There's A New Idiot In Town

Twat

It may be Christmas Eve where the vast majority of the country has closed down for the holidays, but it seems there is still time for one last piece of cretinous, puritanical, ivory tower codswallop from the 'public health' community.

Via The Times:

Vaping should be banned in public places, Britain’s top family doctor says, signalling a backlash against the enthusiastic welcome of e-cigarettes by the medical establishment. 

Helen Stokes-Lampard, chairwoman of the Royal College of GPs, hit out at e-cigarettes as a “lifestyle choice”, insisting they must be confined to medically supervised attempts to quit smoking.

It seems that, despite the events of 2016, these elitist morons still don't get it.

Stokes-Lampard has only been in her job for just over a month, but is already proving that GPs would probably be far better led by Frank Lampard instead. Her view of e-cigs is so out there where the buses don't run that you have to think seriously about the safety of going to your NHS doctor in the future if this is the kind of profoundly ignorant guidance they can expect to be shovelled.

“The only place that I see vaping has is for people cutting down from smoking on their way to quitting, and therefore the appropriate thing is to treat it like smoking,” Dr Stokes-Lampard said in an interview.

This attitude beggars belief and is so far removed from the consensus of current UK medical opinions about e-cigs that we must either assume she is fishing for headlines to stamp her name on the public's consciousness, or question outright the underlying motive for her uttering such execrable bullshit.

“I think it would be a retrograde step to allow vaping in public places,” she said. Many pubs and restaurants have opted to ban vaping on their premises, as have trains and airports.

Retrograde step? The reason that e-cigs are allowed in public places is that we are not (yet) living in a fascist dictatorship - however much 'public health' attempts to make it so - and there is not, and never will be, proven harm to bystanders from passive vaping. Of course, there is nothing but junk science and innuendo to back up the hysteria over passive smoking either, but since Stokes-Lampard appears to be a fully signed-up member of the cult of tobacco control industry woo, she's too gullible to even reach the first level of understanding of the matter.

This, remember, is the person who has just been put in charge of the organisation that oversees every GP in the United Kingdom. Just pause and think on that for a moment. Truly terrifying, isn't it?

As the NNA described just yesterday, Stokes-Lampard is in the camp of those who know the princely sum of fuck all about what she is pronouncing on.

As the NNA has consistently advocated, a vast number of people derive great pleasure from nicotine just as millions enjoy coffee containing caffeine – both judged to be on the same toxicity level by experts – yet we do not hear of government campaigns to wean the public, or even MPs themselves, off coffee. Smokers are not ill and do not require a medical intervention; in fact, for many the very idea is anathema and would deter them from switching to a less harmful alternative.  

The huge and swift success of vaping in the UK has occurred not because it is viewed exclusively as a smoking cessation device – quite the opposite – instead the success is attributable to vaping being an enjoyable, healthier pastime free from the pressure of real or imagined state coercion. If full nicotine cessation then ensues then so be it, however that should not be the sole consideration. 

This is entirely correct. Smokers don't want to be hectored on high by self-righteous totalitarians like Stokes-Lampard, which is why they are voting with their feet and deserting Stop Smoking Services in their droves in favour of their local vape shop; the result has been a significant decline in smoking prevalence. All that a ban on vaping in public places can possibly do is to slow that down or even slam the bloody phenomenon into reverse gear, yet this ridiculous person - charged with being a thoughtful and wise leader of doctors nationwide, incredibly - doesn't even possess the basic mental capacity to understand even that.

Listen, Helen, we realise it must hurt that smokers are doing things for themselves and don't really need GP lectures any more, but wouldn't it be better if you just shut your vacuous trap instead of jealously endorsing policies which would have the sole effect of deterring people from quitting smoking? Christ on a bike, I thought we'd left this kind of protectionist medical industry ignorance behind when quacks finally conceded that a course of leeches wasn't all it was cracked up to be!

“At the Royal College of GPs we don’t allow people to vape in the building. Until we have the full evidence base we are taking the conservative approach that we do not allow smoking, we do not allow vaping because it’s so closely aligned,” she said.

Yes that's right, Helen, they're one and the same thing. My life, how fucking stupid do you have to be to believe that when all the science says otherwise? Now, I could expect it out of some knuckle-dragging ignoramus down the pub, but this woman is billed as "Britain’s top family doctor"! How bad were the other candidates if this weapons grade bonehead got the job?

Jacob Rees-Mogg MP recently said that "experts, soothsayers and astrologists are all in much the same category", and was lambasted for it by the class of arrogant, over-thinking establishment imbeciles which comprise people such as Helen Stokes-Lampard. Her ignorant wibble on the subject of smokers and vaping has just proved him 100% correct.

Did I ever tell you, by the way, that it's never been about health?