Cowardice In The Face Of Bravery

I have consistently said on these pages - since around 2010 - that e-cigs have the potential to show up the cant and oleaginous hypocrisy of the tobacco control industry. There have been numerous examples of this over the years but a spectacular episode this week in Australia has left all others in the shade.

As Snowdon has remarked, so exasperated are Australia's tobacco control extremists at the relentless advance of vaping, that they have now taken to slandering ordinary vapers and implying they are - every single of them - nothing but shills for the tobacco industry.

It has come about since the Australian government invited submissions to a public inquiry which, quite reasonably, over a hundred vapers accepted and told their stories of how they switched from tobacco to e-cigs (see the inquiry report here). Faced with an avalanche of common sense which threatens to encourage e-cigs to be legalised down under, serial merchant of doubt Simon Chapman started slinging mud and articles such as this emerged in many Australian news organisations.

Exposed: big tobacco's behind-the-scenes 'astroturf' campaign to change vaping laws

World renowned tobacco control expert [sic] Simon Chapman, an emeritus professor at the University of Sydney, said Philip Morris and other interest groups were "astroturfing" - trying to create the illusion of a big grass-roots pro-vaping movement that does not really exist.

This is a quite remarkable direct attack on the public by the geriatric industry-hater. There is absolutely no reason why vapers should not be submitting their stories, in fact it would be exactly what the government would want to see. And, as Terry Barnes points out in the Speccie, public engagement is to be applauded however it comes about.

These people don’t lightly come out of the woodwork, but this is a big thing for them.

Indeed it is. Possession of nicotine is (stupidly) a crime in Australia, so it is incredibly brave of these people to respond in such a way to a consultation such as this. For many, it will have been the very first time they have engaged with the political process, yet Chapman - in an act of cowardice which is in direct contrast to the bravery of the vapers he is attacking - has attempted to slander and demonise them for doing so.

Like me, they share views unpalatable to the public health wowsers: vaping is almost certainly a far lower risk activity than tobacco smoking, the scientific evidence in its favour is mounting, and that if we are serious about harm reduction we should follow Britain, Canada and New Zealand and legalise nicotine vaping on a sensibly regulated basis, not prohibit it as Australia does now.  That they’re prepared to declare themselves should be respected, not denigrated. 

How they became aware of the inquiry is neither here nor there.

Quite.

It is also worth noting that none of the ordinary vapers who responded will have been paid for doing so, yet Chapman has made a career out of being a professional anti-smoker, as have all other gobshites who publish articles which try to tarnish e-cigs. So for him to bandy the term 'astroturf' around is quite astounding.

This is, pathetically, yet another piece of evidence that proves many in the tobacco control industry have no care for health whatsoever. They simply hate the tobacco industry, despise smokers, and are frantic with anger that some have escaped punishment by their hideous and sadistic 'control' methods. If you don't wear the hair shirt and suffer, they will despise you even more than if you carry on smoking.

As Carl Phillips brilliantly identified in 2015, Chapman and his lumpen-brained hangers-on in Australia are nothing but vile, bitter extremists.

The test for anti-tobacco extremism is the answer to the following question: If you could magically change the world so that either (a) there was no use of tobacco products or (b) people could continue to enjoy using tobacco but there was a cheap magic pill that they could take to eliminate any excess disease risk it caused, which would you choose? Anyone who would choose (a) over (b) takes anti-tobacco to its logical extreme, making clear that they object to the behavior, not its effects.

Tobacco control had been reaching increasingly high levels of indecency in the past decade or so, but with this disgusting attack from Chapman, they have raised the bar even further.

He and those who think like him are a real danger to society in more ways than one, so well done to anyone who submitted to the Australian inquiry; we can only hope that the Australian government do the right thing and treat his pathetic smears with the utter contempt that they deserve.