Laughable Bullshit Tsunami Incoming From The Telegraph?

A Telegraph 'expert', pictured yesterday

Like Clive Bates who has blogged about this today in an article entitled "Anti-vaping activists pitch unscientific fringe positions to a national newspaper", I also saw an email detailing how the Telegraph is planning on publishing a massive load of bullshit about vaping tomorrow (Feb 29th apparently) in one of "a series of articles".

"We have spoken to the experts listed below and sought their views on the following topics: the medical concerns surrounding e-cigarettes despite them being promoted as a reduced risk alternative to traditional cigarettes; the marketing of e-cigarettes; the risk to young people of becoming addicted to nicotine via the use of e-cigarettes:"

The first thing that sprung to mind when I read this was what could have prompted it? Were Telegraph writers just sitting around one day wondering what to fill the pages of their newspaper up with when one of them said "I know! Let's do a deep investigation into e-cigs!" to which another may have said "Great idea! Let's get on Google!".

If so, one wonders what the search term must have been to come up with this set of 'experts', which is basically a who's who of wacky ideological fuckwit outliers who are out there where the buses don't run when it comes to the thinking around vaping in this country and beyond.

Professor Simon Capeman, Liverpool University  (Professor Public Health and Policy) 

Professor Anna Gilmore, Bath University (Professor of Public Health and Director of Tobacco Control Research Group) 

Professor Mike Daube, Professor of Health Policy, Curtin University, Perth, Australia and Director of the Public Health Advocacy Institute and the McCusker Centre for Action on Alcohol and Youth 

Professor Stanton Glantz, Director Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, California University 

Professor Martin McKee, Professor of European Public Heath, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and former President of the Faculty of Public Health 

Dr Gabriel Scally, President of Epidemiology and Public Health, Royal; Society of Medicine 

Professor John Ashton, former president of public health at the Royal Colleges of Physicians and former president of UK Public Health 

John Dicey, Global CEO Allen Carr’s EasyWay 

Robin Ireland, former chief executive of the Health Equalities Group

Shall we go through them one by one? 

Professor Simon Capeman, Liverpool University  (Professor Public Health and Policy)

Does anyone remember Sarah Knapton? Well, she is/was a science editor (pfft) at the Telegraph who once wrote an astonishingly stupid article entitled "E-cigarettes are no safer than smoking tobacco, scientists warn" which was roundly condemned as being utter garbage. Her article was so very bad that she is now immortalised in Hansard as a junk scientist by Lord Callanan.

Much of the problem stems from media reporting of junk science. The worst example was a headline in the Telegraph in December, which screamed: “E-cigarettes are no safer than smoking tobacco”. It was a nonsense report based on, as I said, junk science.

The reason I mention her is that she had a roladex or something where she was hooked up with just about every junk science peddler in the safer nicotine debate. It would be a very slim roladex since there aren't too many of them these days. She is not the one who sent the email but it would appear that someone has been raiding her list of conspiracy theorist ne'er-do-wells and looks to have got confused between Simon Capewell and Simon Chapman.

So let's assume this one is Simon "Capslock"Capewell due to the location. The guy who tweets like a kid with ADHD, always in capitals and never a care for calm evidence-assessment. A far left business-hating prohibitionist who wants just about everything banned from fizzy drinks, through pizza and of course harm reduction products, he is part of a north west enclave of denialists who are ignoring anything sent to them by central organisations and even government itself despite deriving their funding from that source.

Professor Anna Gilmore, Bath University (Professor of Public Health and Director of Tobacco Control Research Group) 

Anna "anything for a grant" Gilmore has carved out a career in smearing industry of any stripe for cash. Recently awarded $20m by Bloomberg to make her smears global. Heavily incentivised to find fault with everything industry does because, erm, that's how she gets paid.

Professor Mike Daube, Professor of Health Policy, Curtin University, Perth, Australia and Director of the Public Health Advocacy Institute and the McCusker Centre for Action on Alcohol and Youth 

A geriatric former British tobacco controller now living in Perth, Australia. He was condemned by the PM of Australia in 2014 for leading calls to ban a performance of the opera, Carmen, because it is set in a cigarette factory. He was caught lying about that episode and is on record stating that e-cigs are a tobacco control conspiracy. Australia bans e-cigs for little reason whatsoever and is desperately fighting against a wavering Australian government which looks like it may join neighbours New Zealand in regulating vaping, much to his embarrassment. No conflict of interest there then.

Professor Stanton Glantz, Director Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, California University 

Where do we start? The world's biggest pharma-funded anti-vaping liar who said in December that vapers should go back to smoking. Currently embroiled in a bit of a kerfuffle after being accused of sexual harassment and stealing accreditation from female students in his team. His university settled out of court for $150k to avoid too many #MeToo negative headlines. His high-profile 'feminist' colleagues are silent about his antics but he is still being pursued by anti-misogynist groups who want to know why his university was rewarded with more grant money despite the scandal

Professor Martin McKee, Professor of European Public Heath, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and former President of the Faculty of Public Health

Porky Paddy who FOI responses showed had lied in the BMJ and to the Guardian over comments he clearly made.  For a professor of 'public health' to deliberately lie in his profession's most prominent journal should surely call into question any integrity he claims to possess, but despite having a huge conflict of interest he is deemed an objective 'expert' by the Telegraph apparently. Even Debs Arnott of ASH called him out as an outlier on national TV news for his extreme, biased and ideological views.

Dr Gabriel Scally, President of Epidemiology and Public Health, Royal; Society of Medicine 

Not sure where Scally fits in here, I haven't seen what he says about e-cigs since he blocked me on Twitter after he threw a hissy fit about having to obey the law and respond to FOI requests during the plain packs campaign. A committed left-wing former NHS lead from the south west, it will be interesting to see what his 'expert' testimony is considering I'd heard he was amenable to harm reduction but despises big businesses, especially those who sell products containing nicotine. In this kind of company, he could actually be a fig leaf of objective balance.

Professor John Ashton, former president of public health at the Royal Colleges of Physicians and former president of UK Public Health 

Notice it says "former"? Yeah, because he lost that job after an astonishing Saturday evening in 2014 where - fuelled by what substance we don't know but suspect must have been mood-altering - he launched a night-long attack on vapers on social media. You can read the extraordinary goings-on here, some of them extremely creepy. Like Glantz and McKee, what should have been career-ending behaviour was passed over by 'public health' and he was reinstated to the Faculty of Public Health with just a small demotion.

John Dicey, Global CEO Allen Carr’s EasyWay

A business which has been rocked to its core by the advent of e-cigs which are a huge threat to their global sales of quit smoking books. No conflict of interest there then.

Robin Ireland, former chief executive of the Health Equalities Group

Yet another from the last bastion of e-cig denialism in the north west acting like Japanese soldiers still fighting an imaginary war once everyone else has gone home. Part of the Healthy Stadia group which lied to football and rugby clubs to get bans on vaping outdoors at their venues, in direct contravention of guidance being given by Public Health England at the time. Hopelessly pharma-conflicted.

And this is the stellar cast that the Telegraph thinks is an objective panel to pronounce on the benefits or otherwise of vaping. That Google search must have been pretty specifically worded to come up with just about every crank and looneytune in the harm reduction debate, whilst not picking up Public Health England, the Royal College of Physicians, Cancer Research UK, the UK government, Stoptober, Royal Society of Public Health and countless other organisations who have all sifted the evidence and are welcoming towards e-cigs.

The star journos at the Telegraph 'science' department seem also to have missed the Cochrane review - the gold standard of research - which contradicts everything their carefully-selected fruit loops and extremist bullshitters have fed the gullible hacks at the Telegraph.

And another thing. You have to wonder why so many left-wing, vehemently Brexit-hating 'public health' freaks are so fond of a Brexit cheerleader such as the Telegraph. Could it be that - via the Sarah Knapton link - it is the only newspaper still remotely willing to publish their crap?

And it truly is bullshit. A tsunami of it. Bates has gone through each one of their ridiculous assertions in this blog article, I do recommend you read it, it will raise a smile or two I promise.

So now we just wait to see what execrable nonsense the Telegraph comes out with tomorrow. It could be a classic of its genre, a masterclass in fake news and the best bit? They are making it a series! Get the popcorn in, this could be great fun. Did I ever tell you it's not about health? 

The WHO Has Finally Lost It

It's long been a tactic of fraudulent, debate-phobic, anti-smoking organisations to react to a threat to their propaganda by simply pointing a Neanderthal finger and grunting "ug, Big Tobacco". It's just far easier than ​defending their extremist quackery with reasoned argument, just as their stock-in-trade junk science is easier than actually doing the proper stuff.

The problem for them, though, is that methods which worked to dupe a gullible public with smoking don't help achieve the same confidence trick for the plethora of reduced risk products increasingly coming to the market, and they are too stupid to realise that. So it puts them in a position of often being left with impotent arguments which, quite frankly, make them look extremely silly.

Take the World Health Organisation's press release on 9th February for example. Now, either it was written by a 12 year old or the WHO have gone stark staring bonkers.

WHO condemns misleading use of its name in marketing of heated tobacco products 

BAT claims that the vapour formed by the heating the process “contains around 90-95% less toxicants than the smoke in conventional cigarettes.” The company qualifies this claim in a footnote by stating:

This is a comparison between the smoke from combusted tobacco in a standard 3R4F reference cigarette (approximately 9mg tar), and the vapour from heated tobacco in glo^TM, in terms of the nine types of harmful components which the World Health Organisation recommends to reduce. These qualities do not necessarily mean this product produces less adverse health effects than other tobacco products. 

Today, WHO clarifies that it is in no way endorsing BAT’s product nor the company’s claims concerning about the product.

I don't think anyone in their right mind would consider that the low intellect shroud-waving blowhards at the WHO would ever endorse a BAT product, and it's not what BAT would have been hoping for anyway.

You see, these cretins at the WHO are actually condemning BAT for, erm, following WHO guidance on what toxins the WHO demand be reduced in tobacco smoke. Here they are.

So, WHO release guidance of what must be done. BAT do it and find they have reduced the levels of those nine toxicants by 90%-95%. WHO slams BAT for actually taking the increasingly pathetic WHO seriously. Incredible.

They didn't leave it at that, either, moon-howlers never do. So they illustrated their world-class ignorance by screaming it on social media as well.

The only safe level of tobacco use is ZERO.
WHO condemns British American Tobacco’s misleading attempt to associate WHO with its products https://t.co/hVaQDadBGe #NoTobacco pic.twitter.com/8ZGNornBsk

— WHO (@WHO) February 9, 2018

In their PR, the WHO was also very quick to angrily dismiss any claims about reduced risk for BAT's new heated tobacco product.

Currently, there is no evidence to demonstrate that HTPs are less harmful than conventional tobacco products. Some tobacco industry-funded studies have claimed that there are significant reductions in the formation of and exposure to harmful and potentially harmful constituents relative to standard cigarettes. However, there is currently no evidence to suggest that reduced exposure to these chemicals translates to reduced risk in humans. Therefore, additional independent studies will be required to substantiate claims of reduced risk/harm.

Well yes, you fucking supranational idiots. This is why BAT specifically said "These qualities do not necessarily mean this product produces less adverse health effects than other tobacco products" in their publicity. You even quoted it, just scroll up in the thing you just bloody wrote for Chrissakes.

BAT played by your pathetic rules and you didn't like it, did you? Your knuckle-dragging execs just wanted to take aim at a tobacco company but ended up punching themselves in their fucktarded faces with their own misapplied logic. This is car crash stuff. 

And as for "no evidence", what was the point of the WHO advocating for a reduction in toxicants if they are now claiming that, magically, reducing exposure does no good if a tobacco company actually achieves it? Massively reducing exposure to toxins is what the WHO specifically demand as a way of reducing harm, and this is what we would expect, given they are designed to avoid combustion. It seems that once again the WHO is changing the long-established rules of physics and biology because, well, they're just a bunch of industry-hating planks.

Finally, this stance by the WHO is even more astonishing considering The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control - the bastard child of the WHO - defines tobacco control as a concept which embraces harm reduction, at Article 1(d).

(d) “tobacco control” means a range of supply, demand and harm reduction strategies that aim to improve the health of a population by eliminating or reducing their consumption of tobacco products and exposure to tobacco smoke;

Yet when this actually happens, the WHO embarrass themselves in public, throw themselves on the floor, thump their fists into the ground and scream "it's not fair!". I've met 5 year olds who are more mature and intelligent than the incompetent fucknuckles who wrote the 9th Feb press release. Why do we taxpayers have to fund such a laughable parody of a health authority?

The world has turned upside down: the WHO and their tax-gobbling tobacco control chums continually slate 'Big Tobacco' for having lied in the past by claiming some products were safer when they weren't. Now, we have products that actually are safer, and government and NGOs are lying to the public about that, and trying their damnedest to prevent industry from communicating accurately to the population. In short, the WHO are lying to the public and deliberately denying smokers access to products purely because they don't like who makes them, even if the WHO's own guidance is being followed to the letter. Far from governments funding this kind of criminal fraud, whoever comes out with this kind of shit should be in prison.

The WHO is unelected, unaccountable, and entirely unregulated. They can say what they like, however fraudulent, and nothing happens. It's like the Wild West except that exponentially more people are at risk of dying at the hands of the WHO than any badass hired gunslinger could ever hope to imagine.

The WHO has finally completely lost the plot and these deranged histrionics will no doubt be repeated at COP8 in Geneva in October this year. You can bet your mortgage that the FCTC will attempt to have heat not burn products banned throughout the world.

Who's up for a trip to Switzerland? Maybe some of us could pop over there and attempt to point out to them that whatever they think they are doing, it's certainly nothing to do with health. 

Public Health Rogue Traders

Some of you may have caught a segment on The One Show yesterday evening where Matt Allwright visited the Vape Expo event in Birmingham.

It was a surprisingly positive piece from the guy who is known for exposing Rogue Traders, and if you missed it you can watch it here from 41:30 minutes in. It was even complemented at the end with Andrew Marr giving his opinion that vaping is "an entirely good thing". Not bad, huh?

However, I think he missed the real story here.

Yesterday also saw a Westminster Hall debate secured by Gareth Johnson, MP for Dartford, where he pointed out some of the absurdities of the regulations imposed on us by the EU. You can watch the whole thing here but keep an eye out for the part from 9:25 mins where Johnson tells other MPs about the ridiculous warnings on hardware - which I wrote about last week - that blatantly lie to the public.

Because, you see, the real appalling story that needs publicising about e-cigs and vaping is the disgraceful regulations applied by 'public health', as I touched upon in August.

However, what was most striking is that the stall-holders had almost abandoned selling pre-mixed nicotine-containing e-liquid altogether! Yes, you could buy 10ml TPD-compliant bottles but I didn't see many people doing that. In previous years 30ml, 60ml, and even 100ml bottles of ready-to-vape liquids were available at advantageous festival prices, but - of course - the TPD has ensured that those size bottles are now banned. 

So the upshot is that the industry has moved to selling the concentrates (flavours) instead, to be mixed by vapers themselves. Just think about that for a moment. By observing their absurd 'precautionary principle' to supposedly protect vapers and children from the overblown dangers of nicotine in e-liquid, tedious shroud-waving tobacco controllers and their dim weasel-headed EU pals have created a situation whereby liquids are not mixed in a clean environment by professionals, but instead in kitchens up and down the country by vapers buying illicit nicotine base from China ... because you can't get that in anything over 10ml bottles either. 

Instead of pharma-grade nicotine being mixed in sterile conditions with professional equipment, it is now being mixed in houses and flats using a Kenwood Chef and nicotine stored in domestic freezers, in whatever bottles are available, by people with varying levels of competence at mixing DIY juice.

Now, I've heard the trend at Vape Expo was for "short fills", that is where a 60ml bottle is filled to 50ml with a nicotine free liquid which would then be topped up with a 10ml bottle of "nic shot". This is perfectly understandable. Vapers don't want to buy stupid 10ml bottles - a regulation the EU imposed for no decent reason whatsoever - so the result is a get-around which is perfectly reasonable.

Except that just about the only part of the EU TPD that relates to vaping that anyone can possibly say makes sense is the part demanding that anything containing nicotine must be 'notified' to the MHRA so they know what is in it. This, of course, doesn't apply to liquids that do not contain nicotine. The short fill bottles, being nicotine free, can contain whatever the manufacturer wants them to contain, there is no scrutiny whatsoever!

My spies at Vape Expo tell me that there has been a noticeable uptick in nic free short fills from countries like the USA and Malaysia where no standards apply and there is absolutely no control on what is in them. So what the fucking morons who devised the TPD have created is a market where vapers are buying black market nicotine from China and mixing in their kitchen, or walking around with a bottle of nicotine and a bottle of flavouring - the contents of which they have no clue about - and mixing themselves when they never wanted to before. Precisely what the myopic cretins in 'public health' wanted to avoid.

Far from regulating the industry - which had a good record of regulating itself - the TPD has managed to take a beneficial free market and turn it into the fucking wild west, all because a few tobacco controllers either see their Caribbean holiday evaporating through redundancy or simply just can't bear to see smokers quitting without suffering the hair shirt.

The real story that Matt Allwright missed with his visit to Vape Expo is that 'public health' are the Rogue Traders who need to be humiliated. They are the ones who have screwed everything up and are potentially causing a massive amount of harm. There have been no deaths attributable to vaping so far worldwide, but if we ever see one it will most likely be tobacco control who caused it.

If 'public health' was serious about preventing harm from vaping, they would immediately demand that the regulations on bottle sizes be scrapped. But it's never been about health, so they won't. 

"Get Him Off The Island, Export The Problem"

Over the years, I've written a fair amount about John Dalli, the former Maltese EU health commissioner who was sacked over an allegation that he solicited bribes from Swedish Match to overturn the snus ban. The whole affair was very murky (you can read my articles about it here) and was never fully resolved, but the BBC have just aired a programme that investigates the case by talking to Dalli himself.

Along with eventually maintaining the ridiculous and damaging EU ban on snus, Dalli was also reported to have once said that e-cigs are "just as bad as traditional cigarettes" and he makes the same claim briefly at the start of this show. Allegations of crookedness aside, what comes across in this 60 minute film is just how incredibly incompetent the guy is. Yet, before his ignominious dismissal he was entrusted to deliver the TPD for 500 million people and was backed by the European tobacco control industry who never questioned him.

I would heartily recommend you pour yourself your favourite beverage and watch the show, Storyville: The Great European Cigarette Mystery, by clicking here. 

Awkward Facts Emerge From France

Oh dear. It seems that, just like in Australia, plain packaging is having the same polar opposite effect that tobacco control industry troughers were hoping for in France.

Via The Local:

Smoking on the rise in France despite rollout of plain packaging

Since France introduced a ban on branded cigarettes in January 2017, more packets of cigarettes have been sold compared to last year when branding was allowed, according to the country's Customs Office (L'administration des Douanes). 

In March alone the French bought four million packets of cigarettes, over four percent more than during the same period last year.

It's a bit of a dog's breakfast, isn't it?

The problem for tobacco control is that they delude themselves on a daily basis, and have done for decades. Sitting in their ensconced echo chamber shunning all meaningful debate with the outside world, they have become accustomed to convincing themselves that their policy-led rhetoric is somehow a form of truth, despite being the very opposite.

In this case, they have hoodwinked themselves into being very confident that a policy which every man or woman on the street knows won't work, will. They are so incredibly naive that I really should get round to designing that brochure to show off the fine array of handsome-looking bridges that I intend to market to them in the near future.

It's easy to see how their heroic predictions for plain packaging were rooted in sand when you take a quick glance at the ridiculous propaganda they utilised to get the daft idea past wooden-top MPs in the first place. Apparently it would make the warnings more visible, yeah, so what? No-one looks at them after the first glance. They would increase calls to quit lines, yeah so what? Calling a quit line and actually quitting are entirely different things, as the NHS agrees. It is the opinion of tobacco controllers that the policy they have their future income pinned on will work, yeah so what? Everyone has an opinion, and by the law of averages around 50% of them will be wrong - considering tobacco control comes from a low, fact-devoid base, their opinions are invariably less accurate than that.

Christ! Cancer Research UK even provided them a study where kids told how they have never seen the 'glitzy' packs that they were getting so agitated about! What does it take to make these morons realise it's a dud policy? Does it need to be tattooed on their palms before they start to get it?

So, no, it's not a surprise that plain packaging is failing in France. In fact, it's very predictable.

Just last week, a piece of worthless fantasy bullshit stated that 300,000 smokers would quit in the next year solely as a result of plain packaging. We already know this is star-gazing fuckwittery from people so inept that they shouldn't be allowed to handle a sharpened pencil without supervision. They are not just living in cloud cuckoo land, they are whacked off their heads on crack while living in cloud cuckoo land ... yet government pays them!

Meanwhile, in Australia, tobacco control's Clown-in-Chief is valiantly trying to paint lipstick on his pig of an idea.

It has always been maintained that the tobacco industry fought plain packs because it took away premium branding and the ability to fight competitors for market share, therefore ossifying the market. No tobacco company believed for a second it would harm sales.

Chappers has been pointing to "The Scream Test" as proof positive that plain packs was a winner for years, but now it's been shown to be a damp squib - as anyone not a self-deluded tobacco control cultist knew would be the case - he's even trying to deny reality that is in front of his very eyes. What goes on in the limited mind of someone like that? So the scream test was proof that it will work and now it isn't working the scream test proves that the French are talking bollocks? The mind boggles.

Simon, it's not working in France! This is a fact. Howling at the moon and restating that it surely must work because 'Big Tobacco' fought it doesn't change that. It is you that has the problem of comprehension, sunshine, not the rest of us who live in the real world.

It's long past time we stopped paying these people. Tobacco control is packed to the gunwales with propagandists, junk scientists, chancers, journeyman no-marks, charlatans and weapons grade cretins. Politicians and civil servants, for the love of whichever deity you have faith in or not, turn the fucking tax tap off.

Please?

See also: The curse of plain packaging - VGIF

An Outbreak Of Truth On The ASH Twitter Feed

Unless the cleaners got hold of ASH's Twitter feed on Good Friday or something, was this a fleeting glimpse of real life intruding on the fantasy economics they usually try to present to the world?

The influx of cheap, illicit cigarettes into Malaysia has taken a heavy toll https://t.co/3VCfEbjSrL @MsiaChronicle

— ASH (@ASH_LDN) April 14, 2017

Indeed it has, as the article they link to describes.

THE numbers have reached a staggering level. For every two cigarettes smoked in Malaysia, one is an illicit cigarette. 

In other words, the share of the cigarette black market has reached 57.1 per cent as at December 2016, based on Nielsen Cigarette Study 2016.

By Christ! How could this sorry state of affairs have happened?

Right now, illicit cigarettes are priced between 17 and 25 sen per stick at the retail level. 

This compares with 85 sen per stick for legitimate cigarettes. This includes the excise rate of 40 sen per stick. 

No wonder the industry volume for legitimate cigarettes has been on a sharp decline. Last year, the volume fell 25 per cent to just eight billion sticks from 2015, much less than the number of illicit cigarettes.

Perhaps that is the part - about tobacco companies not selling as many legal cigarettes - which attracted ASH's attention, I dunno. It's true to say that the richly-funded tobacco control Goliath's emphasis has long since become a crusade against industry rather than having anything to do with health, so that would fit very nicely.

Except it's not the whole story (emphases mine).

One worrying effect is that the number of smokers is on the rise, not on the decline. 

Seven out of 10 youths are buying illegal products, according to the Health Ministry. 

According to the Health Ministry’s Global Adult Tobacco Survey 2011, the number of smokers in Malaysia was 4.75 million. 

Subsequently, the ministry’s National Health and Morbidity Survey (NHMS) 2015 – Reports on Smoking Status among Malaysian Adults reported that the number of smokers increased to five million. 

However, cigarette prices during the same period increased by an average of more than 30 per cent. If cigarette price increases really do have a correlation with smoking cessation, the percentage of smokers would have dropped.

Blimey! Do they mean that applying excise to cigarettes to an extortionate degree inevitably leads to a burgeoning black market? But ASH have always said this is nonsense, a figment of the tobacco industry's imagination in fact!

Still, I suppose in Malaysia there could be a partial solution to this 'problem' with the advent of risk reduction products like e-cigs, couldn't there? Yeah, well kinda.

Looking at the treatment of vaping in Malaysia is like entering a frightening 1984 world of doublespeak. The Deputy Education Minister is quoted as saying: “We must go to schools. And parents must be aware that e-cigs and vape are no different from tobacco products… We must ‘de-normalise’ smoking.” 

And as if vape replacing smoking wasn’t denormalising smoking to begin with, the paper repeats the hysterical calls from the Association of Adolescent Health: “[We] urged the Health Ministry to take aggressive steps to protect our youth from the harmful effects of using e-cigs or vape, by implementing a complete ban on the manufacturing, distribution and marketing, of the devices.”

So, faced with too many Malaysians smoking, both young and old, the response from the country's government - which apparently doesn't like the prevalence of smoking though you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise from their daft policies - is to ramp up tobacco taxes to ridiculous levels and stamp hard with a steel toe-capped Doc Marten boot on any potential alternative.

Now, considering ASH are the most vocal organisation in the UK for punishing the poor by demanding eye-watering tobacco tax rises; were frenzied in their support for the EU's TPD which puts huge concrete blocks in front of vaping as an alternative; admitted they don't give a shit about collateral damage; and have been utterly silent as vape ban after vape ban is introduced in the UK, I suppose we should find it refreshing that they are tweeting about articles proving their approach is irresponsible and not even remotely to do with health.

And if they are going to choose a weekend on which to repent on Twitter, admit their sins, and illustrate why their policies are counter-productive, self-serving, mendacious and retarded, the Easter one is as good as any.

Meanwhile, it looks like we here are still firmly on the side of the angels because, for years, we have been warning that price prohibition and over-regulation will have this effect. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, huh?

H/T @d4nno_

The March Of Progress

Thanks to @taffyjock81 on Twitter for this gem.

Back in 2015, ITV news trumpeted the launch of the first ever "quit shop" in Wales. Its unique selling point was quite interesting (emphasis mine).

Wales's first quit smoking shop has opened its doors in Cwmbran. 

It aims to help people quit smoking altogether, rather than simply switching to e-cigarettes.

With the direction of travel in the UK driving headlong towards non-medical avenues such as vaping, Stop Smoking Wales had decided to buck the trend and ignore what is quite obviously the future. All that was needed, they figured, was a shop instead of a clinic. Brilliant! Then the state-sponsored gum would fly off the shelves! Very smart it looked too!

Communities and forums would soon be created, there would be Patchfest 2015 and, most importantly, Stop Smoking Advisers would save themselves from the dole.

The problem, though - as with all public sector operations - is that they were thinking with someone else's wallet rather than their brains. It's been pretty clear for quite some time where the wise money is going.

A sharp decline in the number of smokers using an NHS support programme to help them quit has been linked to the rise in popularity of e-cigarettes.  

Nationwide figures have shown a similar trend to those in the south west of Scotland.  

In 2013, the Information Services Division reported that the number of attempts to stop smoking had fallen by 13% compared with 2012.

A businessman would conclude that throwing a bigger overhead at a decreasing client base is not a particularly good idea, but where there's a magic money tree there's a way, eh? Or maybe not.

It is a trial by Stop Smoking Wales which, if successful, could result in more 'stop shops' opening across Wales.

It doesn't look to have been that successful as a trailblazer, sadly, since it wasn't long before this scintillating idea was relegated to a trestle table in the shopping centre.

Our team in Cwmbran has been in the town centre giving information on the stop smoking services available to people living locally. pic.twitter.com/xWsbyujTIH

— Stop Smoking Wales (@StopSmokingW) October 6, 2016

It seems that the shop has since been abandoned entirely as the silly idea that it was, and has now been replaced by something far more suited to make money from exactly the same site. I'm sure you're well ahead of me in guessing what is there now instead.

What delicious irony, huh? God Speed Infinity Mist Cwmbran, and all who sail in her. 

The Latest EU Health Commissioner Hasn't A Clue Either

A few years ago I wrote about why appointing EU commissioners from low populated states ensured their incompetence.

When England play football against San Marino, what generally happens? Well, they get thrashed of course. In fact, they get thrashed by just about everyone because they're pants. Even Scotland can put a couple past them! 

It's not their fault. It's just that their population is so small that there is very little talent to choose from. Pitting 31,000 San Marinoans - or whatever they're called - against 53 million Englanders is only going to end in one result. 

It's why, in football, San Marino are not given equal privileges with more successful (normally more populated) nations. They are not thrown into competition draws on an equal footing with Germany and Spain because that would be monumentally stupid; would make football a laughing stock; and would result in the game being devalued as a result. 

The situation with the EU is entirely different, though. You see, there are 27 member nations and they are all treated equally, which means that the least populous member - Malta with fewer than 500,000 citizens - is afforded the same importance as Germany (with 81 million) when it comes to allocating EU Commissioners. 

Worse than that, though, Malta isn't handed something inconsequential which can't harm one billion EU citizens - like pronouncing on treatment of stray ducks, for example - no, they are currently placed in charge of the continent's health!

The EU, however, has corrected this fundamental problem and has since installed a Lithuanian, Vytenis Andriukaitis, to carry the portfolio for half a billion EU citizens. It's a step in the right direction considering the country's population is close to 3 million!

Sadly, not a significant step because the EU health gig is still being handled by an idiot. Here are a few excerpts from his speech to the European Conference on Tobacco or Health (ECToH) in Porto this week.

Some people say smoking is a matter of choice. Is it really? Do you have a choice if you start smoking as a teenager, as most people do, and then get addicted? Addiction is not a choice! 

Do you have a choice if you use a product that can kill you – and you did not know about it?

Where have you been Vytenis? The EU has demanded cigarette packs say "Smoking Kills" in bold font for nearly 15 years now. The dangers of smoking have been pretty well-known for 50 years, the teaching of anti-smoking propaganda in schools is de rigeur in every nation on the planet. Did not know about it? Great advert for the knuckle-dragging nature of your citizens if that's what you believe, chum.

Evidence shows that people are less likely to smoke if packs display these warnings uninterrupted by branding, logos and marketing designs. This is what we call plain packaging.

Evidence shows nothing of the sort, sunshine. We'll presume that you're playing to the crowd with bullshit considering your crowd is trouser-stuffing tax troughers who desperately need to make plain packaging a success, despite no evidence anywhere in the world proving that it is.

One person's freedom to smoke cannot override another person's right not be exposed to carcinogenics! This is a violation of children's rights.

Carcinogenics? (sic)

It comes as no surprise that the countries ranking the highest - in the new Tobacco Control Scale presented earlier - are implementing well some of the measures I have mentioned.

Yep, just a shame that their ranking in the scale has no bearing whatsoever as to how successful they are at reducing smoking prevalence.

In addition, we must follow closely the scientific and market developments regarding electronic cigarettes – these should not become the gateway for new smokers.

Well, Vytenis, if you actually did follow the "scientific developments" you'd know that there is no gateway, it's a manufactured tobacco control wank fantasy, nothing more.

And if e-cigarettes are to be considered as a possible smoking cessation tool, then they need to be authorised as pharmaceuticals and sold in pharmacies.

They're already a cessation tool for millions; for the vast majority specifically because they are not a pharmaceutical product. At this point we need to refer to Lithuania's e-cig policy and, surprise surprise, they're banned.

Nothing much changes, does it? In 2013, we had a Maltese moron who declared that e-cigs are as bad as smoking, now we have another low-intellect Commissioner from a different non-league nation spouting the same execrable bollocks while the clapping seals of ignorant tobacco controllers lap it all up.

I emphasise, again, that this cretin is in charge of the health of half a billion people, while I'm struggling to understand how he manages to cram so much stupid into just the one life.

Remind me, when is it we are allowed to leave the EU? 

The 'Rigour' Of Simple Simon

If you ask the public what they understand by the title of "academic", they might imagine an austere and profoundly thoughtful sciencey type who will dot every i and cross every t before issuing their opinion.

But tobacco control 'academics' are far from that stereotype. Take Simple Simon Chapman, for example.

Erm Simon, the vape industry doesn't assure us it is "safe", but they do tend to refer to current evidence which suggests e-cigs are safer than smoking, and there has been no credible evidence so far that vaping results in any harm.  "Looks dodgy" really doesn't cut it as rigorous academic opinion from the decrepit Aussie vandal-cum-pub singer, now does it? In fact, it looks more like behaviour people like Chappers used to condemn from the tobacco industry when accusing them of being "Merchants of Doubt". Tweeting that vaping "looks dodgy" and hinting that industry would say that, wouldn't they, is quite obviously designed to create doubt without any evidence to support it.

Hardly the rigorous academic, eh?

As mentioned the other day, he is also a bit woolly and confused when researching where quotes he remembers seeing have been published.

However, his lack of rigour is probably most acute when assessing conflicts of interest. You see, when struggling against the weight of evidence proving his daft assertions wrong he will routinely play the "you're paid" or "conflict of interest" ad hom card which, in my humble opinion, means he immediately loses said debate.

But he's not so concerned about his own conflicts when promoting self-congratulatory, narcissistic books about ... Simon Chapman. In an article in The Conversation last week, Simple Simon basically argued that science wasn't about rigorous objective analysis, oh no, it was about producing headlines.

Except that the piece was clearly promotion for his new book.

It is blatant commercialism, and with no declared conflicts of interest.  Both he and the University of Sydney stand to benefit from this promotion, but this isn't declared. The University of Sydney is both a partner/funder of The Conversation and also publisher of the book by ... Simon Chapman.

So many blurred lines and lack of transparency mean that Chappers, the University and The Conversation are conflicted. Worth remembering next time the crusty clown accuses others of that kind of thing - as he very often does - isn't it? 

Simple Simon's Six Year Long Senior Moment

I suppose we should expect it from a tobacco control industry which despises comments sections so either doesn't have them or censors the fuck out of them, but it's a common occurrence that they often get quite incredibly confused about which person outside of their echo chamber said what.

Take, for example, my Tobacco Tactics page which attributes me as calling Debs Arnott a "wanker". I'm extremely proud of that page - hilariously inaccurate as it is - so much so that a screen grab of it is my Twitter banner. And although I'm wrongly attributed as calling Arnott a wanker - because it was actually Timmy who said it and I merely quoted him - I'm not overly-fussed because it's fair to say I don't think much of her.

I've also been blocked before on Twitter for quoting others while the person who I quoted from has escaped without sanction, so I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding of how blogs and social media work going on within the tobacco control industry. My Tobacco Tactics page has not been updated since 2012 but I reckon - considering the idea was to pretend everyone on the site was motivated by industry cash - that's about the time they found out I actually am a member of the public who simply despises them so there was no point spending more of CRUK's £56k donated cash and Smokefree South West's £350k taxpayer funding on editing it for accuracy.

Still, that's all just momentary stupidity. What is more worrying though is the case of Simple Simon Chapman, who has been confused about a quote that particularly irked him for about six years now.

Here's what he said about it in 2014 in the BMJ.

Here are some choice examples [Chris Snowdon] has fired at me in recent years: 23 May 2011: “His insane wibblings are worrying yes, but still bloody funny to read. It's quite incredible that such a retard has achieved so high a profile since he must take 10 minutes every morning figuring out how his trouser zip works.”

No, you crusty fruitcake, that was me. I know it's confusing that it was in the comments at Snowdon's site, but it was definitely me. Here's the original.

That was funny enough in 2014, but it appears that the daft geriatric carp-botherer still seems unsure as to who actually said it, as exhibited by the publicity for his new exercise in narcissism book.

The Sydney University shop page says it was me, deftly removing the bit about finding his zip.

Yet the tweet currently pinned at the top of his timeline directs you to a scanned preview of the published book, which claims the quote is Snowdon's.

It's worth noting that this is someone who spent 20 years editing a supposedly peer reviewed journal and yet seems to allow simple errors like that to pass him by. Surely there must be some other explanation for his being unable to fathom something very simple for six long years.

Senility is no laughing matter. You have to have a heart of stone not to feel for the old duffer as he sent his manuscript and promotional materials off to the publishers thinking one minute it was Snowdon, next minute it was me, before forgetting what he was doing entirely and falling asleep at 4pm.

Therefore, I think it fair that I help the fool out and clarify matters to save his six year long addled confusion, so I am writing to Darlington Press to helpfully inform them that the attribution of that quote as apparently published is wrong and potentially defamatory to Snowdon and the IEA.

I would hate it if they had to pulp the dozen copies they had printed ready for the early rush, but I'm a caring guy. Simple Simon can thank me later.

Smoke Signals by Simon Chapman is available at Amazon, currently "#6,059,190 in Books"

Is There Something In The Water In Wales?

A few years ago, I hinted that perhaps small populations don't tend to be conducive to producing a large talent pool.

When England play football against San Marino, what generally happens? Well, they get thrashed of course. In fact, they get thrashed by just about everyone because they're pants. Even Scotland can put a couple past them! 

It's not their fault. It's just that their population is so small that there is very little talent to choose from. Pitting 31,000 San Marinoans - or whatever they're called - against 53 million Englanders is only going to end in one result.

I'm starting to think that this population handicap could be the reason why Welsh officialdom seems to be populated by utter dickheads. How else does one explain this week's asinine and Luddite advice about e-cigs from Public Health Wales?

• ENDS should feature alongside other health-harming substances e.g. tobacco and alcohol, in all health education for children and young people, and be presented as harmful to health.
• A systematic enforcement programme should be developed to minimise the sales of ENDS to those less than 18 years of age, including development of a register of retailers and systematic test-purchasing, prosecution and media activity.
• ‘Confectionary-like’ (sic) flavours of e-liquid should not be permitted, in order to reduce the appeal of ENDS to children and young people.
• There should be restrictions on the use of ENDS in settings predominantly used by children e.g. in schools and school grounds and around the entrances to schools.
• There should be restrictions on the advertising of ENDS in all media that would be regularly viewed by children and young people.

So, fresh from being frustrated in their attempt to ban vaping in all public places - for no reason except bigotry and spite - PHW have instead decided that they should do the next most stupid thing and issue advice which can surely only have been designed to handicap vaping as much as possible.

As others have already mentioned, the sweeping statement that e-cigs are "harmful to health" for youths is not true in all cases, so can be described as appalling advice. A fair amount of young smokers in Wales will now henceforth be told that e-cigs are a no-no. 

Likewise, advocating bans around entrances to schools smacks of butthurt 'public health' morons trying to exact revenge after their pathetic and ignorance-based full vaping ban proposal was kicked out by the Welsh Assembly, despite Dangle-belly Drakeford's two year marathon of lying.

As for restrictions on advertising, considering there is no evidence that non-smokers are taking up vaping but that there is compelling evidence in favour of e-cigs being hugely less harmful than smoking, you have to wonder why PHW want to reduce the potential positives by hiding the good news away like some mad Uncle in the attic. Does the affront to their egos hurt that much that they'd prefer vaping to wither and die? Well yes, it would appear so. Yet again, e-cigs ruthlessly expose that 'public health' in the field of smoking has absolutely nothing to do with health, and all to do with repulsive prejudice and vile class-led snobbery.

However, the recommendation which illustrates that PHW collectively are less brainy than Kurt Cobain's ceiling is the one about flavours! Firstly, it's spelt "confectionery" for God's sake; does no-one at PHW have the intellectual wherewithal to spot that mistake before releasing a position statement or are they unaware of the existence of spellchecker? And as for this ...

Ashley Gould from Public Health Wales (PHW) said: "You can buy bubblegum, candyfloss, jam doughnut flavour e-cigarettes and they are only aimed at one audience - and that's about recruiting children."

Yes that's right Ashley, you cretin. We've just had advice from dentists that 'cake culture' must be eradicated from offices because adults love cake too much, but according to you only children like doughnuts? As for the other flavours mentioned, I've vaped both and my two regular vapes are Pear Drops and Aniseed Balls ... I'm in my late 40s.

I'm not an outlier either, as the Ashtray Blog has repeatedly pointed out.

“Think of the children,” has been a rallying cry of the anti e-cig movement. 

According to this movement, the e-cigarette industry is deliberately targeting children to get them hooked on nicotine young. So far, evidence has included the fact that some e-cigs are pink and that e-liquids are provided in a range of flavours. 

But vapers like flavours too! In fact, a survey of 10,000 vapers by ECigaretteForum showed that only 22% of them chose to vape tobacco flavours:

Indeed. PHW would like to throw the baby out with the bath water and ban flavours despite this being probably the prime driver of smoking cessation via vaping.

So what the blithering fuck are the provincial pricks at PHW doing with our taxes if they are employed full-time on high salaries and yet haven't managed to find this information for themselves? Because if we put Ashley's 'expert' wisdom on the subject into a Venn Diagram it would look something like this.

Look, I'm a decent guy, quite forgiving in fact. I can see that PHW have obviously got something disastrously wrong with this advice considering it is off dancing with pixies compared to the sanity over vaping in the rest of the UK's 'public health' community (fat Irish blowhards and Scouse communists aside). So I'm prepared to think that maybe it's not be driven by spite, and that maybe population constraints are not to blame as to why Wales has to suffer officials who - like we don't let alcoholics pilot aeroplanes - should not be in charge of anything except a box of crayons.

So - and this is a long shot to be fair - the only other possible reason must be that there is something nasty in the water in Wales. And if so, perhaps PHW should be looking into that instead of unleashing mentally-incontinent bullshit about vaping to the poor Welsh saps who have to suffer it.

Good grief. 

No Evidence 'Public Health' Aids Public Health

Following swiftly on from the tobacco controllers who believe lying about the benefits of reduced risk products is a fine and ethical idea, comes this remarkable article in the Guardian.

Brace yourselves, because this one is through the looking glass with Alice and the fucking Mad Hatter!

No evidence sugar-free soft drinks aid weight loss – study 

Soft drinks made with artificial sweeteners, such as diet colas, do not help people lose weight and may be as big a part of the obesity problem as the full-sugar versions, academics have said.

That's right, drinks which contain no sugar and no calories are just as bad as ones which do, apparently. So, I presume we can now forget all that ridiculous panicking about sugar, can't we? I mean, they've been telling us the stuff is death personified for the past year or two, but if a drink with no sugar in it at all is on a par then surely there's absolutely bugger all to worry about, no?

You could pitch the conclusion in a slightly different way and say "full sugar drinks are about as harmless as those with no sugar and no calories". Great, why didn't they just say so before. Hey Public Health England, you can shut the fuck up about fizzy drinks now and instead go and do something useful with the monumental amount of our cash you waste.

Of course that's not going to happen, is it? There's still a lot to be milked out of this particular fake health lobbying cash cow.

A paper by researchers at Imperial College London and two universities in Brazil contends that artificially sweetened beverages, often called diet drinks, are just as big a problem as those containing sugar. There is no evidence they help people lose weight, they say, possibly because people assume they can eat more because their drinks are low in sugar.

Oh right, so you mean that it is nothing to do with the drink, it's that people eat more and, erm, eating a lot makes you fat ... as we have kind of known since Neanderthal man overindulged on Sabre-toothed Tiger steaks.

Of course, if there is no difference between sugary and non-sugary drinks in respect to obesity, we can all ignore these chumps about sugar and they can toddle off and talk about over-eating, huh?

Many manufacturers are looking to boost sales of drinks containing artificial sweeteners in order to escape the levy. Such products already account for 25% of the global soft drinks market. 

Prof Christopher Millett, senior investigator at Imperial’s School of Public Health, said: “A common perception, which may be influenced by industry marketing, is that because ‘diet’ drinks have no sugar they must be healthier and aid weight loss when used as a substitute for full-sugar versions. However, we found no solid evidence to support this.”

In which case, there is absolutely no point in the government trying to get manufacturers to reduce the sugar content in their drinks because - as we have been saying on these pages for quite a while - it will have no effect on the nation's weight whatsoever. The best argument yet for scrapping the utterly laughable and pointless sugar tax, eh? Thanks for your help guys, much appreciated.

The paper, published in the journal PLoS Medicine, is a commentary on the research done so far into artificially sweetened beverages promoted as healthier alternatives and the impact on weight.

Erm, "commentary", did you say? So this is opinion and not a "study" or, in fact, any kind of science at all? Well no, because they skip pretty early into the ad homs.

Maria Carolina Borges, the first author of the study, from the Federal University of Pelotas, in Brazil, said: “The lack of solid evidence on the health effects of ASBs [artificially sweetened beverages] and the potential influence of bias from industry-funded studies should be taken seriously when discussing whether ASBs are adequate alternatives to SSBs [sugar-sweetened beverages].”

"Potential bias"? They don't actually bother to try to do science themselves - God forbid! - to disprove the conclusions of these studies, but merely drag their knuckles along the ground, point an accusatory finger and grunt "Ugg! Industry-funded!", which is an instant fail in my opinion.

It gets worse ...

Prof Carlos Monteiro, a co-author, from the University of São Paulo, said: “Taxes and regulation on SSBs and not ASBs will ultimately promote the consumption of diet drinks rather than plain water, the desirable source of hydration for everyone.”

Desirable to whom, sunshine? Who made you the arbiter of what I, and everyone else on the planet, wishes to fucking drink? Why don't you just Samba off into the River Amazon you odious dictatorial motherfucker you.

As one commenter under the line pointed out, this is 'public health' not just aping satire, no it's even more hilarious than that.

"Possibly because people assume they can eat more because their drinks are low in sugar" is potentially one of the stupidest things I have ever heard and reminds me of Little Britain's half the calories diet, where you cut your food in half and it's half the calories. And because it's half the calories, you can have twice as much. 

We're not talking side-achingly funny farce here, this is an actual policy position from people who claim to work in the 'scientific' 'public health' arena. It truly beggars belief!

Of course, we jewel robbers know exactly what is going on here because we've seen it all before. 'Public health' science is never interested in truth, instead it merely endeavours to support whatever policy position the lying bastards are pursuing at any particular time. In the case of sugar taxes, those opposed have pointed out - quite rightly - that the 'problem' is solving itself as the public move onto lower sugar products or ones with no sugar at all, and industry reacts by providing products to satisfy the demand. As a result, low and no sugar alternatives have to be demonised no matter how ridiculous it makes 'public health' fucktards look.

This is not a serious study, piece of research, or even a wise opinion based on sound science. It is merely an attempt to counter a very compelling reason why we should not be subjected to daft taxation policies that the 'public health' bandwagon requires to survive just as much as a great white shark needs to keep moving to breathe.

These people are so incredibly cretinous that I don't think they even considered that the message they could be sending is the opposite of what they hoped for; their one-eyed insanity is so deeply-entrenched that they delivered a message saying full sugar drinks are as 'safe' as Coke Zero almost on auto-pilot.

The real target - as is always the case - is industry and free choice. These snobby fucks don't like that people are enjoying drinks that they personally don't - "plain water, the desirable source of hydration" is a pretty blatant clue - made by companies that they ideologically despise.

It's all drawn from the same dishonest and corrupt playbook that tobacco control created when they declared snus, chewing tobacco and now e-cigs to be as dangerous as chain-smoking, and is designed only to demonise industry and deny our free choice of these products as a concept.

However, there's always an upside. We need a tipping point to make politicians ignore the massed ranks of lying 'public health' parasites, and the more they rip into hugely popular products like Coke and tell us that eating cakes in an office is a 'public health' disaster, the quicker the public will wake up and realise they're a bunch of pompous, fraudulent, right-on, money-grubbing, industry-envious arseholes who will happily destroy civil society if it earns them a buck.

Oh yes, and stratospherically-incompetent with it. 

Dateline 2018: A Storm Is Coming

I've been home for just a couple of hours after a particularly revealing week in India for the COP7 conference, and I have to say I'm feeling quite smug.

Long-term readers here will remember that I've been writing for seven years now about how e-cigs have the capacity to show up the tobacco control industry for the corrupt, self-perpetuating, anti-social, health-be-damned gravy train that it has been since the early 1970s. This week has proved that hypothesis 100% correct. 

Trading only on prejudice and the pursuit of power and tax-funding, this gargantuan enterprise has been perverted to such an extent that it is now incapable - due to a tangled web of prior deceit and funding arrangements - to cope adequately with a nimble breakthrough technology such as vaping. The FCTC has spent so much time setting itself up to be untouchable on tobacco, parroting junk science at every opportunity and routinely exploiting children, that it is now so heavily bureaucratic and conflicted that it finds itself totally stuffed and flailing now they have decided (wrongly) that they should deal with e-cigs. 

So what we have seen this week is their usual disingenuous tactics fail miserably, so much so that when the light of publicity is shone in their direction, they scuttle like cockroaches muttering the same old canards they have managed to get away with before, but which simply won't wash anymore. 

Let's list the main ones, eh?

1) Everyone who objects is a shill. 

Perfectly exhibited by this clown, although he is only one of many to have tried this utterly pathetic defence in the past few days.

Delegates attending #COP7FCTC : #Vape "advocates" are the same as #BigTobacco mercenaries. Do not get distracted! Protect your people!

— Jaime Arcila Sierra (@arcilasierra) November 10, 2016

I don't know why such idiots seem to think that accusing perfectly normal, everyday people of being shills is going to help them? It won't make vapers go away, instead it just reinforces the injustice that he and his colleagues are inflicting on them and makes it more likely that they will be active in the future. He is in a political arena but seems incapable of understanding this.

This dismissal of opposing opinions has been a central tactic of anti-tobacco frauds for decades, but it used to be just one of their tools for misleading the public; with e-cigs is has become almost the only one, simply because they don't know how to handle the public they claim to understand because they've never had to before. Therefore it doesn't work, because the storm of social media outrage was overwhelmingly from members of the public who are appalled at the disgusting behaviour of the FCTC in New Delhi.

The FCTC has installed article 5.3 to purposely silence debate; it is its only purpose. But this goes out the window when private citizens get involved. Clinging to such a stupid policy when real people are trying to send messages their way just shows what charlatans tobacco control execs are.

2) Junk science

Debate at the venue in Noida this week has been based entirely on a fabricated fantasy in the form of the laughable COP7 report on e-cigs. It includes every pile of shit that its pharma-conflicted buddies have concocted to try to quell this inconvenient fly in their ointment, and refuses to consider any science - however rigorous and weighty - that might derail their pre-conceived judgement.

I read the documents that were put to the COP7 meeting this week on the subject, and nowhere was it mentioned that the COP7 report had been ripped to shreds by more honest colleagues in their profession. The science on e-cigs only points one way, but the delegates at COP7 think that - just as they did with tobacco - if they just keep lying for long enough, it will all go away and they don't have to change course. They will have to in the end or continue to be mortally embarrassed as they have been this week. But here we are, over a decade since e-cigs arrived on the scene, with their still being incapable of recognising how their reputation is being trashed by their own incompetence.

And talking of incompetence ...

3) Manipulation of the media

The tobacco control industry has relied for many years on the "science by press release" approach whereby a pliant media just parrots what they're told without asking any questions. This just doesn't work when the world can see what tobacco controllers refuse to; that e-cigs are quite obviously a remarkable invention.

The huge uptake of vaping around the world is something the press are now very interested in, and they are asking questions themselves. Apart from a few very lazy hacks, the ears of journalists have been pricked by the visibly accelerating prevalence of vaping and they are curious, especially since vapers tend to be engaged and hunger for news stories about the subject. The upsurge in vaping is a rich seam of visitor clicks for the new online media

In the past the FCTC hasn't needed to be bothered about such things so just trundle out bland - and almost invariably inaccurate - messages to the media before retiring to their state-funded hotels to get pissed and plan their next jamboree.

It doesn't work with vaping and leads to crashingly embarrassing occasions such as this where their spokesperson not only has no clue about the subject matter, but also seems not to understand how their own processes work.

Do watch this, because it highlights how extremely incompetent the organisers of COP7 really are.

5) David fighting Goliath

This deliberately constructed fallacy is one which has served the tobacco control industry well for many years. They tap into the public's mistrust of big businesses - the ones who make cigarettes in particular - and portray themselves as poor, marginalised, under-funded philanthropists fighting against an incomparably-funded enemy.

But the vast majority of e-cig manufacturers are small independent businesses, which the Goliath of tobacco control is putting to the sword at every opportunity worldwide. There were around a thousand activists at COP7, almost exclusively funded by global governments and with the added bonus of patronage from multi-national pharmaceutical companies.

When you have government representatives on all your delegations; are funded generously by one of the most lucrative transnational sectors of big business; spend a week calling unpaid citizen vapers shills and encouraging governments to put small independent start-ups out of business with impossible regulations and state-sanctioned bans; and have the power to ban the press from reporting on what you are doing, you are no longer the fucking David you like to pretend to be!

The tobacco control industry has never been the poor underfunded underdog, and the FCTC's approach to e-cigs proves this fact categorically.

So what now?

Now, I might be wrong but I believe I was the only vaping consumer to be afforded one of the restricted 30 public places to attend COP7 in India (see report of the day here). I was, of course, then banned from observing further detailed proceedings about vaping along with the press and any other interested parties.

However, I'm already hearing that vapers are so consumed with anger at the way COP7 has treated the subject that the next conference in Geneva in 2018 will be attended by many hundreds more. The FCTC now has a two year period of warning to stop being so lazy and to develop some understanding of the products and the people who make and consume them. Personally I hope they don't, because just following the same idle and mendacious lines as they've done for decades with tobacco is working very well for someone like me who just wants to see their total destruction.

I don't believe I'll be disappointed, either, simply for the fact that the FCTC is not fit for purpose. I will write up the quite ridiculous procedure tomorrow on how COP7 debated vaping for 5 days but ended up with exactly the same ill-researched crap that they had produced in Moscow in 2014. The only teaser I'll give is that it's hardly surprising when you allow third world nations the ability to display their ignorant opinons with the full backing of a UN-backed and unelected global quango Goliath.

Those organising COP8 now have two years to start learning about vaping while the science has another two years to further show up their stupidity. If the FCTC thought this year was a trifle uncomfortable, that will be nothing compared with when hundreds of the vapers  they have insulted this past week - and hopefully unnecessarily-impoverished manfacturers and vendors too - turn up on their doorstep in 2018.

New Delhi will look like a maiden aunt's garden party by comparison. 

Times Of Embarrassment

Today's edition of The Times carries an apology to the scientists and researchers it defamed in a couple of articles last month about the Global Tobacco and Nicotine Forum. This came about after those involved threatened to take legal action.

The articles concerned have now been pulled and the original URLs take you to the apology instead, but you can read some of what was said in screen grabs that I published here.

The articles disappearing will also come as a relief to Cancer Research UK because the journalist claimed that it was they who "condemned scientists who accepted tens of thousands of pounds from tobacco companies".  I'm sure that The Times would also publish a retraction of that claim, but for some reason CRUK don't seem to be demanding one. How odd?

I wonder, also, if The Times will be asking their reporter to pay back her travel expenses considering her lazy hackneyed approach to the subject led to embarrassment for the paper and resulted in nothing but empty URLs for their cash. What a mess, eh? Perhaps there is a lesson in the whole palaver for a few people, don't you think?