The WHO Doubles Down On Its Incompetence

You'd think, wouldn't you, that after the damning political and media criticism the World Health Organisation has rightly been subjected to over fucking up the health of every nation on Earth - with their pitiful and incompetent response to the Coronavirus - that they would have learned a lesson on getting their priorities right.

Well, it seems not. This week, they were celebrating the "defeat" of e-cigarettes in Finland, as if this is in any way a good thing.

Strong legislation helps defeat e-cigarettes in Finland

... 

Many countries across the European Region have struggled to contain the rising popularity of these products, and instead have simply seen a transferral of nicotine addiction from tobacco products to e-cigarettes.

Erm, that's the entire point of harm reduction, you dribbling cretins. In fact, it is in your own literature where you state ...

1(d) “tobacco control” means a range of supply, demand and harm reduction strategies that aim to improve the health of a population by eliminating or reducing their consumption of tobacco products and exposure to tobacco smoke; 

Harm reduction - in this particular policy area - is exactly about transferring people from smoking to far safer alternatives like, I dunno, e-cigarettes. Do you get the sense that the WHO isn't really interested in improving people's health, after all? Because I sure as shit do.

OK, you may be sceptical about that, so try this instead. It is World No Tobacco Day on Sunday, and the WHO has just issued a call to action. Here is the kind of deliberately misleading garbage they will be pumping out.

Tobacco products kill more than 8 million people every year. Tobacco and related industries must continuously find new consumers to replace the ones that their products are killing to maintain revenue.

"Related industries"? What could they possibly mean by that?

Tobacco and related industries’ tactics to market to children and adolescents include:

Over 15,000 flavours, most of which attract children and adolescents
Sleek, sexy designs

Ah, in other words, vaping products which have killed no-one, let alone 8 million people. And in case you didn't get the clever lie message they are trying to send, they offer 'material' to nail their crooked mendacity to your subconscious with this kind of emotional muppetry. Note the box mod vaping device pencilled into the girl's hand just under the emboldened 8 million figure.

This is the kind of anti-scientific garbage the WHO was hoping to enter into their global policy recommendations that I wrote about in my blog entitled Liars To Convene In The Hague 12 Months Later Than Planned at the end of April. Because there is no other word to describe them except disgusting liars who are wedded to policies which will seriously harm the health of the public all over the world.

Not satisfied with seeing their incompetence towards Coronavirus kill hundreds of thousands, if not eventually millions, across the world - along with the global economy - these utter fuckwits are doubling down and deliberately derailing the biggest driver - worldwide - of declining smoking rates too.

It is no accident and they are not stupid people. No, this is a deliberate; they are simply monstrous and catastrophically irresponsible organised criminals.

As Ecigclick put it recently:

Let’s face it, the WHO has been running a guerilla style war on all things vape for some time. 

Its tactics have included sniping from the sidelines with completely fake news and ‘science’ surrounding e-cigarettes, issuing totally made up decrees based on fresh air and billionaire paid for ‘research’, flooding the social and mainstream media with horrific scaremongering based on total BS, and churning out enough anti-vape propaganda to make a dictator of a tin-pot country jealous. 

Shocking stuff and yet more proof the World Health Organization is not fit for purpose.

Well, quite.

The WHO isn't a 'health' organisation, it's a Goddamn killing machine. 

++BREAKING++: Liars To Convene In The Hague 12 Months Later Than Planned

Today saw an announcement from the World Health Organisation that their biennial anti-nicotine shitfest has been postponed by a year.

In light of the COVID-19 global pandemic and its impact on the conduct of international global conferences and travel, the Bureaus elected by COP8 and MOP1, after consulting the host country, have decided that convening the Ninth Session of the Conference of the Parties to the WHO FCTC (COP9) and the Second Session of the Meeting of the Parties to the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products (MOP2), scheduled for November 2020, is no longer possible.

They have been moved back until November 2021 instead.

There is something quite fitting about a real public health emergency leading to postponement of a meeting full of pretend 'public health' tax-spongers who bleat about imaginary threats to the world when people are actually dying in real life instead of on cleverly-created computer models.

The WHO's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control had great plans for COP9 in the Hague. Increasingly irritated by the inconvenient propensity of safer nicotine delivery products, such as e-cigs, to decrease smoking rates all over the world - when loudly-hailed FCTC initiatives like plain packaging had done bugger all - they were all set to spout a load of junk science and lies to try to eliminate their far more successful competition.

If you want an idea of the utter donkey bollocks they were preparing to deliver, you just have to watch this from one of their most prominent officials. I could fisk it all but you might recognise the lies by yourself. There is basically not a single word of truth that slithers out of this WHO maggot's mouth.

Probably the most laughable claim he made was that vaping increases heart attacks. This was filmed at the end of February, by which time the joke study to which he relies on for his 'information' had been retracted due to including heart attacks that occurred before subjects had started vaping. It was widely reported in the popular and medical media, so you would imagine that a top-ranking WHO official might have noticed, but apparently this particular 'expert' was as blind to it as if someone had just told him there was a virus in China.

It's strange that they didn't just hold the thing virtually instead; that seems to be the way of other conferences. But, as has been pointed out on Twitter, that's not how the FCTC works.

They'd never switch to a virtual meeting for the same reason leadership in the US Congress doesn't want virtual votes -- it's a lot easier to twist arms, bully, and watch over people in person.

— Gregory Conley (@GregTHR) April 27, 2020

Indeed. Regular readers will know that the FCTC COP meetings are all held behind closed doors; the public and the press are excluded; deals are done in secret; delegates bullied and gaslighted; countries traded with incentives for repeating falsehoods; and junk science promoted over scientific fact. And that's not to mention the huge influence wielded by pharmaceutical sponsors and funders with conflicts of interests so huge they could swallow planets.

They won't put their conference online because it's not a transparent discussion or open debate, it is deliberately designed to be secret. Despite being funded by taxpayers, they have no wish to let taxpayers see what they are talking about. In 2014 in Moscow, they even turned off the WiFi so that delegates could not communicate with the outside world.

A $40,000 wifi facility was also wasted when tweets dried up on the second day, and Instagram accounts which had been sharing pictures went silent soon after. It seems that the WHO were desperate to ensure nothing escaped to the outside world about what they were discussing.

No, a virtual meeting would never do. They could have put controls in place to exclude people looking in - like they do physically at each COP they organise - and I'm sure they probably discussed it. But, I expect the potential for hacking was too great for them to consider and seeing as they are crap at just about everything else, they decided not to take the risk.

So, farewell then, COP9. We will see you in 2021 and will still be ready to counter your garbage. In fact, it gives us an opportunity. As we have seen recently with various political causes, the public is striking back against elite cabals ... and winning.

The WHO's COP jamborees feature up to 2,000 attendees, but vapers number in the tens of millions, and growing. Arguments are won by people who are infinitely more passionate about causes than their opponents. For the WHO, it's about money, for consumers it is far more personal than that.

We'll be ready for November 2021, slot it in your diary, folks. 

WHO Values Lines Of Text Over Saving Lives

So, it seems that the US has decided to stop funding the WHO.

For those of us who have been aware of how unaccountable and out of control they are for quite a while, it's not surprising that they have been found wanting when it comes to the only thing we all would like them to do very well.

Their failure to cope with epidemics is not just restricted to this one, who can ever forget the former incompetent Director General taking tea with Vladimir Putin at an anti-tobacco and vaping conference in Moscow instead of an event in Brussels to address Ebola killing people very quickly in Africa? She attended Moscow but texted her speech to Brussels.

The US has decided to implement a review because the WHO's handling of the Coronavirus has been an absolute disgrace. Being a highly-professional organisation, the WHO has obviously reacted to this by focussing on what really matters to them in these extraordinary times.

Via The Times.

The World Health Organisation has warned governments about engaging with the tobacco industry over the development of coronavirus vaccines. 

British American Tobacco, whose cigarette brands include Lucky Stripe and Dunhill, said this month that it had made a significant breakthrough in developing a potential plant-based vaccine candidate for Covid-19. 

However, vaccines from Big Tobacco would pose a dilemma for public health officials and governments. Under the WHO’s framework convention on tobacco control, members are restricted in dealing with the industry.

A vaccine to save millions of lives would be a "dilemma" to the WHO? Are you fucking having a laugh? 

The global health body said that “partnership with the tobacco industry undermines governments’ credibility in protecting population health as there is ‘a fundamental and irreconcilable conflict between the tobacco industry’s interests and public health policy interests’.”

Erm, so an industry producing a vaccine is bad because it goes against "public health policy interests"? This must be the biggest "computer says no" statement of all time.

People are dying, but hey, who cares? The WHO has a bit of text and it simply cannot be disregarded. Apparently. 

It's called Article 5.3 and it absolutely doesn't fucking cover this. Not even close! 

In setting and implementing their public health policies with respect to tobacco control, Parties shall act to protect these policies from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry in accordance with national law.

Do you see anything in there about refusing a vaccine which could save millions of lives? 

It said that countries including Britain that had ratified the framework in 2004 “should take steps to prevent any interference by the tobacco industry . . . The key point for addressing tobacco industry interference is to reject partnerships and non-binding or non-enforceable agreements with the tobacco industry at any times.”

In other words, the WHO would dearly love someone to come up with a vaccine to prevent deaths caused by their catastrophic incompetence, but sadly if it comes from a company they don't like, everyone will have to refuse it. Computer says no. 

The London-listed BAT, which generated profits of £9 billion last year, has joined the race to develop a vaccine that involves companies worldwide. Its vaccine is being developed with Kentucky Bio Processing, its American biotechnology subsidiary. It said this month that it was in pre-clinical testing and wanted to form partnerships with government agencies on the non-profit project to help to bring its vaccine to human trials, possibly by next month.

Evil bastards!

David O’Reilly, director of scientific research at BAT, has said that the company has contacted healthcare departments to offer access to its research and planned to contact the WHO. 

The government, which has established a vaccine taskforce including industry and academics, is in contact with the tobacco company and other coronavirus vaccine ventures. 

If testing “goes well”, through collaborations with government and third-party manufacturers between one and three million doses per week could be manufactured from June, the company said. Clinical studies typically take more than a year. 

Dr O’Reilly said that history would take a dim view if the company had not told anybody that it had technology that could be deployed rapidly to help to tackle a pandemic.

Well, quite. I don't know about you, but as someone who would like to go out sometime before next Christmas, actually see flour on supermarket shelves again - maybe even visit a pub - and not see escalating deaths all over the world due to the WHO's stunning stupidity, I really couldn't give a rat's chuff who makes a vaccine. I don't think tens of thousands of bereaved families in the UK or elsewhere will care either. 

Deborah Arnott, chief executive Action on Smoking and Health, an anti-smoking charity, said: “The Covid-19 pandemic is a disaster, there have been over 40,000 deaths since it started and rising — but we mustn’t forget that the tobacco epidemic still kills over 22,000 people a day.”

40,000? Try 160,000 and rising.

But besides that, so therefore we should tell BAT to stop working on a cure? Put away your test tubes, guys, close down the labs and your expensive machines, tobacco control has got this. They're putting health warnings on individual cigarettes soon, that'll learn the virus, and no mistake!

Seriously, some of these people should learn to keep their heads down and shut their traps right now. This isn't a fucking game.

Now, it's clear that WHO are puppet masters of people further down the chain, so they kinda have to dance to the WHO's tune. I'm sure they wouldn't be such disgusting people if that burden was taken away from them.

So for the good of humanity, and to help our UK tobacco controllers to not have to act as heartless oafs, it's probably for the best that the UK government stops funding the WHO too.

It might - just might - force them into working out for themselves that an organisation which claims to be a force for good health around the world, should value people staying alive when faced with a deadly virus which kills in days, more than childish ideology and a few sentences of fucking text.

We're All In This Together ... Except For Some

This week, the Secretary of State for Health, Matt Hancock, asked for further help from industry to develop testing for the Coronavirus outbreak. He namechecked a few Titans of industry in his daily briefing which had already downed their usual tools and decided that their talents, and financial clout, could be useful to society in saving lives.

The week before, Hancock had acknowledged the already admirable efforts that the private sector had put in to redirect their ample resources towards tackling the virus, saying:

Many companies are already working urgently to assist us in this and I'm delighted that so many more are looking to step up to this challenge.

It's all hands to the pump and we are all together on this, aren't we? It is so refreshing to see; everyone pulling together in a common cause against a common enemy.

Well, not quite everyone, unfortunately.

On the same day that Hancock said he was "delighted" at the efforts being made, there was one subset of our society which was still excluding themselves from this campaign of working together. You see, British American Tobacco (BAT) had issued a press release - on the very same day - announcing that they were working hard on producing a vaccine. You can read it here.

You would think, wouldn't you, that those in tobacco control would meet to discuss this and decide that now isn't the time to broadcast their childish and insular prejudices to the world. But, I dunno, maybe because communication lines are difficult working for home (I'm being generous) that didn't happen.

Instead, there was a wail of collective outrage from the tobacco control industry, the most vomit-inducing from Wanda de Kanter, a particularly nasty anti-smoking lunatic from The Netherlands.

Yep, in a global emergency, companies she doesn't like should be told to "stop" using their huge resources in an effort to save lives. This, from someone who would call herself part of 'public health'. Note she is not saying that she, particularly, would refuse anything provided by the 'wrong' company if she was on death's door - which is her choice - but that other people who are dying should be prevented from accessing the equipment and that work on a vaccine should cease because she says so.

Considering over 100,000 human beings have died so far, this evil attitude truly beggars belief!

The reference to ventilators is a reaction to a different story broken by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism - an organisation which claims to be the pinnacle of truth in reporting, but currently writes articles to order funded by Michael Bloomberg's puppet, Vital Strategies - about 50 ventilators donated by Philip Morris in Greece.

No-one would have known this story if it wasn't highlighted by the grubby guns for hire of the journalism trade but, sadly, someone far less of a lunatic - and who should know better - chose to chivvy them along by offering this disappointing comment.

Deborah Arnott, chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health, criticised PMI’s motives. “This is a shameful publicity stunt by Philip Morris International, which owns Papastratos and has a 40% share of the Greek tobacco market,” she said. 

“Smoking makes people more vulnerable to coronavirus, and if they get it makes the symptoms worse, meaning they’re more likely to need ventilators. Papastratos makes €1.3bn a year ... In comparison, the donation of 50 ventilators is a drop in the ocean.”

The fact that Papastratos - an affiliate of Philip Morris - had not courted any publicity whatsoever until the Bureau of Incompetent Journalism blundered in, seems lost on some, obviously.

As if that is not bad enough on its own, shall we test this assertion that "smoking makes people more vulnerable to coronavirus"?

Because, you see, it's not true.

Smokers are conspicuously under-represented amongst cases in both China and the USA. An evidence review published three weeks ago found no association between smoking and the severity of COVID-19. Yet every tobacco control organisation - including Public Health England - in the UK has been spewing this fake news from their social media channels for a couple of weeks now.

So, one could argue that the only people using this virus as a publicity stunt are tobacco controllers themselves. Pretty shameful, huh?

In fact, it's worse than that. While we are all working together to defeat the virus, the tobacco control machine is actively trying to nobble any efforts to join with the noble cause as Hancock has been suggesting.

Another Bloomberg-funded sock puppet made a desperate plea a few days ago for governments to refuse help from not only tobacco companies but vaping ones too. Repeating the lies about smoking and vaping leading to increased risks from the virus, they urged governments to "encourage citizens to quit outright and to hold the tobacco industry accountable for the harm caused by its products, including harm related to COVID-19".

Now, I've always had quite a distaste for extremists in tobacco control. They are devoid of empathy, they pervert scientific principles, treat ethics as if they were an inconvenience and are incredibly venal and selfish.

But, I honestly never believed they could be so monumentally crass as to put their own funding and personal dislikes over and above the greater cause of helping as many people to live as possible.

Maybe I'm being unfair and - just as happened when the WHO installed the butcher of Zimbabwe as a goodwill ambassador, remember that? - there are many others in the tobacco control industry who are disgusted by such a cold, heartless and inhumane reaction to companies trying to help lessen the number of people dying during this real public health emergency, but if so they are extremely quiet about it.

If, at some point, BAT did create a vaccine for the virus, I do hope the massed ranks of selfish and blinkered tobacco controllers who find the manufacturer distasteful will refuse to take it. They would be astonishing hypocrites otherwise, and by declining they would leave more supplies for those in the public who value life above stupid and childish ideology.

You may have read often on these pages that I don't believe certain sections of pretend 'public health' actually care about health at all. Well, I think this is case closed, don't you? 

Humanity Is No Longer A Priority For the NHS

If you wanted evidence that humanity has departed from the NHS in favour of elitist zealotry and pointless ignorant bullying, you couldn't find a better example than this.

Smoking to be banned on all hospital grounds from next April  

Next year’s NHS contract with hospitals will say no-one should be allowed to smoke in any areas such as car parks.

Car parks. You know, where cars spew out deadly exhaust fumes that can kill in minutes in the wrong circumstances. Remember when it was about the vague 'perils' of secondhand smoke ... in enclosed places? Those days are long gone.

Health ministers have said no-one should have to “walk past a cloud of smoke in order to enter or leave their local hospital”.

A laudable aim, no doubt, if you are setting policy to encourage self-indulgent, snobby and bossy people who have orgasms over interfering in the lives of others for no reason but to inflate their own pathetic egos, but of no benefit to public health whatsoever. Smokers are not going to quit because of bullying like this, if anything it will strengthen their resistance and create mistrust of the medical community.

As anyone who has ever visited a hospital will know, the reason these daft rules are ignored - not just by the public but by staff too - is because not only are they are evil, daft, counterproductive and unnecessary in equal measure, but also the vast majority of people recognise that hospitals are stressful places and there is no will from decent people to poke their nose in and finger-wag some poor sod who may have just lost a relative. Are they really saying here that the answer to someone having a cigarette to soothe their grief is to run over and slap them with a penalty charge notice? Fuck me, what hideous mind came up with that plan?

The slug-like justification above is purely because "walking past a cloud of smoke" is one of the most-used reasons for rancid people on newspaper comments sections - who self-select by gravitating towards articles which get their teeth gnashing - to justify their personal wish for the world to revolve around them. We all know their problem is not actually having to breathe smoke in doorways anyway, it's the existence of people doing something they don’t like. There is no evidence whatsoever that these people are suffering harm. Banning smoking in car parks on this basis makes about as much sense as passing a law to fine people who stop in shop doorways ... which is my personal bugbear.

So it seems that NHS policy is now going to turn its guns against people in stressful situations, despite the real harm and distress it might cause, in order to satisfy some of the most intolerant and hideous people in society.

And it's worse because there is a very simple answer to all this if only the NHS and health professionals could drop their bullying and actually be interested in improving lives. Want to banish people smoking by hospital entrances? Simple, build a smoking shelter away from the entrance, it's not rocket science.

It doesn't even need to cost anything. The government claims it is fully in favour of e-cigarettes as a way to quit smoking, so festoon it with ads for vaping products and get e-cig manufacturers and retailers to pay for it to be built and its upkeep, they would be glad to do so. Put adverts for Samaritans in there too and they could be offering a service to the grieving at the same time. You'd expect highly-paid professionals who work in an industry which is supposedly compassionate to come up with ideas like this, wouldn't you?

But, no, NHS offices are now filled with ideological bullies who would rather slap fines on people at their most vulnerable, pander to vile prodnoses, and ignore innovation which could actually help people switch to safer products which are backed by their own Tobacco Control Plan!

So, we are now in a situation where institutions like Grimsby hospital - which unveiled a sensible and forward-looking policy in October this year - will be forced to tear their newly-installed shelter down in favour of adherence to deliberate stigmatisation based on nothing but knuckle-dragging intolerance. So stupid.

Hospital bosses unveil plan to help patients and visitors give up cigarettes - a smoking shelter near the entrance 

“Peter Reading, Chief Executive at the Trust, said: “We have thought about this long and hard. [...] We need to ... help everyone to get the support they need to help them quit. We’ll be putting information about this support into the shelter, which is supported by the local public health team in North East Lincolnshire, and giving the users details of who they can contact to get help.”

Not that there is any adherence to government advice with this new NHS policy either, because they're not ruling out fining vapers too at some point in the future (emphasis mine).

Supplementary documents say the rule would “not apply at this stage to e-cigarettes” Health Service Journal reported. 

The health service and the NGOs, admin staff and assorted hangers-on appear to have completely forgotten what their role in society is supposed to be. They are paid by our taxes to provide a service which fits in with how people choose to live their lives, not to dictate their personal prejudices on us and impoverish or criminalise people who pay their wages for no reason except their own bigotry. They are the cart, not the fucking horse.

I speak from experience having just over a week ago been placed into the nicest room in the hospital - the relatives room where they sit you down, offer you tea and coffee till you're overflowing, and tell you your loved one is dead. I don't smoke anymore but you just know if someone sparked up there the most pressing problem - for the NHS - would be that you lit a fag rather than that your fucking Dad just died suddenly.

Daft policies like this prove that thinking amongst health professionals about providing a service which works for everyone is an alien concept to the higher echelons of the NHS; that they believe their obsessive zealotry is more important than the people who are unfortunate enough to have to visit a hospital; and that decency and humanity have left their premises long before the smokers they wish to eject have done so. They would rather drive bereaved and distressed smokers onto the street at their hour of heartbreak - not even conceding the car park or their own private car for crying out loud - than provide somewhere humane for them to take it all in.

The people who work in NHS hospitals are caring and compassionate, the people who lead them are the opposite; ignorant, overpaid, heartless and - on the basis of this crap - unimaginative, inhumane and incompetent. 

The Incomparable Deceit Of The WHO

Today saw a lot of media coverage over a new report from the World Health Organisation claiming:

Number of males using tobacco globally on the decline, showing that government-led control efforts work to save lives, protect health, beat tobacco

It further boasts that ...

[P]ositively, the new report shows that the number of male tobacco users has stopped growing and is projected to decline by more than 1 million fewer male users come 2020 (or 1.091 billion) compared to 2018 levels, and 5 million less by 2025 (1.087 billion).

Wow! A million globally, they say? That is a lot, isn't it? The Director General of the WHO - who once recruited Robert Mugabe as a goodwill ambassador before worldwide disgust forced him to backtrack - is ecstatic ...

“Declines in tobacco use amongst males mark a turning point in the fight against tobacco,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “For many years now we had witnessed a steady rise in the number of males using deadly tobacco products. But now, for the first time, we are seeing a decline in male use, driven by governments being tougher on the tobacco industry."

Is that so, DG? Really? That million reduction is entirely due to the policies dreamt up by the massed ranks of tobacco control? Well, I think that is debatable. A clue is there if you scroll to the bottom of the page (emphasis mine, cos they'd rather you don't notice it).

The WHO report covers use of cigarettes, pipes, cigars, waterpipes, smokeless tobacco products (like bidis, cheroots and kretek) and heated tobacco products. Electronic cigarettes are not covered in the report.

Yep, the WHO - for this report only - do not consider e-cigs as being tobacco use.

Now, in the UK alone we have approximately 1.9 million ex-smokers who now exclusively vape, and the law of averages suggests at least 50% of those are male. Globally, we know from the BBC that there are around 41 million vapers worldwide. Kinda knocks the WHO's pathetic 1 million into a cocked hat, doesn't it? Add those 20 million odd males who vape instead of smoke to the WHO's consumption figures and we're looking at the same old tired and failed tobacco control policies as always.

In The Hague next year, the WHO will insist at their biennial shit-fest - COP9 - that there is no difference between vaping and smoking, they will also insist that e-cigs are a tobacco product, that they do not help people quit and demand that governments across the world either prohibit vaping entirely or treat the products exactly the same as cigarettes, including slapping taxes on them, eradicating flavours and banning their use just about everywhere. There are no grants for these trouser-stuffing quangocrats from Mr Bloggs handing his own cash to a vape shop to buy a Vype or an Eleaf.

Yet, for the sake of a headline, they will admit that vaping isn't smoking just long enough to claim credit for a revolution which was absolutely none of their doing.

This report from the WHO is weapons grade nonsense. Plain packaging, for example - the WHO's big ticket item of recent years - has had no effect anywhere it has been tried, in fact all evidence points to it increasing the black market and leading to more people smoking. Wherever vaping is treated favourably, by contrast, has resulted in record declines in smoking prevalence never seen in hundreds of years. It is absolutely nothing to do with Tedros and his blinkered, Luddite, stick-in-the-mud troughers and their goalpost-shifting, cherry-picked junk statistics.

The deceit of these people is quite astonishing. If they were so confident that their policies are so fucking marvellous, they would include e-cigarettes and show that despite the massive uptake of vaping their interventions were still robust, but they can't. So instead they exclude vaping and try instead to claim credit for what they had absolutely nothing to do with, and in fact are straining every sinew to exterminate on behalf of their generous conflicted funders.

Christ, if Carlsberg did lying, even they couldn't do better than this. It's never been about health, and it's never been about truth. 

Reality Bites In Snobland

Oh frabjous day!

Long time readers may remember when the sugar tax was installed by a timorous, erm, 'Conservative' government quaking in their boots under pressure from a gullible TV chef. I called it "a triumph for repulsive anti-social snobbery".

The sugar tax is born out of the same vile and scum-infested middle class base as the smoking ban. The only difference being that back then it was smokers, now it is the overweight. The precedent was set a decade ago, a precedent which gave a green light for the most hideous in society to point fingers, criticise the choices of others, publicly vomit insults, and demand government force be brought to bear on people who they feel offended at seeing.

Since then we have seen the laughable spectacle of Jamie Oliver's menu offerings being found to be more unhealthy than Burger King and Pizza Hut and Public Health England have come out with draconian measures of what is deemed to be unhealthy.

This has come as a bit of a shock to some of the food snobs amongst us. Farmdrop is a company which has advertised "fresher, fairer" food on the London tube for a few months now. I've seen their adverts and I personally wouldn't buy from them because I just know it will be expensive but I have no problem with their business angle at all, I wish them the very best of luck. I'm sure most of their customers wouldn't think the same about ads for Burger King or KFC, but then that's the difference, isn't it?

Well Farmdrop just got a dose of reality. L. O. L.

To combat childhood obesity, Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan has enforced a ban on junk food advertising across London’s public transport network, which we fully support. But is it really a ban on junk food as we know it?

For a company which is in the food business, to not see this coming is a fatal error. And, sorry guys, if you fully support this you just lost any sympathy from me.

Preventing brands from aggressively advertising junk food to children on the transport network is a step in the right direction and we fully support it. The link between heavily processed junk foods and obesity is well established (it's not - DP) and recent studies suggest that diet-related diseases like diabetes are rising among children, which is hugely concerning. The majority of Londoners support the decision as well, including respected figures in the food industry like Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

I could go into the concept of polls which ask airy questions without going into detail but I don't think these guys would get it, but they should because what if the poll said "would you be in favour of banning advertising of 'junk food' which includes farm-produced butter, eggs and bacon?" because that's the PHE definition. I reckon they would get a different result and wouldn't be so supportive of the results.

Naturally, we were pretty shocked that a picture of some fresh groceries with a healthy mixture of fruits and vegetables, dairy, eggs and cupboard staples would flout TfL’s new junk food rules. But it turns out that TfL score foods individually according to a nutrient profiling model created by the Government. It’s a pretty crude measure and means that foods you would still think of as junk, like fizzy drinks with artificial sweeteners or low-fat fried foods, could in some scenarios comply with the new regulations.

At this point I imagine the Farmdrop guys be like ...

Well yes because ...

We fully support the Mayor of London’s decision to prohibit junk food advertising on the transport network but we’re concerned about how it’s being applied. We hope that TfL sees some sense and starts to apply the ban with a little better judgement. 

Hey, it's not TfL's judgement of what is HFSS food, it is towards PHE that you should be directing your complaint. Reason being that if snobs call for bans on products they find icky because chavs like them (come on, own up, that's what it is about really) then the constituents of those foods need to be analysed and a policy formulated based on the ingredients. Just a feel-good about who makes it won't wash once you get the big state involved.

It is quite hilarious to see a company piggy-backing on hipster snobbery being hoist by a petard entirely fashioned by its snooty customers. The replies on Twitter to Farmdrop's astonished tweet were testament to it.

Here's the rub though. The companies that Farmdrop fully support having their ads banned - they touch upon McDonald's in their article - will, at some point, get round the rules by reformulating their products. Farmdrop, however - if it is true to its unique business selling point - will not be able to reformulate natural butter, eggs and farm-produced bacon. Their ads will still be banned unless PHE changes the rules.

And the only way that they can do that is by admitting that it's all snobbery after all and that the restrictions will only apply to large fast food chains and not to Jamie Oliver's sugar-laden hypocrisy or Farmdrop's perfectly natural, but sadly high in fat sugar and salt, produce.

Then we will see some pretty momentous court cases.

There is one thing that might help Farmdrop though. They could stop pandering to snobbery and join us in attacking ridiculously arbitrary rules and object to any restrictions on what we are allowed to see on advertising billboards. Now they have worked out that it really isn't about health, would they be prepared to join we who are on the side of the angels? I doubt it.

Once they and the people they sell to learn to be accommodating of the choices of others maybe we might get somewhere as a society. Until then, chalk one up for those of us who have been warning them for a long time about this and revel in the discomfort. 

Laughable Bullshit Tsunami Incoming From The Telegraph?

A Telegraph 'expert', pictured yesterday

Like Clive Bates who has blogged about this today in an article entitled "Anti-vaping activists pitch unscientific fringe positions to a national newspaper", I also saw an email detailing how the Telegraph is planning on publishing a massive load of bullshit about vaping tomorrow (Feb 29th apparently) in one of "a series of articles".

"We have spoken to the experts listed below and sought their views on the following topics: the medical concerns surrounding e-cigarettes despite them being promoted as a reduced risk alternative to traditional cigarettes; the marketing of e-cigarettes; the risk to young people of becoming addicted to nicotine via the use of e-cigarettes:"

The first thing that sprung to mind when I read this was what could have prompted it? Were Telegraph writers just sitting around one day wondering what to fill the pages of their newspaper up with when one of them said "I know! Let's do a deep investigation into e-cigs!" to which another may have said "Great idea! Let's get on Google!".

If so, one wonders what the search term must have been to come up with this set of 'experts', which is basically a who's who of wacky ideological fuckwit outliers who are out there where the buses don't run when it comes to the thinking around vaping in this country and beyond.

Professor Simon Capeman, Liverpool University  (Professor Public Health and Policy) 

Professor Anna Gilmore, Bath University (Professor of Public Health and Director of Tobacco Control Research Group) 

Professor Mike Daube, Professor of Health Policy, Curtin University, Perth, Australia and Director of the Public Health Advocacy Institute and the McCusker Centre for Action on Alcohol and Youth 

Professor Stanton Glantz, Director Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, California University 

Professor Martin McKee, Professor of European Public Heath, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and former President of the Faculty of Public Health 

Dr Gabriel Scally, President of Epidemiology and Public Health, Royal; Society of Medicine 

Professor John Ashton, former president of public health at the Royal Colleges of Physicians and former president of UK Public Health 

John Dicey, Global CEO Allen Carr’s EasyWay 

Robin Ireland, former chief executive of the Health Equalities Group

Shall we go through them one by one? 

Professor Simon Capeman, Liverpool University  (Professor Public Health and Policy)

Does anyone remember Sarah Knapton? Well, she is/was a science editor (pfft) at the Telegraph who once wrote an astonishingly stupid article entitled "E-cigarettes are no safer than smoking tobacco, scientists warn" which was roundly condemned as being utter garbage. Her article was so very bad that she is now immortalised in Hansard as a junk scientist by Lord Callanan.

Much of the problem stems from media reporting of junk science. The worst example was a headline in the Telegraph in December, which screamed: “E-cigarettes are no safer than smoking tobacco”. It was a nonsense report based on, as I said, junk science.

The reason I mention her is that she had a roladex or something where she was hooked up with just about every junk science peddler in the safer nicotine debate. It would be a very slim roladex since there aren't too many of them these days. She is not the one who sent the email but it would appear that someone has been raiding her list of conspiracy theorist ne'er-do-wells and looks to have got confused between Simon Capewell and Simon Chapman.

So let's assume this one is Simon "Capslock"Capewell due to the location. The guy who tweets like a kid with ADHD, always in capitals and never a care for calm evidence-assessment. A far left business-hating prohibitionist who wants just about everything banned from fizzy drinks, through pizza and of course harm reduction products, he is part of a north west enclave of denialists who are ignoring anything sent to them by central organisations and even government itself despite deriving their funding from that source.

Professor Anna Gilmore, Bath University (Professor of Public Health and Director of Tobacco Control Research Group) 

Anna "anything for a grant" Gilmore has carved out a career in smearing industry of any stripe for cash. Recently awarded $20m by Bloomberg to make her smears global. Heavily incentivised to find fault with everything industry does because, erm, that's how she gets paid.

Professor Mike Daube, Professor of Health Policy, Curtin University, Perth, Australia and Director of the Public Health Advocacy Institute and the McCusker Centre for Action on Alcohol and Youth 

A geriatric former British tobacco controller now living in Perth, Australia. He was condemned by the PM of Australia in 2014 for leading calls to ban a performance of the opera, Carmen, because it is set in a cigarette factory. He was caught lying about that episode and is on record stating that e-cigs are a tobacco control conspiracy. Australia bans e-cigs for little reason whatsoever and is desperately fighting against a wavering Australian government which looks like it may join neighbours New Zealand in regulating vaping, much to his embarrassment. No conflict of interest there then.

Professor Stanton Glantz, Director Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, California University 

Where do we start? The world's biggest pharma-funded anti-vaping liar who said in December that vapers should go back to smoking. Currently embroiled in a bit of a kerfuffle after being accused of sexual harassment and stealing accreditation from female students in his team. His university settled out of court for $150k to avoid too many #MeToo negative headlines. His high-profile 'feminist' colleagues are silent about his antics but he is still being pursued by anti-misogynist groups who want to know why his university was rewarded with more grant money despite the scandal

Professor Martin McKee, Professor of European Public Heath, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and former President of the Faculty of Public Health

Porky Paddy who FOI responses showed had lied in the BMJ and to the Guardian over comments he clearly made.  For a professor of 'public health' to deliberately lie in his profession's most prominent journal should surely call into question any integrity he claims to possess, but despite having a huge conflict of interest he is deemed an objective 'expert' by the Telegraph apparently. Even Debs Arnott of ASH called him out as an outlier on national TV news for his extreme, biased and ideological views.

Dr Gabriel Scally, President of Epidemiology and Public Health, Royal; Society of Medicine 

Not sure where Scally fits in here, I haven't seen what he says about e-cigs since he blocked me on Twitter after he threw a hissy fit about having to obey the law and respond to FOI requests during the plain packs campaign. A committed left-wing former NHS lead from the south west, it will be interesting to see what his 'expert' testimony is considering I'd heard he was amenable to harm reduction but despises big businesses, especially those who sell products containing nicotine. In this kind of company, he could actually be a fig leaf of objective balance.

Professor John Ashton, former president of public health at the Royal Colleges of Physicians and former president of UK Public Health 

Notice it says "former"? Yeah, because he lost that job after an astonishing Saturday evening in 2014 where - fuelled by what substance we don't know but suspect must have been mood-altering - he launched a night-long attack on vapers on social media. You can read the extraordinary goings-on here, some of them extremely creepy. Like Glantz and McKee, what should have been career-ending behaviour was passed over by 'public health' and he was reinstated to the Faculty of Public Health with just a small demotion.

John Dicey, Global CEO Allen Carr’s EasyWay

A business which has been rocked to its core by the advent of e-cigs which are a huge threat to their global sales of quit smoking books. No conflict of interest there then.

Robin Ireland, former chief executive of the Health Equalities Group

Yet another from the last bastion of e-cig denialism in the north west acting like Japanese soldiers still fighting an imaginary war once everyone else has gone home. Part of the Healthy Stadia group which lied to football and rugby clubs to get bans on vaping outdoors at their venues, in direct contravention of guidance being given by Public Health England at the time. Hopelessly pharma-conflicted.

And this is the stellar cast that the Telegraph thinks is an objective panel to pronounce on the benefits or otherwise of vaping. That Google search must have been pretty specifically worded to come up with just about every crank and looneytune in the harm reduction debate, whilst not picking up Public Health England, the Royal College of Physicians, Cancer Research UK, the UK government, Stoptober, Royal Society of Public Health and countless other organisations who have all sifted the evidence and are welcoming towards e-cigs.

The star journos at the Telegraph 'science' department seem also to have missed the Cochrane review - the gold standard of research - which contradicts everything their carefully-selected fruit loops and extremist bullshitters have fed the gullible hacks at the Telegraph.

And another thing. You have to wonder why so many left-wing, vehemently Brexit-hating 'public health' freaks are so fond of a Brexit cheerleader such as the Telegraph. Could it be that - via the Sarah Knapton link - it is the only newspaper still remotely willing to publish their crap?

And it truly is bullshit. A tsunami of it. Bates has gone through each one of their ridiculous assertions in this blog article, I do recommend you read it, it will raise a smile or two I promise.

So now we just wait to see what execrable nonsense the Telegraph comes out with tomorrow. It could be a classic of its genre, a masterclass in fake news and the best bit? They are making it a series! Get the popcorn in, this could be great fun. Did I ever tell you it's not about health? 

A Short History Of Pharma-Bought Influence

If you have half an hour to spare, you could do worse than watch the two excellent films by YouTuber Grimm Green embedded below

Long-time readers here will remember the history of anti-smoking legislation and how it developed from an aspiration in the 1970s with the Godber Blueprint. Specifically:

The 3rd World Conference on Smoking and Health (“The Worldwide Campaign Against Smoking”) was held in New York from June 2 June 5, 1975. 

Sir George [Godber, raging anti-smoking UK CMO,] noted that the means by which smokers could be encouraged to quit, was to : “foster an atmosphere where it was perceived that active smokers would injure those around them, especially their family and any infants or young children who would be exposed involuntarily” to secondhand smoke. 

In other words, the perception of harm to others would have a far greater impact on convincing smokers to give up the habit than merely harping on the long term health risks to smokers themselves. It would also make it easier to convince the public that discrimination against smokers was justified, not just for their own good, but to protect the health of those around them.

This was a gift to pharmaceutical companies who were peddling their ineffective - but highly lucrative - nicotine patches and gums without too much success at the time. The long search for junk science to back this dream began after that conference and anti-smoking legislation has become exponentially more hysterical ever since, with pharma interests encouraging it every step of the way.

At every turn, the public is told that the evidence is leading the policy, but there is every reason to believe that the policies were set in stone many years ago and that these policies have been leading the evidence. It is clear from the documents that plans to deal with passive smoking, for example, were being drawn up long before there was any evidence of harm.

Scroll on to today and we see exactly the same misdirection and junk science being targeted at vaping products, and exactly the same big industry actors throwing billions at hungry 'public health' researchers to produce it.

In a well-referenced piece of investigation, Grimm Green takes you through the history of how Big Pharma bought the 'science' from those days and continues to do so today. Every time there is a threat, there they are, a massively-rich global industry paying huge sums to corrupt the public's understanding and buying off politicians to install legislation which favours their products.

Ask any MEP, for example, and they will tell you that pharma lobbyists swarmed the EU during formulation of the Tobacco Products Directive in 2012, yet anti-smoking orgs concentrated hard on complaining about those from the tobacco industry who were outnumbered about 20 to 1.

If you've ever wondered why the tobacco control industry seems completely unconcerned about conflicts of interest arising from pharmaceutical grants yet strangely will scream at any hint that a researcher has even had a cup of tea with someone working for a tobacco company, well it's because many of the most powerful players in the tobacco control industry are trousering huge sums from the former, as Green highlights. Hardly any surprise, then, that there was indecent haste by tobacco controllers in the early years of e-cigs to kill the insurgent technology off as swiftly as was possible, it was only a groundswell of activist vapers who headed it off. But the corporate struggle goes on to this day, with the US being the focal point for a rearguard action to try to demonise anything that threatens pharma sales as the burgeoning e-cig market is doing very well.

Don't believe me? Well, take a pew and watch both parts of this. A short history of how Big Pharma has paid for 'science', legislation and - ultimately - global public perception in the smoking and nicotine debate, none of which has anything to do with health, but lots to do with a manufactured market spat over nicotine driven by big stinking corporate profits.

Once again, as I have revelled in many times before, new nicotine products are revealing the corruption and cant that had previously gone unnoticed in the war against tobacco. A spotlight is increasingly being shone on the unrepentant cockroaches in the tobacco control scam like never before. Long may it continue.

With the direction of travel heading towards acceptance of safer nicotine alternatives for those who choose to quit, it's fair to question the true motivation of those last die-hard defenders of 'quit or die', don't you think?

H/T @Twigolet

So Predictable

Just the other day I said this about the pitiful state of tobacco controllers when it comes to safer products made by industry.

I don't know about you, but I always thought tobacco control was about stopping people smoking by whatever means. You'd think Arnott would be happy about smokers being encouraged to use something far safer, wouldn't you?

And, today on the BBC, here we go again.

One of the world's biggest tobacco firms, Philip Morris, has been accused of "staggering hypocrisy" over its new ad campaign that urges smokers to quit. 

The Marlboro maker said the move was "an important next step" in its aim to "ultimately stop selling cigarettes". 

But Cancer Research UK said the firm was just trying to promote its smoking alternatives, such as heated tobacco. 

"This is a staggering hypocrisy," it said, pointing out the firm still promotes smoking outside the UK.

Look, it's very simple. In much of the world, the ghastly tobacco control machine has been demonising e-cigs and other similar products so much that governments are banning them. The latest is the absurd decision by Hong Kong to prohibit sale, manufacture and advertising of anything to do with vaping while still allowing cigarettes to be available everywhere. They join cretinous policy-makers in Thailand, Brazil and other assorted lunatic nations like Australia.

Look at Australia, proudly standing shoulder to shoulder with these fine, upstanding countries which have banned #ecigs #COP8 https://t.co/qp7bYspyZs pic.twitter.com/RldgPCDZnD

— Dick Puddlecote (@Dick_Puddlecote) August 8, 2018

What the blithering fuck do these cretins think are going to be promoted if they do silly things like that? Well, a brain donor from CRUK seems to think he has a stunning argument on that.

"The best way Philip Morris could help people to stop smoking is to stop making cigarettes," George Butterworth, Cancer Research UK's tobacco policy manager said.

Jesus Christ! This is the thinking of a fucking 10 year old yet he is being paid handsomely to have it. George, there are things called businesses that are beholden to their shareholders, your puerile nonsense is quite absurd, as I have mentioned before.

Any CEO who cut their shareholders off at the knees with such a stupid destruction of their business would probably end up in jail for abandoning their fiduciary duty to their investors, many of which are pension funds which could see their value decimated overnight. Any tobacco controller who suggests this as a feasible course of action - and some actually have - is showing themselves up to be a monumental cretin.

Let me tell you something that I fully believe Butterworth knows very well. Philip Morris ceasing production of cigarettes would not lead to a single smoker quitting. Their carcass of a company would be picked over by hawkish competitors, their shareholders would be in uproar, pension funds would suffer and their brands would just be produced by someone else.

If he truly believes this is a good argument he is a moron. But I suspect he is not that dense and just says it because he instinctively wants to oppose anything industry does. It's a quite pathetic stance to take and one which ASH are happy to follow too.

Deborah Arnott, chief executive of Ash, said Philip Morris was still advertising its Marlboro brand wherever globally it was legal to do so. 

"The fact of the matter is that it can no longer do that in the UK, we're a dark market where all advertising, promotion and sponsorship is banned, and cigarettes are in plain packs. 

"So instead Philip Morris is promoting the company name which is inextricably linked with Marlboro," she said.

It advertises its brand in other countries, Debs, because it is legally entitled to do so and is arguably obliged to to satisfy its investors. You were in Geneva for COP8 and singularly failed to remove prohibition of safer products from the FCTC's guidance to less developed nations. If you want Philip Morris to stop selling cigarettes why not talk to your colleagues and get them to stop encouraging countries like India - for example - to ban alternatives?

As for Philip Morris advertising its company name, erm, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a smoker who knows who makes the cigarette they smoke. It's an utterly absurd argument.

The simple fact, yet again, is that tobacco controllers are raging about the fact that industry is doing their job far better than tobacco control can. And they are sensing how much of their funding is going to disappear.

It's never been about health with these people, and today proves it yet again. They are more interested in attacking industry than encouraging smokers to quit.

It wouldn't be so pathetic if it wasn't so bloody predictable.

Anyway, here's the campaign video that these 'anti-smokers' are objecting to. Not my cup of tea but oh how ridiculous and venal tobacco control make themselves by wanting it shut down.

How Dare You Reduce Harm!

Still bogged down in Puddlecoteville with real life, I'm afraid. I keep meaning to get round to write about recent trips including Geneva to see what the global cult of tobacco control was doing at COP8 at the start of the month, and I will do so soon.

In the meantime, you may have missed this article at the Telegraph in its 'premium' section, meaning you have to pay to access it.

Salesmen for one of the world's biggest tobacco firms have been caught offering potentially illegal incentives to smokers in bars to get them hooked on new "heat-not-burn" tobacco, it can be revealed.

In a breathless exposé, the excitable journo has highlighted the dastardly practice of the tobacco industry in trying to get smokers to take up something the UK's Committee on Toxicology (COT) assesses as 50 to 90 per cent less harmful than smoking. The bastards, eh?

Acting for Philip Morris, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes, salesmen push tobacco devices in bars using a range of questionable tactics to entice potential customers, a Telegraph investigation has established. 

Erm, the smokers are already tobacco industry customers because they are smokers. And if the journo wants to talk about getting smokers "hooked" on heat not burn, has it escaped her attention that there is something else smokers are currently consuming which she might class as being "hooked"?

Evil tobacco exec tries to sell a safer product to a smoker, for shame!

The reporting of harm reduction products in media is pretty shit, I have to say. You know what we need? An 'expert' to calm things down a bit. But instead we get the head of the UK's pre-eminent tobacco industry-hating tax sponging organisation instead.

Commenting on the findings, Deborah Arnott, chief executive of health charity Ash, urged the government to take action.  

She said:  “After the Telegraph’s previous article exposing illegal advertising of IQOS by Philip Morris, the company promised the Government this would stop. Yet over a month later IQOS ads are still all plastered all over vape shops and tobacconists. Not only that, but now we find out Philip Morris is also plying smokers with free drinks in a desperate attempt to promote IQOS and sign up new customers.”

I don't know about you, but I always thought tobacco control was about stopping people smoking by whatever means. You'd think Arnott would be happy about smokers being encouraged to use something far safer, wouldn't you?

Especially if it won't cost the taxpayer a penny instead of government funding groups like ASH to ... oh hold on!

So ASH are calling for a ban on businesses talking to smokers and trying to get them to switch from smoking to products which are far safer. This is actually tobacco control policy in the UK right now. Staggering.

Of course, this just illustrates yet again that anti-tobacco cultists have completely abandoned their stated purpose of acting on "smoking and health" in favour of simply attacking industry instead. I'm sure in the past there were well-meaning people in tobacco control who cared about smokers' health, but once it became a multi-billion pound global industry, grants come easier if you have a dragon to slay.

It's not been about health with tobacco control for a couple of decades now. 

Science And Tech Committee Lifts Up A Stone To See What Crawls Out

I'm sure you've already seen it, but today the government's influential Science and Technology Committee released a report which will have capslock cretins, lardarse Irish academics, follicly-challenged no-mark physiotherapists and crusty Sydney pensioners spluttering their purified water all over their disinfected keyboards.

In the report - carried by, erm, just about every media outlet and heavily featured on the BBC - the committee makes a number of recommendations about reduced risk nicotine products which I summarise below:

- A simpler and cheaper system for manufacturers to get e-cigs approved for medicinal use
- Increasing information about e-cigs so that they can be used in far more public places
- More government-backed research into e-cigs and heat not burn products to be added to PHE's current annual review of e-cig evidence
- A review of the stupid limits on nicotine strength and tank sizes thanks to the inept EU's TPD
- To look at allowing e-cig adverts to make health claims (which, of course, are 100% true)
- A shift to a "risk-proportionate regulatory environment", meaning a joined-up government policy to co-ordinate approaches to regulations, advertising rules and tax regimes to accurately reflect relative risks of harm reduction products
- Vaping to be allowed by default in mental health institutions unless there is a damn good - evidence-based - reason not to
- And to look again at the absurd ban on snus

In the words of Committee Chair Sir Norman Lamb, "E-cigarettes are less harmful than conventional cigarettes, but current policy and regulations do not sufficiently reflect this and businesses, transport providers and public places should stop viewing conventional and e-cigarettes as one and the same. There is no public health rationale for doing so."

Of course, the reason many of those mentioned are confused is due to a longstanding and continuing campaign of misinformation by organisations - many state-funded - based on ideology and with little care about health. This cuts through all that and will send shivers down the spine of anti-vaping denialists up and down the country; their deliberate lies and fabrications have been nailed. The new age merchants of doubt - in the UK at least - have been rumbled.

They should, of course, take this as a chance to change their ways and move into the real world where safer nicotine delivery devices are doing their job for them but ... oh hold on, perhaps that's the problem!

What has also become clear today is how brutally e-cigs have, yet again, shown up the hypocrisy, cant, dishonesty and prejudice surrounding smoking ... or should I say, anti-smoking.

Norman Lamb has released a report saying that policies should be based on the evidence about e-cigs, that the public should be better informed, and that this is vital for the good of the nation's health. The response from the ever-decreasing band of anti-vape denialists and much of the public has been - effectively - "fuck health, I don't like them".

As Carl Phillips has written before on this subject, 'public health' campaigners who desperately cherry-pick evidence and sling ad homs around to avoid having to admit the obvious benefits of harm reduction are nothing but dangerous extremists.

About ten years ago, I coined the term “anti-tobacco extremists” to refer to those who take the most extreme view of tobacco use. This was an attempt to push back against anti-THR activists being inaccurately referred to as public health, given that they actively seek to harm the public’s health. I have since given up on that, and recognize that “public health” is an unsalvageable rubric, which should just be relegated to being a pejorative. But the extremist concept remains useful. The test for anti-tobacco extremism is the answer to the following question: If you could magically change the world so that either (a) there was no use of tobacco products or (b) people could continue to enjoy using tobacco but there was a cheap magic pill that they could take to eliminate any excess disease risk it caused, which would you choose? Anyone who would choose (a) over (b) takes anti-tobacco to its logical extreme, making clear that they object to the behavior, not its effects.

The same goes for the public who are squealing about the very thought of vaping being allowed anywhere. The very same miseries will have furrowed their brow and insisted that the smoking ban was to save the lives of those poor, put-upon bar workers. They absolutely, most definitely, honestly didn't want to interfere in your choices, but, you know, it's about health. Innit.

But now a report is produced stating - having looked at the evidence and taken testimony from a range of health bodies such as PHE, MHRA, NICE, ASH, and even the Department of Health - that there is no harm to bystanders from vapour, the mask slips.

"I don't give a shit", they shriek, "I don't want it in my pub!". Evidence be damned. The nation's health begone. Choice for all, get out of here. But then, it was never about health anyway.

Of course, the committee's report said that there needed to be better education of the public about these devices, so all the vitriolic bitching and whining proves - apart from that there are a hell of a lot of self-absorbed anti-social arseholes in the UK - is that what the report says is absolutely true. The public are ignorant on the subject and they do need to be better informed of the evidence, and maybe the government have to step in and do something about it. Ignorance doesn't cure itself, after all.

Anyway, you can read the report here, unlike the self-professed bar room experts screeching on social media about how e-cigs "STINK" (remind you of anything in the past?) will do. It's a great piece of commonsense which is causing a lot of butthurt anger amongst anti-vaping 'public health' extremists and the vilest anti-smoking prodnoses in the population at large.

The FDA Blatantly Hands E-Cig Market To Big Pharma

Around about this time last year, the FDA's Scott Gottlieb made a public statement about e-cigs that many vapers thought was a new dawn in how reduced risk products would be treated in the US.

You may remember that I thought it was just a cleverly-worded hill of beans.

The FDA's announcement relents on some e-cig rules but only on the proviso that it might make vaping more attractive to smokers who will be deprived, by force, of nicotine from their combustible cigarettes. That is nothing more than vile coercion and should have no place in a land that claims to be free.  

I cannot possibly cheer the FDA's overall plan and I don't think there is anything particularly concrete to be happy about yet anyway. Smokers are being thrown under a bus but apart from that everything else is up in the air and subject to change.

Despite many vapers rejoicing at this "huge" announcement, and describing it as "momentous",  a "reprieve", with some even saying they had "every confidence" in Gottlieb, it stunk to high heaven in my book. The emphasis seemed to be more on pointlessly reducing nicotine in regular cigarettes rather than promoting e-cigs.

Nothing I've seen since has made me think that the FDA has any intention of taking harm reduction seriously as a policy to encourage smokers to quit. In fact, the evidence is all pointing in the opposite direction.

The FDA is incredibly slow in regulating #ecigs but lightning quick on advocating low nic cigarettes based on poor evidence. Hate to say I predicted this carve-up, but I did https://t.co/q1Nd0cfWKC

— Dick Puddlecote (@Dick_Puddlecote) July 10, 2018

However, the whole thing has since taken an even more sinister tone with the release of another Gottlieb FDA press announcement on Friday.

Statement from FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D., on new steps the agency is taking to support the development of novel nicotine replacement drug therapies to help smokers quit cigarettes

"Novel nicotine replacement drug therapies"? Is he talking about e-cigs here? Well, yes he is.

We’re working on multiple fronts to recognize the role that more novel forms of nicotine delivery could play in achieving our public health goals, as part of an appropriately regulated marketplace. This not only includes encouraging innovation of potentially less harmful tobacco products for those adults who still seek to use nicotine (such as e-cigarettes), but also taking a closer look at our overall approach to the development and regulation of NRT products that are regulated as drugs, and designed to safely reduce withdrawal symptoms, including nicotine craving, associated with quitting smoking. 

The development of novel NRT products, regulated as new drugs, is a critical part of our overall strategy on nicotine.

I added the emphasis because it's quite clear he is not talking about a free market in e-cigs sold from vape shops.

Instead, he has issued some guidance on how to get e-cigs approved by the FDA (emphasis again mine).

This draft guidance, when finalized, is aimed at providing sponsors with recommendations on the nonclinical information appropriate to support development and approval of orally inhaled nicotine-containing drug products. It recognizes that a great deal of toxicity information is available for nicotine. But such information may not be available for other compounds contained in e-liquids and delivered by these products. These include the flavorings and heat-generated chemicals. These products can be used for six months or more over the course of a lifetime. So, it’s important to understand the risks to humans from these exposures, including developmental and reproductive toxicity and carcinogenicity.

Drug products? Six months over a lifetime? I've been using my non-drug e-cigs for about 8 years.

But then when you look at the guidance, it is quite clearly intended for a different subset of businesses than those which currently provide e-cigs for the US market.

It is guidance for a therapeutic product and nothing more. Such a product doesn't currently exist and any company which decided to have a go at it would have to have millions of dollars to spare. It is designed in a way that pharmaceutical companies would understand because it is a route to a pharmaceutical, or 'medicinal', e-cig. This would likely take the form of some ridiculously safe and bland cigalike which is so far removed from the products which are finding favour with smokers and driving the lowest smoking prevalence figures in US history, that it will be practically useless.

OK, it's fair to say that tobacco companies have the resources to throw huge amounts of money at getting a product of this type approved, but it will still be a therapeutic, medicalised e-cig designed for complete nicotine cessation, so it barely matters who manufactures it.

Gottlieb’s approach is cigarettes stripped of nicotine coupled with medicalisation of e-cigs. Because almost all of the products currently being sold in America by independents will disappear in 2022 thanks to the imposition of a predicate date.

It's important to note that Gottlieb has not issued guidance to current e-cig manufacturers on how to produce an independent product which could be sold on the open market as a consumer product. He has hinted that there may be some on the horizon but, for now, he has bypassed that and gone straight to issuing guidance - which heavily leans towards the pharma industry - on what is acceptable for a therapeutic product. At the same time as still insisting on rules which will effectively remove competition from anything recreational that is currently on sale.

It is, to all intents and purposes, a co-ordinated effort to make e-cigs a medical product and one which should only be used as a means to quit nicotine entirely. It is basically handing the entire market to the pharmaceutical industry. In other words - and especially considering the parallel regulations to take the good nicotine out of cigarettes and leave the harmful elements in - 'quit or die' on steroids.

Many were of the opinion when Gottlieb took over the job that he'd just end up being a pharma shill. He seems to be living up to those predictions quite spectacularly so far.

It is so blatant that it's astonishing. One can only assume that this is a result of the American disease of corporate lobbying, with pharma front and centre. I don't know about you but I don't think it's wrong to call this organised crime.

So, no, Gottlieb's announcement in July last year wasn't a new dawn for e-cig use. It was the start of a process which will see a brilliant innovation crushed and handed to corporate interests to destroy. It also proves, once again, that none of this crusade against smoking has ever been anything to do with health. They really couldn't care less.

We're on the side of the angels, always remember that. 

Scotland Plans To Gold-Plate The TPD And Further Restrict E-Cig Advertising

Yesterday I wrote about the tobacco control industry's habit of cherry-picking evidence and - more recently - disbelieving real life evidence because it doesn't agree with their wild, junk science-led fantasies of how the world works.

Today sees a new low, though, as the Scottish Government released its Tobacco Control Plan. Snowdon has highlighted some of the blinkingly barmy aspects of it, so do go read his piece.

He said that he had only skimmed it and that there is bound to be more crazy in there, and he's correct. There is. For example, how much does this send your hypocrisy detector buzzing?

In the ministerial foreword, Minister for Public Health and Sport Aileen Campbell boasts about NHS services and how "there are new, more effective medications and our services are now more e-cigarette friendly", while further down the document it states:

On the basis of current evidence vaping e-cigarettes is definitely less harmful than smoking cigarettes. So, e-cigarette use as a means to quit should be seen by health professionals as a tool which some smokers will want to use. 

It also says about "smokers in mental health settings":

Raising awareness of the need to take a new approach in these settings and particularly about the possibilities which e-cigarettes being made available in appropriate non-NHS prescribed ways could have a big impact on the physical health of these patients.

So what are they going to do about these products which they have obviously recognised as being something which smokers are choosing to use and which have led to smoking prevalence tumbling?

Well, they're going to ensure that almost no-one knows about them, of course.

Providing protection through regulations and restrictions 

We will consult on the detail of restricting domestic advertising and promotion of e-cigarettes in law.

The key word there is 'domestic' because the EU's article 20 of the TPD specifically banned cross border advertising, therefore broadcast and online media. Domestic advertising such as posters, leaflets, direct mail, cinema and ads on buses are not covered by EU law.

So, the Scottish government is consulting with a view to gold-plate the EU regulations by placing further restrictions on 'domestic' advertising; that very e-cigarette advertising which is currently not burdened by the ignorant, lobbyist-led stupidity of Brussels.

With the UK's advertising regulator recently having given evidence to the UK government's Science and Technology Committee that they are looking at allowing e-cig vendors to make truthful claims about the safer nature of vaping - as in, relaxing the regulations - the Scottish government is planning to go the other way and make sure as few people know about vaping as possible.

The Calvinist puritanism being displayed in Scotland right now is jaw-dropping, but this takes the biscuit. We have a tobacco control plan for England committing to "maximise the availability of safer alternatives to smoking", at the same time that Scotland has decided it only wants safer alternatives available via state-run channels. If they can't control it, they'd prefer you don't even try.

There are also sinister hints that they intend to go even further down the rabbit hole of anti-vaping moral panic.

Over the course of this action plan it is likely that the markets for e-cigarettes and novel heated tobacco products will develop further. This could mean that the current focus of tobacco control enforcement changes over time to take account of these newer markets. For example if there were changes to the law on restricting the sales of non-nicotine containing e-liquid for e-cigarettes this would have implications for enforcement.

If markets for e-cigs and heat not burn increase, that is a good thing! But not for Scotland, it seems. There is also a hint there that there might be more regulations on the horizon for nicotine free e-liquid, again not covered by the EU TPD.

Have I got your attention yet, Scottish vape reviewers? Yep, that could be the end of short fills.

There may also need to be programmed initiatives on ensuring e-liquids are authorised products ...

Well, considering the TPD created a new category for e-cigs so they are already kinda "authorised", could they mean yet another gold plate layer on top of EU regulations? Or maybe they just mean the whole hog and enforced medicinal licensing. We shall have to see.

... and perhaps even on whether these age-restricted products are being marketed in a way which primarily appeals to young people. 

They've really swallowed the anti-vaping Kool Aid in bucket loads, haven't they?

And as for this ...

During the summer of 2018 we will work with health boards and integration boards to try to reach a consensus on whether vaping should or should not be allowed on hospital grounds through a consistent, national approach.

It's not illegal, it's not dangerous, the same document talks about smokers using e-cigs to quit. Where is the debate?

I reckon the best take I can offer to you is that if you are Scottish and a vaper, remember that ASH Scotland - who will have advised the government in detail on production of this plan - is not your friend. Neither, I would suggest, is the SNP. Worth remembering next time some politician asks for your vote.

Like Snowdon, I have only skimmed the document and - like him - I think "these people are off their heads". I'll leave it there for now, though, but I'm sure I'll be coming back to this utter insanity, maybe tomorrow. Watch this space.