Wednesday 30 March 2016

Let's Discuss Angels On A Pin

There was an awful article posted at the weekend about vaping entitled "6 Misleading Pro-Vaping Arguments We Should Stop Using". It should more properly have been headlined "Let's discuss angels dancing on the head of a pin" for the usefulness to the cause it presented. That is, on balance negative.

It centred around a whole load of smug pedantry to strike down effective sound bites which are useful to vapers in general when seeking to spread the message about the benefits of e-cigs.

For example, 'misleading' argument number one concerned ingredients.
We’ve all heard it. “Cigarettes contain thousands of chemicals with about 70 carcinogens, whereas e-cigs just contain four: PG, VG, nicotine and flavorings.” In essence, the core point is true – e-cig vapor does contain vastly fewer chemicals than tobacco smoke, and especially less toxic ones – but the specific formulation (“four ingredients/chemicals”) is blatantly incorrect.
No, it's really not. There are four ingredients in e-cigs - nicotine, PG, VG and flavouring. It's true that some make an erroneous comparison between that and the purported "thousands" of chemicals in tobacco smoke, but it's not incorrect that there are four ingredients (as opposed to chemicals) in e-liquid.

If that were the case, we'd have to describe a Big Mac as thousands more words than "two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions, all in a sesame seed bun" and the public would be confused, not better informed. A strawberry included as an ingredient in a dessert is described as a strawberry, not as 279 chemicals.

Because that's what the author was seriously suggesting.


Now, that might be OK if you just want to exhibit your intellect to the world - and well done to him for that - but it is crassly damaging when applied to simple messages which resonate with the public. An easily-digestible message should take priority over theoretical moral grandstanding.

The second apparently misleading argument was that “all of the ingredients in e-cigs are generally recognized as safe”. The author admitted that this was "technically true", but only for ingesting not inhaling.

In other words, "we just don't know". Now where have you heard that before?
Inhaling flavorings probably isn’t going to kill you, but it’s one area where we really do lack information about the risks, and saying they’re “generally recognized as safe” is undoubtedly misleading.
No, again it's really not. If the average vaper is asked a question about what is in an e-cig from an interested smoker, the answer is that there are four ingredients (see above) and that they are generally understood to be safe. Saying otherwise is confusing, counterproductive, and really quite silly.

Number three spoke about how the assertion that PG is used in asthma inhalers can't be verified, except that the author admitted that ...
There is one study looking at the potential to use PG as a carrier for an inhaled medicine and another which mentions that PG or ethanol may be used as a cosolvent in nebulizers, but no evidence presented of an asthma inhaler or nebulizer that is actually used today containing PG.
Which quite obviously means that authorities have identified it as safe enough. It is nitpicking of the first water to then go on to say.
We’d love to be proven wrong on this one (and will update/remove this as needed), but it seems like this argument – especially for inhalers – is total bullshit.
No it's not, the only possible tweak could be that it should be stressed PG is approved by incredibly risk-averse regulators to be used in inhalers. The fact it isn't actually used is pretty irrelevant and a result of market forces and pragmatism rather than proof that a sound bite is "bullshit". Especially coupled with the insulting and smarmy denouement.
Much like those who repeat anti-vaping arguments without fact-checking, this one in particular shows that we vapers can do exactly the same thing.
Well, not the vaping author, of course, because he's far cleverer than you.

Number four is quite simply laughable.
“Nobody Has Died from Vaping”
No, they haven't.

But if we twist things enough and add a hell of a lot of speculation not supported by evidence, we can tell vapers they can't use that either.
To see the problem, you can just imagine cigarettes had only been on the market for 10 years or so. Would we be seeing any deaths from smoking? Well, probably not, no.
Yes you would because cancer does not respect time limits and macro epidemiology. To say that we wouldn't have seen a single death from smoking after a decade of use by millions of people with differing metabolisms and susceptibility to disease is utter garbage.

So the image he contemptuously published as an example of this supposed 'misleading' argument is absolutely spot on.


It's a powerful and accurate image. The gravedigger patiently waiting for a first client is particularly brilliant. Not for our intrepid pedant though.
In short, after 10 years of smoking, chances are you’ll still be alive, so the lack of deaths from vaping at present means pretty much nothing.
No, it means that there is still no verifiable death from vaping, only theoretical - you know, like those theoretical 'deaths' that tobacco control like to talk about. Hmm.

Number five is even more pointless pedantry. Quibbling over whether diacetyl is 100 or 750 times less prevalent in e-cigs is not even worth the effort of putting fingers to keyboard. I mean, what would someone on the other side say in response? Can you just imagine it?

"You're lying! The lies we told were about something 100 times more invisible, not 750! Yah boo sucks!". No, they simply wouldn't because it would be exposing themselves as pathetically stupid and, as a result, scaremongering liars. This, when advocating e-cigs, is exactly what you do want!

The self-defeating navel-gazing was rounded off with number six.
“Smokers Don’t Get Popcorn Lung from the Diacetyl in Cigarettes”
Yep, that's quite true. They don't. Well not unless you try very hard to create speculation where they do, of course.
So smokers might not be diagnosed with popcorn lung very often, but they are regularly diagnosed with COPD, a more general obstructive lung condition, and this happens a lot more than you’d expect even heavily diacetyl-exposed people to be diagnosed with popcorn lung. Of course, smoke contains tons of bad chemicals, but it’s not exactly easy to say that diacetyl doesn’t contribute to the problems smokers have. Plus, when presented with a smoker with lung problems, is a doctor going to jump to popcorn lung as a diagnosis, or just assume it’s COPD?
All well and good, except Michael Siegel stated categorically that this was not the case in December.
Despite the much higher levels of diacetyl in tobacco smoke than in e-cigarette vapor, smoking has not been associated with "popcorn lung."
And you know how readily tobacco control like to link just about everything with smoking, the fact they don't tells you all you (should) need to know.

Likewise Professor Peter Hajek said the very same two weeks ago. Used the term "never" too.


So who do you believe? It's not a 'misleading' argument to make, it is in fact supported by two different tobacco control academics who - let's face it - make the rules of this game. Carry on using that fact (as in, not a "misleading" argument) at will, because it's true.

Again, what possible benefit is there from dissuading vapers from pointing this out, you can imagine that by this point I was questioning whose side this geezer is on.

So, to sum up.

1) Yes, e-cigs contain four ingredients, just don't compare them with the apocryphal (and probably massively exaggerated) 4,000 or 7,000 in smoke. This is as far as the article was useful.
2) Yes, feel confident to state to people who are thinking about vaping that the ingredients are generally considered safe, because the alternative offered is anal speculation.
3) You can say PG is approved for use in asthma inhalers because it is. Whether it is actually used or not is purely pointless semantics.
4) Nobody has died from vaping. This is a supportable fact, the suggestion that it might not be true is supported only by smug innuendo.
5) Use whichever figure you want about the comparative levels of diacetyl in e-cigs and tobacco - especially if the flavour you use doesn't contain it as most now don't - because ...
6) ... It is irrelevant, diacetyl at much higher levels than in e-cigs has never been linked to popcorn lung even in smokers however much one may try to contort reality.

So if you're one of those who has declared this week that they feel like they can't make these simple arguments to people they meet anymore for fear of being condescendingly termed inaccurate or dishonest from an ivory tower, don't. What you're doing is just fine.

See also: Fergus on the same subject.





Tuesday 29 March 2016

Truth To Power

Warning: This article contains nails hitting heads 
You'll often read on these pages about how I believe there should be wholesale prosecutions of public health charlatans - in particular those in tobacco control - for example in the last article here.
Let's just compare something here. Say your employer lied about you to have you sacked, it would be illegal for them not to allow you your chance to debate them. 'Public health' has no such concerns, they can close businesses down on a whim and put thousands - or even millions - on the dole simply to boost their own bank accounts, and without fear of censure or financial penalty. 
The 'public health' industry is the most vile, corrosive and damaging drain on the well-being of the public that there has ever been. There is not a single person working in 'public health' today who hasn't, at some point, lied to the public and to politicians. They all, without exception, deserve to be in jail.
The reasons should be clear if you have kept a close eye on their cynical manipulation of truth and their abandonment of the well-being of the public in favour of political aspirations and their own personal financial betterment.

However, I don't think I've ever seen the tobacco control industry described more accurately than in the comments under this article by Carl Phillips. Replying to an oncologist asking why he is not enamoured with the profession, he had this to say.
Well, given that tobacco control hurt a lot of people (usually intentionally), lie to the public, undermine the credibility of the sciences they abuse, threaten the credibility of real public health, and erode modern values, I don’t think it is actually possible to be too hard on them without committing a felony (oh, and they frequently do that too).
And furthermore.
It has demonized smokers and tried (often successfully) to make them feel miserable about themselves, to take just the theme of this post, as well as compounding the harm from smoking with the harm from punitive taxes. It has aggressively blocked harm reduction efforts. It has actively promoted scientific innumeracy. It has turned large subsets of epidemiology and other sciences into utter junk. It has eroded Western values, taking us down a path where the state dictates individual choices. It has perverted the concept of public health and damaged the credibility of real public health. I could go on.
Bravo!

It is important to note the above when you next hear some tobacco control industry liar talk about how they are a weak, flailing David in the face of a powerful industry Goliath. It has ceased to be true around two generations ago and their appallingly destructive behaviour since is a direct result of being allowed to run rampage while any opposition has been silenced. By their bullying, of course.

If you like a drink, by the way, you should be a trifle worried that these extremely experienced socially-violent tobacco control frauds - just as their equally destructive and fanatical antecedents in Prohibition era America did in reverse nearly a century ago - are now coming after alcohol too.

We did warn you.


Saturday 26 March 2016

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Huge kudos to Pete Brown for once again calling a spade a spade when it comes to anti-alcohol liars.

Via the PMA:
A new report, picked up by the Publican’s Morning Advertiser (PMA) on 9 March, claimed that alcohol taxes are too low because the revenue collected by Government from alcohol sales is far lower than the cost of alcohol to society. 
The report hinges on the claim that the Government collects £9bn in taxes in alcohol, whereas alcohol costs society £21bn a year. If these stats were true, there would be a strong case to answer. But the comparison between £9bn revenue and £21bn cost is completely erroneous. 
How about with that £21bn? As I’ve written previously, this number seemed plucked from the air. The vast bulk of it consists of ‘intangible’ (and therefore incalculable) costs such as the impact on the economy of the emotional trauma of the victims of alcohol-related crime (£4.7bn of the total.) 
The £21bn figure, even if it was correct, is the total cost of alcohol to society, not just the cost to the taxpayer of health and emergency services dealing with alcohol-related harm. 
And yet in the plus column, this report and others before it only consider duty receipts from alcohol direct to the government. There isn’t an honest accountant on the planet who would accept this as an acceptable balance of cost versus benefit. 
If the IAS were to compare like with like, they would have two options: firstly, to compare the cost to the UK taxpayer of alcohol abuse with the revenue to the UK treasury from alcohol sales. That would be a fair comparison. And it would reveal — as has previously been reported — that revenue would exceed cost to the tune of more than £6bn a year. 
If they want to include every single cost of alcohol to society — including everything from lost productivity due to hangovers to expenditure on alarms to prevent alcohol-fuelled crime — they need to also include the broadest possible range of benefits from alcohol consumption. 
And that would include the contribution pubs make to their local economy, and corporation tax paid by brewers, to the intangible benefit of the stronger social networks, increased community cohesion and stress reduction that moderate consumption gives the majority of drinkers. 
Anti-alcohol campaigners are aware of all this, and yet they continue to quote their figure of £21bn versus £9bn figures as fact.
Very well put.

The problem, of course, is that 'public health' is an inherently dishonest profession. By that I mean that they are not at all interested in truth, scientific integrity or even what is beneficial for the public, and don't even care that much what is good for public health. They only care about their own lucrative tax-sponging nest and how best to feather it for the future.

Brown puts this very well in his denouement.
If you continue to insist something is true when you know it’s not, that makes you a ‘liar’. It’s time the drinks industry went on the offensive against these people and named them for what they are.
Indeed. And the possibility that the drinks industry might very well do that is why the anti-alcohol version of 'public health' is seeking to do exactly what their anti-smoking counterparts have done - silence all speech by anyone who might meaningfully debate them.

Let's just compare something here. Say your employer lied about you to have you sacked, it would be illegal for them not to allow you your chance to debate them. 'Public health' has no such concerns, they can close businesses down on a whim and put thousands - or even millions - on the dole simply to boost their own bank accounts, and without fear of censure or financial penalty.

The 'public health' industry is the most vile, corrosive and damaging drain on the well-being of the public that there has ever been. There is not a single person working in 'public health' today who hasn't, at some point, lied to the public and to politicians. They all, without exception, deserve to be in jail.

But where do the anti-alcohol liars get their methods from? Well, from the anti-smoking liars, of course.

In 2010, a pal of Action on Smoking and Health - Henry Featherstone of the Policy Exchange think tank - peddled an economically bankrupt study in order to 'prove' that smoking costs more to the public's finances than it generates. Their report was destroyed by other economic think tanks and panned into ridicule by the printed media (apart from the Guardian, natch) because it was demonstrable nonsense from start to finish, and the author knew it as much as his pharma funders and his cheerleaders in the tobacco control industry did.

But tobacco controllers - the most corrupt liars of the lot - still quote it to this day and so do their vacuous poodles in parliament. It doesn't matter if it's bollocks, because they know very well it's bollocks but spout it anyway.

No-one from the anti-alcohol bandwagon will sue Pete Brown for calling them liars because - as he points out - they know very well that they are. They know that if they dared to take it to a court case, the court would judge them to be lying scum and scales might fall off millions of eyes.

So they'll just carry on using the £21bn figure even when they know they are lying, just as anti-smoking liars continue to use their own laughable lies when they are well aware that the figures they are quoting are pure fantasy.

If you're not keen on the lies being told about alcohol, fizzy drinks, e-cigs, fast food, chocolate or any other popular product, always remember it started with the liars in the tobacco control industry being allowed to get away with it. They're just copying the tobacco control playbook and destroying people's lives every day that they are permitted by our weak and pathetic politicians to do so.


Link Tank 26/03

Spring links.

Scotland's smoking ban "was just the start of an assault on our everyday freedoms"

"The global ‘war on drugs’ has harmed public health, human rights and development"

10 reasons why the sugar tax is a terrible idea

Kids need to waste time

Why some restaurants are banning doggy-bags

How a Burger King advert became a symbol against terrorism (pic)

Teetotal vegetarian Jeremy Corbyn presents award at British Kebab Awards

The Hot Cross Bunny Burger and other London Easter dishes

British brewer wins court battle against Champagne industry to sell his new 'Champale'

City birds are cleverer than country ones


Tuesday 22 March 2016

'Public Health' Fascism: A Glossary

If you're a regular fellow jewel robber here, you'll have often read my referring to those in 'public health' - and particularly the tobacco control industry racket - as fascists. Perhaps, by way of social media examples from the past day or two, I can explain why.

Carl Phillips recently drew parallels with a Twitter account parodying Kim Jong Un's North Korea.
The @DPRK_News comedy includes treating one-off problems from the news of the day as being representative of all life in Western societies. “Public health” treats transgressions by cigarette companies that occurred two generations ago, by no one who is still active today, as if they have a bearing on the quality of current research. What makes @DPRK_News particularly funny, more so than if similar jokes came from a mock Mother Jones or Rush Limbaugh feed, is the contrast between the supposed Western problem and the reality of North Korea, which is worse by most any measure. The parallel with the accusations from “public health” should be clear: A huge portion of “public health” research is utter junk science, blatantly tortured to serve their special-interest political goals, while research done by the tobacco companies is honest and consistently high quality, and has been for a few decades.
OK, you can quibble about North Korea being a fascist regime, it's communist. And everyone knows communism is the polar opposite of fascism, right? Well not really, because what do you associate with brutal dictators and fascism? I think you'd come up with the same criteria as me.

1) What we say goes

I don't think this needs much explaining when it comes to 'public health'. Whether it be smoking, drinking, sugar, vaping or anything else, the organised criminals in the state-funded finger-wagging Mafia have always decided what they want to implement and then constructed a framework of lies around it.

The public is rarely consulted, and even if we are, we are routinely ignored.

2) Propaganda

Not content with ignoring public objections, 'public health' also completely ignores proper science in favour of their own corrupt policy-based evidence-making. Trying to control the public with falsehoods to drive through whatever daft scheme they have already committed to is the first thing they teach you at 'public health' school. Here's an example from today.


The science on alcohol consumption is unequivocal and has been built up over decades. The message that moderate alcohol consumption reduces all cause mortality compared to teetotalism - which is incontrovertible - is an inconvenient thing for bansturbators and prohibitionists to work with, so instead 'public health' desperately tries to create its own narrative based on lies.

(Further reading on this concept here)

3) Monitor dissent

Any fascist regime worth its salt monitors its citizens closely in order to track dissent and control them. You can't have the public having their own opinions if they disagree with those of the regime, now can you? 'Public health' does the same, as we saw the other day.
We used a set of manually curated key phrases to analyze e-cig proponent tweets from a corpus of over one million e-cig tweets along well known e-cig themes and compared the results with those generated by regular tweeters.
Only "proponents" you notice, the lies spouted by insane e-cig denialists are perfectly hunky-dory.
Proponents also disproportionately (one to two orders of magnitude more) highlight e-cig flavors, their smoke-free and potential harm reduction aspects, and their claimed use in smoking cessation. 
Given FDA is currently in the process of proposing meaningful regulation, we believe our work demonstrates the strong potential of informatics approaches, specifically machine learning, for automated e-cig surveillance on Twitter.
If you express an opinion which differs from the narrative 'public health' wants to create, you will be monitored and reported to the authorities. "Re-education" has been a central plank of fascism since time immemorial.

4) Crush freedom of speech

Hand in hand with 3) if you are a fascist dictator, is not just to monitor your dissenting public, but also to silence the dissent you have identified. Yep, 'public health' loves to do that too. Here's an example from this week (emphases mine).
Objective: To quantify e-cigarette-related videos on YouTube, assess their content, and characterize levels of engagement with those videos. Understanding promotion and discussion of e-cigarettes on YouTube may help clarify the platform’s impact on consumer attitudes and behaviors and inform regulations. 
Conclusions: There is evidence that YouTube videos promote e-cigarettes as cigarette smoking cessation tools. Presence and reach of e-cigarette videos on YouTube warrants attention from public health professionals and policymakers.
Too many people are talking positively about vaping on social media, so the state needs to step in and censor them. And 'public health' are just the tell-tale fascists to persuade them to.

(Side note: If you're laughing at how absurd these people are, I assure you I am too. They couldn't possibly better confirm everything I've been saying on this blog for the past seven years)

5) If challenged, play the man not the ball

All dictators have their favourite way of doing this because it's vital to make sure unapproved ideas do not spread. But the aim is to ensure that resistance is either crushed or discredited, it should never - under any circumstances - be allowed to create a factual debate (see also 4) above).


Of course, this is a link to my page at the incredibly incompetent - and quite hilarious - smear site paid for out of £350k of our taxes by the now rightfully defunct Smokefree South West.

Because, as one of their own has highlighted, if you're a 'public health' careerist in a sticky situation you must always default to pretending your opponent is somehow paid.
It is, as Michael Siegel explains, Tobacco Control 101.
In the 20 years that I was a member of the tobacco control movement, I was led to believe that there were only two sides to any anti-smoking issue: our side and the tobacco industry side. Therefore, anyone who disagreed with our position had to be, in some way, affiliated with the tobacco industry. I was also taught to respond to their arguments not on any scientific grounds or on the merit of their arguments, but by simply discrediting the person by attacking their affiliation with the tobacco companies.
If you take part in secondhand smoke policy training in the tobacco control movement, chances are that you will be taught that all opposition to smoking bans is orchestrated by the tobacco industry, that anyone who challenges the science connecting secondhand smoke exposure and severe health effects is a paid lackey of Big Tobacco, and that any group which disseminates information challenging these health effects is a tobacco industry front group. Consequently, the chief strategy of tobacco control is to smear the opposition by accusing them of being tobacco industry moles. And in no situation should one say anything positive about an opponent, even if true.
Who is this rogue? A tobacco shill himself? Well, no. Quite the opposite, in fact.
How do I know this? 
Because for many years, I was one of the main trainers of tobacco control advocates in the United States. And this is what I taught, because this was what I was led to believe. I attended many conferences and trainings and this is precisely what I was taught. I accepted it for the truth, and passed it along to others. 
So, to recap. 'Public health' likes to present itself as some benevolent movement dedicated to improving people's lives, and if it was I would happily support it. However, it seems to have lost its way somewhat. and when it embraces and enthusiastically apes the methods of some of the most disgusting regimes in the history of mankind, I think it's perfectly fair to term 'public health' as fascist.

QED.


Sunday 20 March 2016

Why I Love E-Cigs #497

Here is David Sweanor, a renowned Canadian tobacco controller, talking about one aspect of the benefits of e-cigarettes.
[...] vaping offers to save taxpayers money while saving smokers’ lives.
Saving taxpayers' money is the thing we are always told, isn't it?

Smokers are costing every country in the world a fortune! Politicians always implore us to quit to save the country cash.

Yet when push comes to shove we see stuff like this.
10. OBSERVES that some of the products, such as e-cigarettes, defined in Directive 2014/40/EU on the approximation of the laws, regulations and administrative provisions of the Member States concerning the manufacture, presentation and sale of tobacco and related products, do not fall into any of the categories of products subject to excise duty under Directive 2011/64/EU. 
11. NOTES that in most of the Member States some of such non-categorised products, often being niche-products in the market, are not subject to an excise duty or any other specifically designed tax, and AGREES that the situation in the market should continue to be monitored and, should the market share of such products show a tendency to increase, the ongoing efforts to develop an efficient taxation method for such products would have to be intensified.
Y'see, e-cigs keep throwing up awkward hot potatoes like that for 'public health', don't they? I mean, if vaping saves wads of taxpayer cash while saving lives, why on Earth would any state body be even considering taxing them? Surely it is a win/win for government as costs to public services plummet with every person who quits smoking with an e-cig.

You don't think they might have been lying to us for years, do you?

One to watch, isn't it?


Thursday 17 March 2016

A Triumph For Repulsive Anti-Social Snobbery

"... and I realised with horror that I'd seen this awful thing before", Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds
Back in 2006, government passed legislation to usher in a new age of intolerance and snobbery. It had taken around 30 years for the Godber Blueprint to take effect, that is 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”.

This, of course, was the smoking ban. Based on a pre-planned lie and brought to prominence by way of three decades of slogans such as "smokers stink", it played upon a latent dislike of smoking and smokers amongst the dregs of our society. It was an incessant onslaught which turned a nation comfortable with co-operation and tolerance into one where to openly hurl disgusting insults and threats at otherwise law-abiding and productive members of the public was actively encouraged.

It was a victory for the army of fanatical single issue state-funded tax-spongers who prey upon the borderline insane mentality of the revolting; the contemptuous; the arrogant; the pinch-lipped; the selfish; and the proudly anti-social.

A clusterfuck of the abhorrent; a circle-jerk of the hateful and nauseating.

These days, as Snowdon points out in City AM, it doesn't take anywhere near so long.
It has taken several years of the most ludicrous, unscientific hysteria about a single ingredient to get us to this point, but this is the result: a reverse Robin Hood tax with a dismal track record in every country in which it has been tried being presented to the public as a health policy. 
It would be laughable if it were not so pathetic.
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. That's all, just seeing!

All that's required is a section of the population eaten up by bigotry, and a handy figurehead to produce junk science, spit vitriol, and wildly exaggerate. With sugar it was this guy.
I have some previous with Prof [Graham] MacGregor. Earlier this year, I went head-to-head with him on Andrew Pierce’s LBC show. The topic: a proposed sugar tax. I went first and made the case that it was our responsibility to look after our own health and that it is the responsibility of parents to look after the health of their children. This opened the floodgates of condescension. I was talking rubbish. He had worked with poor people in deprived areas and they cannot look after themselves. It was the responsibility of people like him to look after them as he knows better. 
At the start of questioning by MPs on the Health Committee, I knew what was coming. Naturally, he favours a sugar tax, and he fully expects it to start low and increase year-on-year. Don’t be surprised when Prof MacGregor calls for 700 per cent, roughly the same as cigarettes. 
This was just the start, though. As he started moving up through the gears, Prof MacGregor revealed that he doesn’t just want sugary drinks taxed, he wants those with artificial sweeteners taxed too. Even though a sugar tax would be regressive, he attacked Jeremy Hunt for calling it that, and described it as a “desperate ploy” on the Health Secretary’s behalf. He openly displayed his hatred of the food industry. He wants all advertising of unhealthy food banned, and thinks the food industry kills more than tobacco manufacturers. 
As he was cruising in top gear, he also came out with this gem. Prof MacGregor has worked in Tooting amongst the socially deprived, and he claimed that everyone living on the estates in Tooting is obese. Not just some, the majority, no, everyone.
To the vast majority of us MacGregor is a crank who makes shit up about his personal irrational prejudice about a pretty minor problem because he's a revolting, froth-mouthed cocksnorter of biblical proportion, but when heard by fellow gut-wrenchingly repellent snobs, it's an invitation to be the most vile they can be.

Jamie Oliver, a man perfectly described by the Speccie as "a chef whose own waistline has expanded as fast as his ego", exemplified this ugly triumphalism over those he feels are inferior to him when interviewed by the BBC.


With these two sickening people leading the charge, is it any wonder the foul and the loathsome come crawling out of the woodwork.




You're not making a choice anymore, instead you're a shit parent; stupid; an idiot ... for knowing your family better than the judgemental and the obnoxious. You are lazy, and they are damn well going to tell you so because, well, they're the apocryphal perfect people whose snobbery and crass ignorance makes them think they are entitled to 'cast the first stone'.

Well, they're not, they're absurd self-regarding shitgoblins, but slack-waisted Jamie is their God and they're on a roll now. So why not demand more, eh?




Osborne didn't usher in any new success for 'public health' yesterday - for the simple fact that a sugar tax has never worked and, as admitted by those who favour it, never will - but he certainly delivered multiple orgasms to the most deranged and repugnant in our country; the type you would hide behind the sofa to pretend you were out if you saw them park outside your house. If pandering to the vile and intolerant was the purpose, the upper class boy Osborne did exceptionally! He enthralled his fellow pompous and snooty middle class minions and stuck it to the less well off good, so he did.

Or, as Alex Deane succinctly describes it in The Telegraph.
Virtue-signalling politicians, bureaucrats and celebrities feeling tremendously good about themselves because they’ve bossed the rest of us around, and imposed a stealth tax on those least able to afford it.
It's not a step forward for the health of the nation, but instead a triumph for repulsive anti-social snobbery and the most obnoxious human faecal matter we have the abject misfortune to share our everyday lives with.


Quite. It's like 2006 all over again.

UPDATE: Here's an interesting perspective from a statistician.
But whatever they spend it on, they would have preferred to spend it on sugary drinks, so we are again making them worse off in terms of the things that they value. 
All these considerations are trivial for people on high incomes. They may not be for people on low incomes. What seems certain is that the costs of the sugar tax will fall disproportionately on the poor. 
You may think that’s a good idea. George Osborne obviously does. But personally, I’m not a fan of regressive taxation.
Unlike all those odious snobs above.


Wednesday 16 March 2016

There's Only One Person To Blame, Drakeford

The BBC has carried some pretty awesome news this evening.
A public health law which includes a ban on e-cigarette use in some public places has been rejected by AMs after a row between Labour and Plaid Cymru. 
Plaid voted against the bill in a last-minute move, meaning the assembly was tied 26-26 and the bill failed. 
It comes after Public Services Minister Leighton Andrews said a previous deal with the party was a "cheap date". 
Health Minister Mark Drakeford said he was "deeply disappointed" that the bill would not become law.
So that's the ban on vaping in public places binned then, possibly for good.

Now, I'll reserve comment about how pathetic Welsh politics must be if an appalling law was tossed out not because it was appalling, but instead because of puerile "he said, she said" piffle you'd expect teenagers to have grown out of, let alone those entrusted with government.

But Drakeford's response is an incredible display of cognitive dissonance which is as amusing as it is staggering.
“There will be widespread anger that opposition parties, who had exerted a real influence on the Bill, failed to support it into law and abandoned all the important protections for the public it would have put in place, preventing a range of public health harms. They chose not to do so and they must answer for their conduct. 
“It would have introduced important new measures to improve the provision of pharmacy services across Wales and the provision of public toilets for the young and old; it would have introduced a ban on intimate piercing for children under 16 ..."
Yes it would have, but it's not opposition parties who are to blame, now is it Mark?

No. The person at fault is the one who initiated ignorance-based policy-making, ignored the scientific consensus on benefits of e-cigs, and knowingly lied to the Welsh Assembly in a desperate - and now ultimately vain - attempt to install one of his personal pathetic and evidence-free prejudices as Welsh state policy.

The culpable person could have removed the utterly daft vaping ban provisions - the major divisive sticking point - from the Health Bill at any time during its passage through the Senedd, but steadfastly refused to do so. Instead - seemingly determined to reserve himself a place in history as one of the most ignorant and comical politicians to have ever lived - he ramped up the lies and deceit to ever more preposterous levels the longer the farce went on. His own bigotry and irrational hatred was evidently more important than pharmacy services, public loos and piercing safeguards for children.

So if you want to see who is responsible for the failure of your Health Bill, Mark Drakeford, look in a fucking mirror.


Tuesday 15 March 2016

See How They Run

Bravo to Vapers in Power who have written an open letter to the vacant Pembrokeshire Council wooden tops who think outdoor smoking and vaping bans are a spiffing idea.

From the ViP blog:
Are you aware that there is no evidence that e-cigarette vapour has any harmful effect on bystanders, whether inside or out?  Also that there is no credible evidence that vaping normalises smoking: in fact the evidence points in the opposite direction. You may have seen the Public Health England expert independent review² which estimates vaping to be at least 95% safer than smoking and says ecigs have potential to help people to stop smoking. The authors regret that nearly half of the adult population don’t realise that ecigs are safer than tobacco cigarettes, a misconception which the Little Haven beach ban does nothing to dispel. 
There is no scientific justification for this and it will harm public health. 
Our Welsh members have expressed concern that this will harm much needed tourism in the area. Many of our members also feel it’s disgraceful for smoking to be banned on a beach or open space; this measure is similarly without scientific backing.
Of course it isn't, we're talking about tobacco control initiatives here, they're never about science and always sod all to do with health too. This beach ban in Wales is perfect proof of that.

It's nearly a week since this petty, vindictive, pointless and clawless 'voluntary' ban was put in place but apart from ViP's open letter there's been pitiful silence about it since, most notably from ASH Wales - you know, the self-professed friend of the vaper in the province - who as I pointed out on Thursday were more interested in praising Pembrokeshire's overt fascism instead.
[Jamie Matthews, Deputy Chief Executive of Action on Smoking and Health, said:] “We fully welcome the smoke free beach pilot in Pembrokeshire to protect our young people from the harmful effects of tobacco.”
Note use of the word "fully" in that context. Not a cautious welcome 'but why the fuck are e-cigs that we support included?'. Nope, "fully" welcome.

In other words, you can quit smoking using e-cigs if you like - and have a good chance of being successful - but the state-funded fake charity shitsacks at ASH Wales are still very happy to bully you and 'denormalise' you anyway.
They were very coy about condemning it when asked afterwards too.


Not us, Guv, it was them guys over there. We did our best, we really did. Yeah, pull the other one.

Even a direct invitation to condemn something which is utterly absurd to anyone who 'claims' - and ASH Wales' position as a supporter of vaping is exactly that, just a claim - to be a friend to vapers and e-cigs came up woefully short. A full five days after they'd conflated smoking with vaping in the eyes of the public - on a major and widely-read news platform - they came up with this pathetically limp sophistry which will have been seen by precious few people ... something I'm sure they were well aware of.


"Do not support" is a bit different from condemning, isn't it? And if they didn't support the ban on vaping why on Earth did they say they "fully" welcomed the ban when the press came asking for a quote? All the ASH franchises are primarily political lobbyists so know the value of language; if they said they "fully" welcomed the ban - thereby, I repeat, conflating smoking with vaping in the minds of the public - they meant it. Either that or the person entrusted to talk to the press is incompetent and should be handed their P45. You decide.

But then again, they are also very happy to have their logo appended to the message that seeing vaping is equally dangerous to kids as the vapid idea that seeing smoking is dangerous.


Of course, it's not difficult to work out why ASH Wales are determined to sit on the fence and are happy to see their logo proudly displayed on a disgraceful beach ban policy. On the one hand telling vapers how they're right onside and happy to engage, while on the other "fully" welcoming bans which are counterproductive and acting in a manner which is a disgusting slap in the face to the vaping advocates who have held faith in them.

You just have to look at their funding.

Voluntary donations from the public total a whopping 2.6% of the £610k they were handed last year. The Welsh government accounted for £135k of that, a full quarter of their revenue, 78% of which - in turn - is state-funded in some form or another. With the Welsh government currently polishing off a Health Bill which has painted e-cigs as a danger to kids everywhere, it's not wise to tell the truth bite the hand that feeds, now is it?

So the question now is what ASH Wales are going to do tomorrow. You see, the Welsh government - who hand ASH Wales £135k every year - are passing a law tomorrow which will ban the use of e-cigs just about everywhere, despite no credible evidence that vaping causes any harm to anyone, and plenty of evidence that it is beneficial to 'public health'.


So looks like ASH Wales will have to show us what they really think about e-cigs, eh? Will they publicly condemn the Welsh government for an appalling law which goes against everything fair, equitable and evidence-based towards vaping? Of course they won't, they'll throw vapers to the wolves and think nothing of it.

Just watch which way the rats run tomorrow when forced off that fence.


Thursday 10 March 2016

A Day In The Strife Of Wales

There were three interesting articles yesterday about e-cigs in Wales which give a great insight into the disconnect between the public, on one hand, and the repulsive parasites who plague us on the other.

Via the South Wales Argus:
A POLL of smokers and vapers for No Smoking Day shows that two-thirds (65 per cent) of e-cigarette users have managed to quit smoking. 
The poll found that [two thirds] (63 per cent) of e-cigarette users say they’re using them as an aid to stop smoking tobacco. 
[Mike Knapton, associate medical director at BHF, said:] "This unique study shines a light on just how popular vaping has become as an aid for smokers in Wales trying to quit and we need to listen to what is helping people the most on their path to a smoke free life."
Indeed. If - as politicians and 'public health' nags constantly insist - it is important that smokers quit, then perhaps it might be a good idea to listen to what the public says works for them. And if, as the BHF appear to suggest, e-cigs are working for many many people in Wales, surely their use should be encouraged, no?

Well, of course no, because Wales is run by feeble faggot-lipped fuckwits.

Via the BBC, also yesterday:
AMs have backed a proposed ban on e-cigarettes in some public places. 
The Welsh government has won support from some Plaid Cymru AMs for the measure after ministers watered down the ban to places where children are likely to be present.
So, just about everywhere then.

And where are self-professed friends of the vaper, ASH Wales, while all this is going on? Oh yeah, they're having orgasms over a pointless and absurd beach smoking 'ban' ... which also includes e-cigs.

No, really!
The first smoke-free beach is being trialled in a drastic bid to discourage young people from taking up the habit. 
Little Haven beach in Pembrokeshire, West Wales, is the first seaside resort in Britain to test the no-smoking signs on the sand. 
The year-long trial, which also includes e-cigarettes, comes after a YouGov survey showed 54 per cent of adults believe smoking should be banned in communal areas like parks and beaches. 
[Jamie Matthews, Deputy Chief Executive of Action on Smoking and Health, said:] “We fully welcome the smoke free beach pilot in Pembrokeshire to protect our young people from the harmful effects of tobacco.”
Note use of the word "fully" in that context. Not a cautious welcome 'but why the fuck are e-cigs that we support included?'. Nope, "fully" welcome.

In other words, you can quit smoking using e-cigs if you like - and have a good chance of being successful - but the state-funded fake charity shitsacks at ASH Wales are still very happy to bully you and 'denormalise' you anyway.

That's because, yet again, none of it has anything to do with health, merely ugly, rancid morals and salaries for sock puppet tax-spongers like ASH. If there is a hell, that's exactly where Welsh AMs and ASH Wales are headed, vile, socially-destructive, lying, self-enriching, fascist cretins that they are.


Wednesday 9 March 2016

Surreal Stuff In The Lords

I case you missed it, there was something of a Twilight Zone moment in the House of Lords the other day.

It started mundanely enough, with Viscount Ridley raising the thorny issue of the EU proposing to tax e-cigs.
Given that the Prime Minister said in the other place that 1 million people have given up smoking as a result of taking up vaping— including, I believe, my noble friend Lord Brabazon of Tara—given that the public health benefits are in the order of £74 billion, and given that the main loser from this is the pharmaceutical industry, which is seeing falls in the sales of patches and gums, does he agree with me that pharmaceutical industry lobbying may be behind the attempt to regulate these products too heavily and possibly to shackle them with an excise tax? 
This was quite clearly referring to moves - highlighted in The Times - to bring e-cigs into the scope of the Tobacco Duties Directive.

But perhaps Lord Prior of Brampton - replying on behalf of the government - doesn't read The Times, because he must have believed Ridley was talking about the TPD instead.
The tobacco regulation that the noble Viscount refers to does not have any proposals for an excise tax - it purely relates to ensuring that these products are used safely and are of a given quality.
No, the Tobacco Duties Directive does actually deal with excise tax, strangely enough, and was actually what Ridley was referring to.

It then got weirder.
My Lords, the Minister will know that the impact of this directive is to make it much more difficult for e-cigarettes to be promoted. Why is that, given the clear benefit to public health?
This, believe it or not, was from Labour Lord Hunt, the party's health spokesman in the Lords, no less ... the day before his party voted to ignore the "clear benefit to public health" in Wales and in fact deny it as "evidence-free" and "nonsensical".


Lord Hunt was backed up by Lord Brabazon, another Labour Lord.
My Lords, I have already been mentioned during this Question. I am one of those who smoked for many years but has not have a cigarette now for two years because I have taken up using one of these devices. Can my noble friend tell me why these devices are included at all in the tobacco products directive, because they are not a tobacco product?
Ooh please Sir! I can answer that one. It's because there is a hideous mare in Labour's EU contingent of MEPs called Linda McAvan who fought like stink to ensure that they were. Why would a Labour Lord not know that, huh?

Next up was then Lib Dem Baroness Walmsley. You know, from the party which officially endorsed e-cigs in their manifesto and whose Welsh representatives bravely tried to head off the stupidity of a vaping ban in public places there. She'll be sound, won't she?
My Lords, although these products are clearly much less harmful than smoking tobacco, they are not entirely harmless. They have a lot of noxious chemicals in them.
Erm, everything has noxious chemicals in it, dear. I swear I heard Paracelsus chuckle when reading that bit.

Another Labour Lord - Lord Turnberg - then piped up with this.
My Lords, the noble Lord dismissed the idea of an excise tax, but there is a strong rumour that the EU intends to impose a tax on these products. Will the Government do everything they can to counteract this counterproductive suggestion?
Well, Turnberg my pusscake friend, if Labour hadn't done "everything they can" and voted en masse to ensure a "counterproductive" TPD was passed without even knowing the first thing about e-cigs, perhaps we wouldn't be in the position with them being crowbarred into the Tax Directive, now would we? Just a thought.

Meanwhile, Tory Lord Prior continued to miss the point.
My Lords, as I said, there is no proposal for an excise duty as part of the tobacco directive, as I understand it.
There's a Products Directive and then there's a Tax Directive, you chump. Please try to wake up, you're part of the government for crying out loud.

Good grief. These people are entrusted with running the country and they barely know what's happening around them! A fox could wander in and nick their marmite sarnies and I fancy they'd be none the wiser.

The issue of passive vaping was broached by Lord Naseby, and the correct reply given by Prior.
My Lords, I think there is evidence that e-cigarettes are more effective than, or as effective as, nicotine replacement therapies, and that my noble friend is right that there is no danger from passive smoking, which is why the inability to smoke in public places does not apply to e-cigarettes.
Really, Lord Prior? Then why is it that parasites funded by the government are enthusiastically welcoming their prohibition in public places all over the United Kingdom? Perhaps there is a tax tap there that requires turning off, I dunno.

UKIP Lord Rannoch asked a pertinent question too.
My Lords, do we really need this sort of interfering directive from Brussels? Are we incapable of looking after vaping devices ourselves?
Of course we're not, but the EU won't allow us to. Simple.

Lastly, Conservative peer Lord Forsyth stated the bleeding obvious ...
My Lords, is it not perfectly obvious that big business is lobbying Brussels to shut out competition, that e-cigarettes cost less, which limits the impact of highly regressive taxes on tobacco, and that they enable people to save their health? Will my noble friend admit that the Government are powerless to do anything about this?
... to everyone except Lord Prior.
No, I do not admit that the Government are powerless to do anything about this.
Yes you are chum. You can't refuse to implement the TPD and when (not if) the EU impose duty on e-cigs in their directive, you won't be able to do anything about that either. In fact, George Osborne will most likely do a jig.

You can watch the whole thing here courtesy of @dnglos. Try to keep the facepalming to a minimum.





Sunday 6 March 2016

Sock Puppet Outraged About Curbs On Sock Puppetry

Boy did this make me laugh!

Via The Observer:
“We know the tobacco industry funds the IEA to do its dirty work and has been trying for years to undermine public health charities,” said Anna Gilmore, professor of public health at the University of Bath and director of the Tobacco Control Research Group. “In other words, the IEA is the tobacco industry’s sock puppet here. This policy change will only serve to increase corporate influence while silencing those acting in the public interest.”
In the public interest, eh Anna? Uh huh. And where does the Tobacco Control Research Group - a blatant political lobbying organisation - get its cash from, do you think? I'll afford you one guess.

Long time readers might remember the name of Anna "anything for a grant" Gilmore. If I were to publish each and every time she received government funds for projects which were designed exclusively to lobby government, this place would become the Anna Gilmore show. I pointed out just a few in 2010.
European Commission. Seventh Framework Programme, €3,000,000 (Grant), Health in Times of Transition (HITT), May 2009 - April 2012
Gilmore A, McKee M et al

European Commission. Seventh Framework Programme, €2,991,656 (Grant), Pricing Policies and Control of Tobacco in Europe (PPACTE), 2009 - 2012
Gilmore A, with Clancy L, Perkurinen F, Godfrey F, Fischbacher C, Levy D, Boffetta P, Gallus S, Fernandes E, Ross H

NHS Southwest, £165,284 (Grant), Smokefree South West: Research and evaluation support, 2009 - 2011
Bauld L, with Gilmore A.

Cancer Research UK, £30,000 (Grant), Studies of the impact of passive smoke exposure on child health, 2009 - 2010
Gilmore A, with Britton J et al

CIHR (Canadian Institutes of Health Research), £146,767.50 ($286,769) (Grant), Upstream Determinants of Smoking in Low, Middle and High Income Countries participating in PURE (Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology study), 2008 - 2010
Yusuf S, Chow C, McKee M, Sankaranarayanan V, Teo K, Gilmore A.

Bloomberg Initiative, $1,092,000 (Grant), Development of sustainable structures to promote ratification of FCTC and advocate for stronger tobacco control legislation and compliance, 2007 - 2010
Gilmore A with Danishevski K, et al on the behalf of the Russian FCTC Coalition

European Respiratory Partnership, £150,000 (Grant), Tobacco industry influence on European Union Tobacco control policy making, 2007 - 2009
Gilmore A, with Collin C

Islington Primary Care Trust, £30,000 (Grant), Evaluation of the impact of smokefree legislation amongst different ethnic groups in Islington PCT, 2007 - 2008
Gilmore A, with Lock K

Health Foundation Clinician Scientist Fellowship, £576,195 (Grant), Developing and evaluating policies to reduce tobacco use and harm in the UK, November 2006 - 2011
Gilmore A

National Cancer Institute, US National Institutes of Health, $1,564,280 (Grant), Globalisation, the tobacco industry and policy influence - grant extension, 2006 - 2010
Gilmore A, with Lee K, Collin J, McKee M

Open Society Institute, US$300,000 (Grant), Public Health Leadership for an Open Society, 2005 - 2005
Gilmore A, with Coker R, Atun R

Cancer Research UK, £80,000 (Grant), Centre on Global Change and Health (support for tobacco industry document work), 2003 - 2004
Gilmore A, with Lee K, Collin J

National Cancer Institute, US National Institutes of Health, US$1,628,225 (Grant), Globalisation, the tobacco industry and policy influence, 2001 - 2006
Gilmore A, with Lee K, Collin J, Bissell K, McKee M, Vaughn JP

The Wellcome Trust, £1,000,000 (Grant), History of Medicine tobacco document archiving project, 2001 - 2006
Gilmore A, with Lee K, Collin J, Berridge V, Black N
Did you notice Smokefree South West up there? You know, the ones who have just had their funding rightly switched off for blatantly using government funds to lobby government with?

Well yes, you would have done, because Anna really isn't the best person to talk about sock puppetry.
As I said before, SFSW are central to any daft idea pumped out by the UK tobacco control industry, simply because they are awash with cash. One such initiative is the woefully inept mud-slinging Tobacco Tactics website, as detailed in their business plan from the time of its inception [pdf page 20].

You know the drill, click to enlarge
So Smokefree South West were funnelling £350k to the University of Bath for their wiki, eh? The same university which boasts Anna "junk for hire" Gilmore, one of the most adept tobacco control grant magnets of all time.

And what do we find from Anna's Bath University web profile?

Look at the entry at the foot of the screen shot
Yes, that's correct. Anna Gilmore is part of the committee which decides Smokefree South West's policy. The same Smokefree South West which is channelling hundreds of thousands of taxpayer funds to the University of Bath ... for initiatives which Anna Gilmore benefits from.
Isn't that hilarious?

Someone who is mostly responsible for Smokefree South West becoming politically toxic for their appalling abuse of taxpayer funding - and benefited professionally from it - is actually complaining that someone else is not acting in the public interest.

You really couldn't make this up, could you? What is it that her side say about the scream test? Hint, see here, here, and here.


Thursday 3 March 2016

A Vapid Anti-Vaper Writes

Following on from yesterday's article about vapid anti-vapers (the term was stolen from an admirable editorial in The Times on Tuesday), you just knew it wouldn't take long until the point being made by The Times was proven in real life.

To explain, let me point you to an article by Carl Phillips where he accurately describes the difference between tobacco industry science and tobacco control industry junk science. Making a good call by comparing 'public health' pronouncements with the parody Twitter account @DPRK_News, he highlights an accurate observation.
The @DPRK_News comedy includes treating one-off problems from the news of the day as being representative of all life in Western societies. “Public health” treats transgressions by cigarette companies that occurred two generations ago, by no one who is still active today, as if they have a bearing on the quality of current research. What makes @DPRK_News particularly funny, more so than if similar jokes came from a mock Mother Jones or Rush Limbaugh feed, is the contrast between the supposed Western problem and the reality of North Korea, which is worse by most any measure. The parallel with the accusations from “public health” should be clear: A huge portion of “public health” research is utter junk science, blatantly tortured to serve their special-interest political goals, while research done by the tobacco companies is honest and consistently high quality, and has been for a few decades.
This is true. By way of example, just have a look at the report BAT released today about innovations in tobacco harm reduction here. The striking thing about it is that it is written by people with degrees in proper science such as molecular virology, medical oncology, molecular cell medicine and polymer chemistry. Not, you notice, people trained in sociology, marketing and fixing aeroplanes like you'll find in the parasitic and counterproductive tobacco control industry.

Phillips goes on to suggest a spectrum of scientific credibility, on tobacco harm reduction specifically but can be extended to tobacco too, which - although probably a revelation to most of the public who like to believe in QI-style myths - makes perfect sense if you have the wherewithal to think through the motivations at play.
If you were doing to do an ad hominem ranking of the probability that a research study conclusion is overstated or out-and-out wrong, it would be: major tobacco company at the low end (they wouldn’t dare); e-cigarette company or advocates in between (they have truth on their side and are truth-seeking, but have less to lose and more to gain from pushing beyond what is really solid, and are unlikely to get called out for it); and “public health” people worst by far (their discipline is inherently dishonest, so they have absolutely nothing to lose from lying, and they know the truth is not on their side).
Quite. The proof of this is that you will never see tobacco controllers trying to replicate results of industry science, because they know it is sound (they also lack the required skillset, being sociologists and mechanics etc). Instead, they will always, but always, just scream that it is performed by tobacco companies so should be ignored entirely, and strive to make sure it isn't published anywhere.

So how do we test this hypothesis?

Well, as Phillips was publishing his article, the very scenario was playing itself out in the letters page of The Times. First up is career anti-smoker Mike Daube, a "Professor of health policy" who effectively banned the classic opera Carmen because it is set in a tobacco factory, and then lied about it.


Dropping words in there such as "much debate", "cautious", and "potential harmful", Daube is employing exactly the same 'merchants of doubt' tactics his profession claims were appalling when long-dead tobacco industry execs did the same. In fact, all the doubts and scare stories about e-cigs have been created by him and his charlatan colleagues, and there is no credible science behind any of them. Daube's is a lucrative industry which has long since forgotten what science actually is.

I'm sure I don't have to also remind you that the tobacco industry is not "in the forefront" of anything to do with vaping, in fact they are miles behind the independent sector on e-cigs and their trade accounts for only a small fraction of the market, but Daube doesn't concern himself with that. His only motivation - stung as he is by being called, rightly, a "vapid anti-vaper" - is to ignore any science and instead hark back to decades old actions by tobacco companies to try to pretend e-cigs are some kind of nefarious plot. It doesn't matter that his scare stories are not backed by any evidence whatsoever, and he doesn't even bother - nor has his kind ever - to try to provide real science to justify his stance. Nope, ad hominem all the way.

Exhibit B is on the same page, by the guy who is in charge of all those scientists we spoke about earlier.



As Phillips points out, this is in keeping with how industry operates, and so far removed from tobacco control's cartoon portrayal of tobacco companies that Daube should be embarrassed to raise his head above the parapet and write such vapid nonsense.
Of course they are researching products in their space, along with associated behaviors and health effects, with an expectation that it will help them be more successful in the future — help the individual company, that is, not the mythical unitary “the tobacco industry” the public health people seem to think exists.
BAT are employing specialist scientists not to collude with their competitors and fit in with tobacco control's fantasies, but instead to stay relevant and continue selling stuff when the market is shifting towards harm reduced products. It's not rocket science but vapid anti-vapers - like Daube has self-identified himself as being by writing such a laughable letter - understand business less than they understand science, which is quite astounding considering they don't even have the first clue about the latter.

One day this will be something that is understood widely, but in the meantime we will have to continue to suffer comprehensively stupid old farts like Daube exposing themselves as vapid anti-vapers in response to an article entitled "Vapid Anti-Vapers". Congrats to The Times for helping that along with such an irresistible carrot to mud-hurling lunatics like Daube.