Meet Mendacious Martina

OK, we all know tobacco controllers lie, it's just what they do. It is module one of the induction course before they learn other essential skills such as hurling ad hominems, publishing junk science, ignoring the public and blaming everything on Big Tobacco.

But I don't think I've ever seen or heard an article where the tobacco controller lies from start to finish before. Not till yesterday anyway.

E-cigarettes will no longer be sold to children and adolescents, according to a new draft law in Germany. And rightly so, says Martina Pötschke-Langer of the German Cancer Research Center.

Well, actually, Yale University recently concluded that bans on youth access to e-cigs increased smoking rates, so she's not off to a good start. But then, the tobacco control industry normally only take note of 'science' if it's the junk kind they produce themselves, so no surprise there.

If you've never heard of Pötschke-Langer, she is a tobacco controller of the most vile kind, whose hatred of e-cigs can only be because they look a bit like smoking. She is a spiteful bereaved East German tobacco control moon-howler of the first water who "fights for laws" so - it won't surprise you to know - has been working as adviser to the pharma-funded but unelected WHO since 1999. She claims not to need 'science' to ban e-cigs because "we do not need a new nicotine product available on the market", so was an obvious choice as "curator of the knowledge" by Linda McAvan when she was rigging the EU's Tobacco Products Directive to drive through policies to kill off vaping for good.

Monumental Liar, Mad Martina, via Flickr

Since then, the absurd woman has been busy trying - unsuccessfully - to attack e-cigs and those who sell them through various German courts. Defeats on demanding they be classed as medicines and on vendors using her quotes have followed, which is perhaps why she is so pissed off. How else can we explain some of her other ludicrously astonishing claims in yesterday's article?

That does not mean that they are steady smokers but the products have actually been sold to children.

Yes, very strong on the children line, Martina, tobacco control industry school taught you very well.

Of course, children may have gotten hold of e-cigs but it's highly debatable that they were all 'sold' them. Only an incredibly unscrupulous vendor would do such a thing and throughout Europe e-cig sellers have been voluntarily implementing bans on sales to under 18s. Insofar as there might be a problem with e-cigs being sold directly to children, it is a vanishingly small one. This, of course, doesn't fit the narrative anti-smoking lunatic Pötschke-Langer wishes to create, though.

They are mostly propylene glycol and glycerin, flavoring, and nicotine.

No dear, that is all of what is in them, nothing else.

Carcinogens have been detected in some of the aerosols in these products, i.e. substances that cause cancer.

You forgot to say "in quantities too small to cause any harm whatsoever", dear.

The product range is great and also very appealing to children. Some of these products are purchased mainly by children. 

The product range is appealing to everyone, and no, there are no categories which are "mainly" bought by children.

Are e-cigarettes mainly produced for children?

Yes, the marketing is definitely geared towards youngsters, especially because children like the flavors, like bubble gum.

Definitely?

I sometimes wonder what rattles around inside the heads of idiotic people like this. I expect they imagine the scene in an e-cig manufacturers office as follows:

Evil E-Cig Exec: We need to sell as many of these as possible, how do we go about it?
Henchman: Well, there are tens of millions of adult smokers in Europe and many more around the world we can reach via the internet. Tobacco control say that 70% of them are desperate to quit smoking so it is a huge and willing market to tap.
EEE: How easy would it be to sell to these adult smokers?
H: A doddle. They already spend massive sums of cash on cigarettes due to taxation, so they would actually be saving money buying our products instead. We would also be seen as the good guys for helping them quit tobacco. It's win/win all round.
EEE: Nah, fuck adults and all their cash, let's sell to kids instead. They have next to no disposable income, have no natural need for the product and are almost impossible to advertise to, that's much more likely to turn a profit. Plus I like scandalising the public, it's all I'm in the game for.
H: Yes, good point, why didn't I think of that before, Master? 

Said no e-cig company board members, ever.

Only someone who wished to bankrupt themselves would run a business along those lines, but for certain cretins in the tobacco control industry - whose own business model is to merely scrounge from taxpayers - this is apparently how businessmen think. It beggars belief that governments give cash to such superlative simpletons, doesn't it?

E-cigarettes were actually designed to replace tobacco cigarettes to help smokers gradually give up smoking. Why have children been targeted as consumers?

Producers have used unscrupulous strategies to build up a market made up of children and adolescents. That was intentional and we have studies on the subject.

The most credulous interviewer in history believes her shit but still mad Martina goes even further. "A market made up of children", and "intentional and we have studies"? No it isn't and no you don't, you big fat fucking liar.

Is second-hand smoke from e-cigarettes just as dangerous as tobacco cigarette smoke?

Emissions clearly worsen indoor air quality, especially if several people in one room are smoking e-cigarettes. There is a high increase of respirable particles that remain in the lungs and are then absorbed by the rest of the body. In indoor air measurements, carcinogenic substances have been found: acetaldehyde, formaldehyde and metals. E-cigarettes must be treated like tobacco cigarettes.

Is there proven harm from e-cigs to bystanders? Well, no, of course there isn't, nor will there ever be. And she knows that, so instead she just spreads innuendo from a bunch of fundamentally fraudulent studies which have been effortlessly debunked - all of which only studied only active use of e-cigs - and pretends that they apply to non-vapers too. Erm, which they don't.

This is such a blatant lie that she should be hauled into a court and banged up for it. But in tobacco control circles you get a pat on the back for being a disingenuous liar, so she'll probably receive another award instead.

But more astounding than her propensity to lie without missing a heartbeat is her jaw-dropping lack of care for the consequences of her actions. She claims to be someone dedicated to eradicating smoking, yet is actively spreading inaccuracies, misleading statements, half-truths and downright lies because she is a bit piqued that smokers are quitting without the help of obscene corpulent health nazis like her.

I'll say it till I'm blue in the face. It's never been about health with these professional bed-wetting, self-indulgent, mentally feeble, fib-lipped pieces of slug shit.