The Big Scream

A blinkered vaper-hating tobacco controller, pictured Thursday

"In tobacco control we call these reactions ‘the scream test’ of policy potency. We’re amused when the industry supports anodyne, useless campaigns like these. And we know we’re on the right track when they behave as they did over plain packaging." - Simon Chapman, 2013

Every right-minded person's favourite Grandad has written today about the hilarious reaction by Irish anti-tobacco extremist James Reilly to Thursday's positive Royal College of Physicians (RCP) Report on e-cigs.

Oh no. The RCP could be wrong. We still don't know if vaping could be harmful in 50 years time. And there are a lot of people in America and elsewhere who have raised doubts [no matter how ludicrous].

Responding, the Irish cancer charity said that while it recognised e-cigarettes were safer than tobacco, it could not recommend them for use as a smoking cessation device until further research was carried out.

Minister for Children Dr James Reilly said he was “very concerned” about e-cigarettes.

“We didn’t have sufficient information and I didn’t want the ‘perfect’ to get in the way of the ‘good’ in relation to including that in the legislation,” Dr Reilly said.

“But the evidence is starting to pile up now that this is a serious problem.”

Actually the evidence is now saying it isn't a problem, but never mind.

Oh joy. It seems that Reilly - a doctor himself, apparently - has been stung badly by a report written by the UK's leading representative body for those in his own profession. Instead of admitting that he may be wrong on this subject, he obviously knows better so will ignore it (if he even read it at all) and just scream the same old shit he has done before.

Curious crusty Simon Chapman - who is a sociologist, not a doctor - is of the same mind. After FOIs revealed he had been corruptly attempting to undermine August's PHE report, he now appears to be sticking his fingers in his ears and refusing to listen to the RCP's conclusions too.

The link refers to the rapid responses at the BMJ where every absurd butthurt anti-nicotine fruitcake has been lining up to pass their ignorant and often laughable opinions about how the RCP is wrong. From the gynaecologist with a sideline in hypnotherapy who can see his income drying up; through the guy who bizarrely used the recent death of Prince to argue against vaping; to the nutjob whose "laser-like" critique amounted to citing Martin McKee and Simon Crapwell's easily-debunked Lancet article which McKee then lied about in the BMJ.

Then, today, the pièce de résistance. A letter to the editor of The Times which is unintentionally hilarious.

Signed by a diminishing cohort of reality-denying lunatic usual suspects including the aforementioned McKee & Chapman, along with opera-banning liar Mike Daube and German extremist Martina "Mendacious" Pötschke-Langer, the letter is a triumph of deliberately disingenuous brat-like screaming so effortlessly filleted by Clive Bates here, an article which I heartily recommend you read in its entirety.

The worst letter of 2016? It’s definitely an early contender

Three of writers of this letter to The Times (McKee, Chapman and Daube) won my “Worst Letter of 2014” award for a deranged letter they wrote to The Lancet, trying to mock a vaper, Lorien Jollye for having the impertinence to disagree with them based on her actual lived experience (my take on that letter is here - DP). But this is very strong: a real contender for  the 2016 award.

And, of course, no tobacco control industry scream is complete without hysterical comment from Mad Stan the aircraft mechanic, eh?

“These guys, in my view, are going off a cliff,” said Stanton A. Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California who has been outspoken in his criticism of e-cigarettes. “They are taking England into a series of policies that five years from now they all will really regret. They are turning England into this giant experiment on behalf of the tobacco industry.”

Add in random medical morons taking to Twitter and Facebook to exhibit their snobby prejudice and blind ignorance of the huge body of evidence in favour of the benefits of e-cigs, and the dramatic increase of newly chronic asthmatics in comments sections, for whom - shorn by the advent of e-cigs of their recently-endowed permission to sneer at many smokers - apparently now insist that even stepping into a shower could push them into an early death by steam so therefore vaping must be banned despite all evidence to the contrary, and we have one of the world's biggest ever collective screams on our hands.

Who knew that such a benign activity as vaping could flush out so many vile anti-social and intolerant arseholes in one fell swoop, eh? As Simon Chapman has taught us, the scream test has been well and truly failed by these ridiculous flat-earthers so the UK triple-whammy of PHE report, RCP report and NCSCT guidance must surely be on entirely the correct track. Hey, Simple Simon made the rules of this game, who am I to not follow them?

But then, I've always said that e-cigs carried the potential of doing just that. So as well as the first word, I'll leave the last word to Grandad too.

Over the years these lies have become the truth purely by virtue of constant repetition.  How often do we hear of the hundreds of thousands who have "died from second hand smoke" or the thousands of kids who take up smoking because they have seen it in a film?  I am not saying that all anti-smokers know they are lying but those at the top definitely do, unless they are totally deranged. 

Then along comes the e-cigarette. 

They had no answer to this device which threatened not only their livelihood but also the profits of their masters in Big Pharma.  Their only answer was to spin more lies in the hope that the momentum would carry them over the bump.  E-cigarettes are leading kids into smoking real cigarettes.  E-cigarettes are carcinogenic and are more dangerous than real cigarettes.  E-cigarettes reduce smokers' chances of quitting.  E-cigarettes explode without warning.  The list is long and tedious. 

They have been called out on their lies in public.

Maybe now people will see they have been lying through their teeth all along?

Quite. The longer these stubborn, narcissistic and inveterate liars scream, the more the public will hopefully see them as the repellent dishonest moon-howlers they (and their colleagues) have always been.

UPDATE: You'd think this would be a parody tweet, but it really isn't. I think they actually mean it.

The echo chamber seems to be collapsing in on itself in ever-decreasing circles. Long may their absurdity continue.