Monday 19 May 2014

Carry On Smoking, Spain And America

Mike Siegel has today highlighted the absurd position of the CDC and FDA towards e-cigs and how they are effectively turning vapers back to smoking.
Data published last week in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine suggest that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are doing an effective job of helping protect the cigarette industry. These data show that despite widespread marketing of electronic cigarettes, half of the adult public still thinks cigarettes are no more hazardous than the fake ones. 
[...] 
If the Senate truly wants to reduce cigarette smoking and protect the public's health, it will shift its attack from e-cigarette companies which are trying to get the public off tobacco cigarettes and over to the federal government, which is doing everything it can to protect the cigarette market.
As it-looks-like-smoking-so-we-don't-like-it-ism goes, the American situation is a cracker and worth investing in cases of popcorn to observe. For while smokers are taking up the harm reduction route of vaping in their many thousands, all we see is the US authorities desperately trying to drive them all back to tobacco!

I've seen this coming for a long time and always knew that e-cigs had the potential to expose the venal, disingenuous and ultimately selfish nature of the transnational tobacco control industry Goliath, so it's delicious to watch the CDC and FDA willingly destroy their own integrity.

Especially since, via Spain, we can see what the outcome will be
SALES of electronic or E-cigarettes have plummeted by 70 per cent in Spain due to strict regulations covering their use and reports claiming they are not entirely without health risks.
Up and down the country, Spaniards tempted to quit or cut down using e-cigs are having their decision-making hijacked by propaganda and legislation which is telling them there is no benefit to be derived, and heck, that they may as well just carry on smoking, eh?

No 'spectacular decrease' in child smoking for Spain, then. Brilliant work, anti-smokers! You're excelling yourselves.



7 comments:

harleyrider1778 said...

Governments will not let revenues be destroyed in the end and neither will the Nazis allow the MSA deal to be lost because of lost sales levels which cause losses to the payouts to the states and which also fund anti-smoking groups in those states.
The states have literally decimated the amounts received by the anti-smoking groups over the last several years.
Now that sales levels are in fact being lost Big Tobacco has arbitrated for lowered payouts in several states and won.
The blackmarkets take an even bigger toll out of those gross sales figures.
In the end the governments will repeal the bans and lower the taxes back to their normal levels like before.
Its the same costs and revenue losses that drive governments to abandon prohibitional efforts each and everytime.
When its over and it will be soon we can look back and say,WE TOLD YOU SO!

Lisabelle said...

So true! Painfully.

de fumo in flammam said...

As a normal smoker I welcome the witch hunt against the pseudo gaspers.
Now seeing their freedoms restricted to the same levels as the natural smokers can we expect them to throw their shock troops into the fight for common sense,choice,liberty and normality.
It is painfully obvious the pro freedom campaigns including the smokers and
the liesure sector have been woefully inadequate amounting in some cases
to sheer cowardice. The lack of will and glaring disunity together with a blind obedience and dependency on the digital vacuum has led to a tiny collective of coughing budgies and muttering mice.
If only there were a few hundred who would leave their cages ,flee their
hidden nests and face the sun,find the ring leaders of restriction and give them something to worry about.......but when?

Michael J. McFadden said...

Zillatron, many thanks! I'm remembering it now! And I fully agree with your approach: I think I gave the argument that if they'd found a couple of six year old "experimenting" they could likely have said 100% of experimentation at 6 was by nonsmokers. If I remember rightly there was also some fancy footwork confusing (both for smoking and vaping) someone admitting they tried a single puff and someone regularly engaging in the activity every day.


What I've learned over the years in analyzing these abominations is that you need to approach them the same way James Randi (the psychic debunker) approaches any new tale he hears of a fortune-teller calling up spirits of people's great grandmoms. The tricks may not be right out front and evident, but you can be pretty sure that if you look hard enough you'll find the hidden levers, fog machines, and assistants with ghostly voice boxes hiding behind the curtains.


The only reason I add "pretty" in front of "sure" is that, even if everything is done on the up 'n up, you've still got that 5% chance that a study will give you a nice, solid, statistically significant... BUT DEAD WRONG.... answer.


Most antismoking researchers know better than to depend on that 1 in 20 chance when they're grant money is at stake though -- which is why you'll almost ALWAYS find those hidden levers.


- MJM

harleyrider1778 said...

No Cowardice here..................I fight em everywhere I can find em!

shaz said...

"Now seeing their freedoms restricted to the same levels as the natural smokers" The pseudo gaspers are by and large ex smokers so know full well about restriction. But to restrict something far less harmful because it looks like smoking is just getting rediculous. I agree we should all be able to choose what we do and the anti tobacco lobby has lied and manipulated for years against smokers, but when smokers finally switch to less harmful vaping, they are then hounded again by the same people with more lies and manipulation. none of it is right. I think you will find many vapers are sympathetic to smokers since they were there themselves for a long time.

Lisabelle said...

Very nicely said.