Now, there may be many who think that there isn't a lot of point; that no-one in the EU is noticing. I can tell you that they certainly are.
A fellow jewel robber within the Berlaymont shared the EU parliament's social media briefing with me yesterday. It is a report sent out by parliament detailing the most significant mentions of the European Parliament on Twitter for each day. Here is their report for Monday.
· “The European Union ignores science and common sense by making proposals that will damage the health of smokers and vapers” Ecigarette Research (230+ mentions) http://bit.ly/1aT4RIr
· “They just don’t get it – Commission proposal for the regulation of e-cigarettes” Counterfactual (210+ mentions) http://bit.ly/1cLmSHV
· “Bayer is suing Europe for saving the bees [petition]” SumofUs.org (100+ mentions today) http://goo.gl/ZVSkLY
· “Prostitution: We need to see paying for sex as violence rather than vice” Independent (75+ mentions) http://ind.pn/1ekqOki
Top hashtags: #ep2014uk (180+ mentions) #eu (100+ mentions) #ep2014 (80+ mentions) #ecigs (75+ mentions)A follow up e-mail received this afternoon simply said: "Same again today".
They're noticing, right enough. They might not like what they are seeing, but they are very aware of what is being talked about by real people.
This has always been the strength of the vaping community. Despite public health tax spongers continually pretending that objectors are merely front groups for whatever industry they are trying to destroy at any particular time, vapers are real people and can't be ignored. Politicians are timid souls, always easily scared at the thought of bad press from bully-boy prohibitionists, but they're far more terrified of real people holding them and their stupid pronouncements to account.
Electorate outrage - as highlighted at The Free Society today regarding what David Cameron described as the not "very sensible approach" in other areas of the Tobacco Control Directive (TPD) - is still a powerful weapon.
It's always been clear that the TPD was a deeply corrupt document, drafted by incompetent Maltese politicians and presented to a supranational body riddled with cronyism and infested by lobbyists whose motivation is anything but health. This leaked Lithuanian lunacy is just the latest shameful episode in its ill-begotten timeline.
On the plus side, it has exposed this arrogant and insular cabal for the revolting creatures that they have always been. I do hope that those who read here and harbour a deep dislike for the bully state will find a little time to shine a light on them by doing as David Dorn suggests above.
Whichever part of this ill-considered, pharma-designed, evidence-light, propaganda-heavy, illiberal and incoherent TPD nonsense you object to, do get writing, sharing, retweeting and generally making a fuss to make EU politicians notice more than they already do.
Pile it up, people.
31 comments:
Hi Dick did you get my email on this, if not check your junk file.
I do have serious doubts about Big Pharma being behind this, we musn't forget that nicotine substitutes are only a very tiny part of their business and if all their patch/gum/whatever clients were to suddenly abandon them to turn to e-cigs instead it wouldn't even make a dent in their profits.
Basically I don't see why they would spend so much time and money trying to corner or ban a market that truly doesn't concern them much. Pharmaceutics make their profits off antibiotics, vaccins, aspirine, and all sorts of medical supplies, not nicotine substitutes (wich really don't sell that well anyway).
The tobacco companies have just invested billions in e-cigs so why would they now try and make them basically totally unappealing to the consummer? Unless their strategy is to send people back to cigarettes, wich just may be.
I personally believe these are the result of pure stupidity coming from extreme and highly conservative anti-smoking groups who feel that anyone and everything that even vaguely ressembles smoking should be exterminated.
It's a war unless we want to cave!
To be cynical. Smokers are sick more often so need a lot more medication. Bonus for Big Pharma.
Thanks, Dick, that's incredibly useful information. Will spread far and wide.
True, but being even more cynical we'd have to compare smokers to old people (smokers are unlikely to become old), and I think old people would win out as far as medical supplies go.
I have emailed every Irish MEP about this. I would like to know how they feel about their parliamentary decision being ignored. If this goes ahead, why not get rid of the European Parliament altogether and just put the European Commission in charge.
The Berlaymont is an office building in Brussels houses the headquarters of the European Commission, which is the executive of the European Union (EU). The Espace Léopold (French, commonly used in English) is the complex of parliament buildings in Brussels (Belgium) housing the European Parliament. It would be preferable to distinguish these two organizations...
I personally know a lot of old smokers (60+) though. Both my parents died before 65, both none smokers!
Of course nothing is that simple or cynical, and you may very well be right in suggesting that Big Pharma wants you to get cancer so it can make huge profits off the anti-cancer therapies.
I personally think it would be putting too much effort into something they can easily compensate for (a new 'bird/pig/whatever' flu obliging governments to purchase huge vaccin stocks just in case).
But of course it's only my opinion, and very possibly Big Pharma sees things differently.
Bottom line, those stupid European commission members are set on destroying e-cigs ans I really don't understand why.
Chris Price from ECCA has looked into the economics of NRTand come to the conclusion it does provide massive profits to the pharmaceutical industry. NRT products don't actually work, but ecigs do result in a big drop in smoking and a consequent fall in sales of hearts disease and cancer medication. Drugs concerned with heart disease almost certainly do form a large part of drug company profits. And always remember. Drug companies don't exist to help people. They exist to sell drugs.
I totally agree with you.
I life in the Netherlands. We have something that looks a lot like Obama care (not a good plan people, it's getting more expensive each year. To the point that for a huge part of our population the healthcare insurance is reaching a 25% of our net income, regardless how much we use healthcare or the quality of the healthcare).
Nicotine products aimed at "quit smoking" are covered by those insurances.
It doesn't matter for Big Pharma that they get payed for individual products (at least here in the Netherlands), they get payed for "packages" the insurances buy in. The more products those packages consist, the more money Big Pharma can negotiate.
More cancer promotion in CRUK's press release on ecigs
Alison Cox added: “It’s too long to wait until 2016 when e-cigarettes are due to fall under medical licensing regulation that might help to address these concerns. The government should move faster.”
Well, where would they be if people stopped getting it?
You can give feedback below the press release.
http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/news/archive/pressrelease/2013-11-27-concern-for-children-as-e-cigarette-market-flourishes?rss=true
Give them one almighty kicking.
It's really heartening to know that the thousands of words that many of us pour out every day in anger, frustration or grief serve some purpose. I have just read the CRUK spiel referred to by (I think) Jonathan Bagley but can see no comments or space to comment. The word is spreading really fast now to many outside the vaping community - I get constant enquiries re our progress
and they are as sickened by it all as we are. We have to redouble pressure now, and your blog will encourage many who feel that petitions and letters are just wasted effort - they most certainly are not!
Even though I use an e-cig myself on occasion, I'm somewhat disinclined to lend any succour to the vaping community, for the simple reason that they perpetuate and endorse many of the lies and myths that emanate from Tobacco Control. Why should I help them when they have done less than nothing to counter the SHS scam? That they are using (and implicitly agreeing with) smoking bans based on SHS to further their ends demonstrates a large degree of hypocrisy, And, I have to add, perfidy.
Also a large degree of stupidity! If they can only, now, see the motives behind all this, it hardly speaks volumes for their intellect and perception. Or, maybe, they just thought it was all a 'conspiracy theory'. Idiots! They deserve it.
Unfortunately, at this point, we find ourselves on the same side.
Barroso is a Marxist since his student days. As such he would have had KGB training. That is why the EU has turned in to the monster that it is. Here is what has been done to us, and how it has been done. This video shows exactly what the EU has done to us, using the methods of the KGB. The whole UK political system has been used to betray us all to the EU. Please watch and share. It is essential to know the enemy and how it operates, and gives a clear understanding of why the EU is so enamoured of Islam, something I was only groping towards. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4YtgA2jnu4
Nisakiman, only partially true.
Everything is in the eye of the beholder. In the view of the health zeelots (not mine) their lying and cheating is morally justified since it encourages people to a healtier lifestyle; with the e-cig however their lies undeniably prevent people from switching to a healtier lifestyle so this is no longer morally justifiable. Their biggest fear is smoking would be renormalised again... Our fight is to confront them with their own arguments and expose the huge contradictions in those, the e-cig poses now. If that exposes them as well as the charlatans they are in the eyes of many more, the better, and renormalisation of smoking could indeed become a possibility, but this is not our fight nor is their reputation our concern.
That's not my experience of vapers. I read the forums and articles and find the vast majority are sympathetic to smokers. They may well point out the differences between e-cigs and tobacco but how could they not? It's the central point of the EU debate.
It's certainly wrong to say they endorse smoking bans and agree with the SHS myth. For an example, here is an episode of Vapour Trails from last week where David Dorn rubbishes an article telling vapers how to be discreet. If you cue to 49:30 on, you'll hear him saying the ban was wrong; that smokers are where the fun is; that "publicans let the government walk all over them"; and that it should be changed in the future.
http://t.co/1au64dcVYp
"Rated 1 out of 5 based on 47 votes"
Ha! :)
Yeah, it's one of those. The Albert something-or-other, but it's kosher is what I is sayin'.
Was is this?
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/2745/eu_power_grab_fatally_undermines_democracy
Yes, it could well have a bearing.
Via here.
"A prominent recent critique of electronic smoking devices came in September from the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, a group which has been supporting efforts to lump e-cigarettes into anti-tobacco regulations."
RWJF are veterans of this. It's well known that they spent around $700m on promoting NRT over tobacco products in the 90s. This is just deja vue.
You're right that NRT is a relatively small part of pharma business, but when you're talking about an industry with such eye-wateringly huge incomes, even a small part of it is in the many hundreds of millions pa worldwide.
I've seen, and interacted with, pharma consultants at debates on plain packaging of tobacco in this country, and one tweeted last week he was in parliament with tobacco control industry lobbyists to help effect legislation. He wasn't doing it for the tea and biscuits. They're all over any competitor to their nicotine supply like a rash.
I put this in their feedback form.
"Stop lying, and start accepting E-cigarettes as a viable and considerably safer harm reduction policy. Of course, that will be completely against the wishes of your big Pharma paymasters who wish to continue to peddle their completely ineffectual patches, and insanity producing tablets.
Its nothing to do with health with you lot really is it."
We need a new America somewhere, where the natives don't have to be killed for our freedom from persecution and taxation!
Slightly unfair. I was a smoker from the late fifties and the world was different then. No computers, little television and newspapers with huge sales. There was no media that told us the truth so we accepted that we were doing harm and quietly did as we were told. So for 40+ years the public have believed the lies and the smokers have not said a word. Today we have control of the information and we can all share it so we know what the lies are. We have publicised the truth about SHS but it takes more than that to convince the whole world including most smokers that they have been conned. The big looser again is health. We know it's not SHS that is causing the cancer it is blamed for but no scientist who wants to keep his job will admit this no look for the real source. One of the fears of the establishment may well be that when vaping replaces smoking the cancer will not go away and they will have to admit they were wrong.
Don't get me wrong - in principle I am with the vapers all the way, because what the Tobacco Control Industry is doing to them is as wrong as the smoking bans based on the chimera of SHS.
What makes me take a step back from the situation is the fact that the majority of comments I read from the vaping community seek to justify their right to vape anywhere by pointing out (and I'm not talking about isolated incidents, I'm talking about the standard response) that vaping "does not emit 4000 toxic chemicals blah blah blah like tobacco does" or similar. And in making that argument, they are tacitly endorsing the unfounded claims of the 'dangers of SMS'. And in doing so, they are undermining our efforts to make people aware of the fact that the SHS scam is just that - a scam.
So when the vapers stop using the same arguments as Tobacco Control. and by extension stop demonising those who choose to enjoy tobacco, that's when my support will be forthcoming.
If that is your experience then I agree with you. My experience and Dick's above is that we do not see thoes statements being used. Hundreds I have seen have compared vaping to smoking in thoes terms but not SHS. In fact I have not seen any claims I can think of that state anything other than the Drexel report and that the vapor is safe for the users and bystanders. As I have said I do agree with you if your experience is different.
Never give up and never ever give in!
Many of us don't do that, or have learned more than we knew going in. The Tobacco Control is a much your enemy, non smokers, smokers and vapers HEALTHISM is the enemy to all. If anything help educate people so we can form a big enough army against Tobacco Control. Second Hand smoke has never been proven to cause disease! I know it.
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