the current antismoking crusade – like most before – is a moralizing, social engineering, eradication/prohibition crusade, and has been so from the outset. It is the attempt, through denormalizing propaganda, to turn smoking into an “abnormal”, “immoral” and “shameful” act not fit for public view. But the antismoking fanatics/zealots/extremists recognized in the
1970s that there were few takers for social engineering. Particularly in
relatively free societies, including America and the peculiar state of California, coercive measures to conformity were viewed as repugnant by the majority.
The zealots had all sorts of coercive measures in mind – extortionate taxes, smoking bans - indoor and outdoor. But they recognized that the social
engineering crusade had all but stalled. They were already talking in the
late-70s that the only way forward was to convince nonsmokers that secondhand smoke exposure was a threat to their health despite there being no evidence for such an inflammatory claim.
So, since the 80s we’ve had self-installed social engineers (and their financial partners – government & Big Pharma) telling the public that they weren’t doing social engineering, that they weren’t moralizing, that they weren’t trying to force smokers to quit. They concocted storylines to
masquerade their social engineering intent. Extortionate, punitive taxes –
well, so their storyline goes, is because smokers are a “cost burden” to
society and with concocted reports stating as much. Smoking bans – well,
they’re necessary to protect nonsmokers from secondhand smoke “danger”. “There’s no slippery slope; we’re not doing social engineering”, squealed the zealots. They’re lies that have been told many times over during the last three decades. And governments around the world got suckered in by the inflammatory rhetoric and the appeal of easy tax money, i.e., license to extort.
It’s only in the last few years that the zealots and their useful-idiot politicians are up front about the moralizing and social engineering, speaking of “denormalization” in glowing terms. For example, this just recently:
“She said allowing the devices (e-cigarettes) into places where cigarettes are now banned also could "renormalize" smoking and undermine the public perception that the habit is now acceptable only in the privacy of one's own home.”
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/12/19/4556523/vote-coming-on-adding-e-cigarettes.html#.UrT2iHrZiSp
George Godber – 1975: “I imagine that most of us here know full well that our target must be, in the long-term, the elimination of cigarette smoking…… We may not have eliminated cigarette smoking completely by the end of this century, but we ought to have reached a position where a relatively few addicts still use cigarettes, but only in private at most in the company of consenting adults.”
[Remember, this statement was made 6 years before the very first, forced study on secondhand smoke by the antismoker Hirayama and 18 years
before the flawed EPA(1993) Report that declared secondhand smoke as a “hazard” to nonsmokers. And it's many years before smoking was redefined as an "addiction"]
Mike Daube has been with the current antismoking crusade from its early days. Here’s a recent article by Daube (2012) that reiterates the Godber?WHO Blueprint:
“Extending restrictions on smoking in any environment so that it essentially becomes a practice only for consenting adults in private.”
http://theconversation.com/bring-on-the-end-of-tobacco-use-but-not-a-total-ban-tomorrow-8881
For example, the recent banning of smoking in cars where children are present is just the latest step in removing another place where people are able to smoke, dressed up for a gullible public as “protecting” The Children™.
A point of interest. Rabid antismoking has occurred in America since the early 1800s. It was first pushed by questionable “religious” groups
(Temperance) and then peddled by eugenicists (medically-aligned) from the
late-1800s. It’s the eugenicists that held favor with the legislature, falsely
viewed as “scientific and scholarly”. There was all sorts of antismoking
activity (e.g., bans) in the early 1900s pushed by the eugenicists and
supported by Temperance groups. Following Prohibition there was an attempt to institute a tobacco version of prohibition.
Amid this antismoking fervor and with most smokers in the WWII battlefields, this particular story is of interest. In 1942, Chrysler banned cigarette smoking. The workforce, mostly nonsmokers, went on strike protesting the draconian ban. But this was years before secondhand smoke “danger”
had been drummed into people’s heads:
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0B15F63458167B93C2A8178BD95F468485F9&scp=14&sq=anti-cigarette&st=p
Henry Ford, rabidly anti-cigarette and a vocal anti-Semite, refused to install ashtrays in his vehicles:
“Ashtrays were offered at first only in luxury vehicles, but were standard in most cars by the 1920's, David Lewis, a professor of business history at the University of Michigan, said. One holdout was Henry Ford, an anti-smoker who published a pamphlet in 1914 called "The Case Against the Little White Slaver.” Mr. Ford did not install ashtrays in his Model
T. But he caved in by the 1930's, though he advertised his lighters as
"cigar lighters." Cigars were permissible because Mr. Ford's hero,
Thomas Edison, smoked them.”
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/01/05/business/for-car-buyers-smoking-is-no-longer-standard.html
Ford, and others of the megawealthy elite (e.g., Rockefeller, Carnegie), was also a supporter/funder of USA and Nazi eugenics. He is also known for penning the collection of anti-Semitic literature titled “The International Jew”.
Some of the snake-oil cures for smoking from mid-1800s to early-1900s America during a period of antismoking and, more generally, “clean living” hysteria (see pics).
Tobacco Control is a closed propaganda-machine pushed by
ideologically-driven zealots/extremists and their financial partners (e.g.,
Pharma); there are now numerous funded organizations in this corrupt network. In antismoking since the mid-1850s in America, there have been opportunists selling snake oil “cures” for smoking. But they were typically outsiders exploiting the situation. This time, those selling the “cures”, i.e., Pharma, have been the main funders (to the tune of billions of dollars over the last few decades) of antismoking groups peddling inflammatory propaganda
and pushing for higher extortionate taxes and more widespread smoking bans. In the cold parlance of marketing, it’s called “cultivating the market”.
Another point that needs to be made concerns “smell/stink”. There
are nonsmokers that like the aroma of tobacco smoke and there are plenty more that are not fussed one way or the other. This is understandable given sensory accommodation: Within 3-4 minutes of encountering new sensory information (e.g., a smell) it is accommodated into the background. It’s antismokers – a different mentality entirely – that hate [tobacco] smoke/smoking/smokers, i.e., misocapnists. Antismokers’ reaction to smoke is incredibly inordinate and disproportionate; it’s as if they’re being led to the gallows. It’s their hyper-reaction that’s abnormal. Yet they constantly claim that only they are the “normal” ones. Antismokers are a very small subgroup of the population. That’s why they have to continually hijack the entire nonsmokers group, pretending to speak for all nonsmokers, to push their agenda.
Things can’t be banned simply because some people don’t like them. Even the rabid antismoking nut cases that started the current antismoking
crusade understood that they couldn’t get smoking bans instituted simply
because they didn’t like the smell of smoke. That’s why they went to great
lengths to manufacture secondary smoke into a “health” issue for nonsmokers. It’s just one of many con jobs by the sanctimonious, neurotic, bigoted buffoons.
Smell/stink has become a major antismoking “strategy”. Activists aren’t concerned with facts, only with what might be “effective” in pushing the “cause”. It doesn’t matter if there’s a smell or not, let alone a “gag-inducing” stench. A strategy is simply to tell people who smoke that they “stink”:
New strategy: Tell smokers they stink
Forget their health, aim at their vanity – research suggests smokers who are told they stink are more likely to quit the habit.
In findings that are to be published in the prestigious Journal of Smoking
Cessation, an Auckland University research team reveals insights into the real reasons that prompt smokers to quit and shows how quit campaigns are wide of the mark.
The survey – “Do New Zealand Maori and Pacific walk the talk when it comes to stopping smoking? A qualitative study of motivation to quit” – finds that questioning the personal hygiene of smokers may be a significant motivator.
One of the report’s authors, Dr Marewa Glover, said campaigns with the
primary purpose of triggering quit attempts should include more emotionally
loaded reasons, such as “it stinks”.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10911018
So, smokers don’t buy into the derangement. Tell the antismoking nut cases that it sounds as though they have a major nasal complaint or maybe they’re plain neurotic...... or tell them that it's their minds that are dirty.
These are excerpts from a comment posted to an article that plays the “stink” strategy:
“subject to the foul stench of someone else's addiction”
“without having to be subject to the hideous stink of a smoker's disgusting effluent.”
“stink-up our collective atmospheric commons”
“I just DON'T WANT TO SMELL THAT STENCH.”
“to the effluent of their foul-smelling habit over the freedom of the (majority) non-smokers to breathe air that isn't hideously
awful-smelling.”
“Cigarette smoke is by far the worst stench I am routinely
subject to”
“to avoid their dreadful, disgusting, hideous stink.”
“you smell really, really bad. I mean dog's vomit bad”
“I don't want to be subject to your stench. Anywhere. Ever.”
“You subjecting me to your gag-inducing stench whenever I go
for a walk”
There is, to me, an astonishing sentence in the conclusion stuff at Godber blueprint linked above:
'The
utilization of the women's liberation movement to encourage rebellion
against the old social systems by the act of not smoking.'
Oh wow. Now there's a Trojan Horse no one within feminism, to my knowledge, has ever mentioned, let alone analysed. The co-option of other movements, supposely to serve the interests of those fighting entrenched power, is both breath-taking and sickening. I think I need to do some more digging around in this one.
(Sorry about the colour, can't work out how to turn it off.)
Unite objected to plain packaging because (I think) they represent Imperial workers, and a recent Daily Mail article on the closure of Imperial's Nottingham factory carried a quote from someone at the GMB. So those two unions, at least, represent tobacco industry workers.
Funniest of all is that Unite is considered by ASH as a tobacco industry front group! :)
http://taking-liberties.squarespace.com/blog/2012/5/7/ash-youre-all-part-of-big-tobacco-now.html
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