Rage-Driven Tobacco Control Industry Stupidity Explained In One Tweet

It was once explained to me that there are thousands of students who start off aspiring to be doctors. Those not clever enough to become doctors drift into other public health roles, but those who are not clever enough for that often go into the tobacco control industry. 

This was in answer to my querying why I regularly read stuff from tobacco controllers which are too stupid for words. Either they lack basic comprehension of concepts such as behaviour and economics, or advance ideas so puerile that most 14 year olds should be able to see through them. Often I have imagined that some would not even have had the required intellect to be a driver in my transport company. 

And today, we have seen a diamond-encrusted example of exactly this type of utter tobacco control stupidity. 

In the early hours UK time came this tweet from anti-vaping organisation Quit Victoria, whose Twitter timeline is chock full of ignorant statements and assertions which they must surely know are untrue at the best of times. But on this occasion they have truly excelled themselves.

In answer to Australian academic, Alex Wodak, asking why they rejected the Cochrane Library - the gold standard of evidence reviewers - stating that there is "high level certainty" that vaping is more effective for smoking cessation than NRT, Quit Victoria came up with this absolute stonker of a lie. 

Earth-shattering, if true, but of course it wasn't. What's more, they elaborated on their claim by saying that it was "backed up by investigative journalism", no less. 

The link they provided to 'prove' this was an article in The Australian at the end of January designed to smear pro-vaping academics of being manipulated by Philip Morris International. BAT was not mentioned in the article and the only reference to Cochrane merely confirmed that what Wodak was referring to was correct. 

A review by the widely respected British policy institute Cochrane found rates of quitting smoking were higher when people used vapes and e-cigarettes than when they used nicotine replacement therapies such as patches.

So, we are already in the realms of stunning idiocy, but imagine what kind of thought process went into this tweet. Well, basically none. 

Firstly, where did the thought originate? Had the author read something somewhere to make them think this was the case? Perhaps they were confused with something else. Which leads us to ask did the author of the tweet do some basic fact-checking before going public around the world with it? Patently not, because it has no shred of truth about it.

How can someone be employed in such a role when they are unable to perform basic functions like that in a public-facing organisation? I'm afraid it is just the nature of the industry. When you have a never-ending flood of funding at your disposal, any old idiot gets hired so the corpulent budgets can be spent. 

I can imagine some in the industry think a professional is someone who play sports for money, accountability is being able to add up, and rigour is someone who works pumping oil. 

The motivation for such a moronic action, in case you were wondering, is the irrepressible rage that anti-vapers get when they read convincing and evidence-based arguments about the huge potential benefits of vaping products. For them, this is pure heresy! It must be discredited by any means. If they can't do so by challenging the science (as if tobacco control is bothered by such things) then they will have to lie and lie about it until people disbelieve the claim. Standard tobacco control behaviour. 

A Sydney pensioner has already had a pop at Cochrane by saying it assesses the wrong kind of studies, but even his Koi carp don't listen to the old duffer anymore, so a dullard at QuitVic thought they'd have a go in their own vacant style. We saw the same desperate wriggling, by the same people, funnily enough, to try to discredit PHE's claim (repeated annually since 2015) that vaping is at least 95% less harmful than smoking. Thousands of lies later, they have consistently failed with that too, hence the palpable frustration you see with people who know that, as evidence mounts up in favour of vaping, they are losing the war and just cannot stomach it.    

Word eventually reached Cochrane about the palaver, and they confirmed what everyone except the dumbasses at QuitVic already knew with an admirably low-key tweet. Considering the disgusting slur they had been subjected to, it exhibited class that the likes of QuitVic will never be able to achieve. 

Of course, if QuitVic employed people who possessed even a modicum of intelligence, they could have discovered this themselves as it was announced on Twitter that Cochrane had received a new round of Cancer Research funding on February 10th. 

And to add the cherry on top of this monumental tobacco control industry self-own, at time of writing it is approaching 6am in Melbourne. It seems they posted a load of demonstrably defamatory cobblers, allowed themselves a smug grin, turned the computer off and fucked off to watch telly. It is often noted that the tobacco control industry has no regulator. No-one to complain to when they make inaccurate or mendacious statements. No accountability, no-one to censure them when they regularly mislead the public. Now, we see that QuitVic doesn't even have internal oversight of its own. 

Soon the author of the tweet and the rest of QuitVic will wake up to a whole host of mentions calling them out as liars and their reputation in tatters. 

With any luck the lawyers' letters will soon follow.

The WHO Doubles Down On Its Incompetence

You'd think, wouldn't you, that after the damning political and media criticism the World Health Organisation has rightly been subjected to over fucking up the health of every nation on Earth - with their pitiful and incompetent response to the Coronavirus - that they would have learned a lesson on getting their priorities right.

Well, it seems not. This week, they were celebrating the "defeat" of e-cigarettes in Finland, as if this is in any way a good thing.

Strong legislation helps defeat e-cigarettes in Finland

... 

Many countries across the European Region have struggled to contain the rising popularity of these products, and instead have simply seen a transferral of nicotine addiction from tobacco products to e-cigarettes.

Erm, that's the entire point of harm reduction, you dribbling cretins. In fact, it is in your own literature where you state ...

1(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; 

Harm reduction - in this particular policy area - is exactly about transferring people from smoking to far safer alternatives like, I dunno, e-cigarettes. Do you get the sense that the WHO isn't really interested in improving people's health, after all? Because I sure as shit do.

OK, you may be sceptical about that, so try this instead. It is World No Tobacco Day on Sunday, and the WHO has just issued a call to action. Here is the kind of deliberately misleading garbage they will be pumping out.

Tobacco products kill more than 8 million people every year. Tobacco and related industries must continuously find new consumers to replace the ones that their products are killing to maintain revenue.

"Related industries"? What could they possibly mean by that?

Tobacco and related industries’ tactics to market to children and adolescents include:

Over 15,000 flavours, most of which attract children and adolescents
Sleek, sexy designs

Ah, in other words, vaping products which have killed no-one, let alone 8 million people. And in case you didn't get the clever lie message they are trying to send, they offer 'material' to nail their crooked mendacity to your subconscious with this kind of emotional muppetry. Note the box mod vaping device pencilled into the girl's hand just under the emboldened 8 million figure.

This is the kind of anti-scientific garbage the WHO was hoping to enter into their global policy recommendations that I wrote about in my blog entitled Liars To Convene In The Hague 12 Months Later Than Planned at the end of April. Because there is no other word to describe them except disgusting liars who are wedded to policies which will seriously harm the health of the public all over the world.

Not satisfied with seeing their incompetence towards Coronavirus kill hundreds of thousands, if not eventually millions, across the world - along with the global economy - these utter fuckwits are doubling down and deliberately derailing the biggest driver - worldwide - of declining smoking rates too.

It is no accident and they are not stupid people. No, this is a deliberate; they are simply monstrous and catastrophically irresponsible organised criminals.

As Ecigclick put it recently:

Let’s face it, the WHO has been running a guerilla style war on all things vape for some time. 

Its tactics have included sniping from the sidelines with completely fake news and ‘science’ surrounding e-cigarettes, issuing totally made up decrees based on fresh air and billionaire paid for ‘research’, flooding the social and mainstream media with horrific scaremongering based on total BS, and churning out enough anti-vape propaganda to make a dictator of a tin-pot country jealous. 

Shocking stuff and yet more proof the World Health Organization is not fit for purpose.

Well, quite.

The WHO isn't a 'health' organisation, it's a Goddamn killing machine. 

Popcorn Poppycock

You'd think, wouldn't you, that the US governmental Food and Drugs Administration would be tasked with giving the public information based on rigorous and robust science. Sadly, you'd be wrong.

This week - in the face of hysterical panic about youth use of e-cigs - they have produced a poster which they will be sending to every High School in America to be put up in school bathrooms. Now, let's put aside for a moment the laughable idiocy of showing kids the new risky fad that many of their peers use and that they might be missing out on, and look instead at what is in it.

Well, as you can imagine from an arm of the tobacco control scam, it is full of lies, none bigger than this.

Erm, inhaling flavours from an e-cig causes popcorn lung? Well that's the message they seem to be wanting to send here. This is the biggest lie that tobacco controllers have ever told, and that is from a long list of fucking massive lies that their industry is renowned for.

Michael Siegel has written extensively about this and, to cut a long story short, it is absolute bollocks.

There is no evidence that e-cigarettes cause popcorn lung. Despite millions of e-cigarette users, there has not been a single confirmed case of popcorn lung caused by e-cigarettes. Moreover, since the level of diacetyl in cigarettes is 750 times higher, on average, than in e-liquids, why isn’t the Tennessee Department of Health warning kids that smoking can cause popcorn lung? The rest of the story is that popcorn lung has not even been associated with smoking. There is absolutely no evidence that vaping causes popcorn lung. 

Juul, the market-leading product in the US which has caused panic amongst knuckle-dragging American parents countrywide, and which the FDA seeks to demonise, doesn't sell flavours containing diacetyl. But then again, nor do any other vape companies because e-liquid manufacturers stopped stocking products containing diacetyl back in 2015, so it's difficult to contract popcorn lung from a substance which is hugely diluted compared with that in cigarettes if it isn't even in any products at all.

But that's the message these government-funded goons are sending to the entire country. 

Shouldn't the FDA know these kinds of things? Instead of basing their decision-making on solid science they are embarking on hare-brained public information rooted in fantasy and seem to be on an intellectual par with medieval witch-finders. It makes you wonder if they are even in the business of seeking the scientific truth at all. Which means that if they can get this so badly wrong, what is the value of taking anything the FDA says on trust? 

The answer, of course, is absolutely none. 

That Mask Keeps Slipping

Remember that smoking ban which was about protecting bar workers? Oh yeah, and the plain packaging of cigarette packets which was solely about making sure kids don't start smoking?

It wasn't about bullying smokers, heaven forbid! No, you were free to make your own choices, they just wanted to safeguard the kiddies and put a welcoming arm around poor put-upon bar staff. It was a shame that the hospitality industry was severely damaged with tens of thousands of pubs closing and the bingo industry all but wiped out, a shame that social exclusion for vulnerable adults has meant we now have a Minister for Loneliness, and a shame that intellectual property worth billions was eradicated to the detriment of legal UK businesses for no purpose whatsoever.

And it was a shame that this has set a precedent which has unleashed a torrent of single interest zealots on the public at large trying to prohibit everything from your weekend pint to a box of Corn Flakes.

But it was only about protecting people, absolutely nothing to do with veiled coercion towards smokers. Got that?

When the mask slips like that, it makes this blogging lark so worthwhile.

It's never been about bar workers. It's never been about kids. I have consistently said this for nearly ten years. It is purely hideous state-funded bastards justifying their existence by fighting for their place on the taxpayer teat.

They have no interest in the public's welfare, they don't even have an interest in health. Just look at that tweet and see what is missing from that list of 'successes' over the past 20 years; most especially since about 2012.

Yes, the one thing that their own kind didn't think up, which has had a far more dramatic effect than any of the daft policies they implement and then refuse to allow to be judged for efficacy. And the thing that many on their own side are lying through their fucking teeth about (you know who you are if you're an obese Irishman, a Sydney pensioner, a 1970s trot throwback from the north west, or an inconsequential wage slave from Lincoln) because they can't earn out of it.

It was never about bar workers, it was never about kids, it was never about health. It's always been a collection of zealots making a buck out of a job massaging their prejudice towards smokers.

Has there ever been such an ignoble and socially-damaging profession as tobacco control? I venture to suggest not. 

Inconvenient Evidence For Tobacco Control

Life is still overwhelmingly busy at Puddlecote Inc hence the lack of content here of late, plus I've just got back from Poland after another interesting GFN conference. There is lots to write, but sadly not much time to write it.

For now, your humble host would invite you to read this article at Reason which neatly highlights some textbook tobacco control fraud.

Three days after more than two-thirds of San Francisco voters agreed that mandating flavorless e-liquid was a reasonable response to the rising popularity of e-cigarettes among teenagers, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published survey data showing that in 2017 vaping declined among middle school students and remained steady among high school students after falling in 2016. E-cigarette alarmists were so flummoxed by reality's failure to fit their narrative that they insisted the survey must be wrong. "Study Says Vaping by Kids Isn't Up," read the Associated Press headline, "but Some Are Skeptical." 

The skeptics had heard that teenagers are Juuling in schools across America, and they figured all that press coverage should translate into higher vaping rates. They suggested that survey respondents might not have realized Juul e-cigarettes are e-cigarettes.

It seems we are seeing a new application of the customary spreading of misinformation and lies. For decades tobacco control has deliberately spread falsehoods by way of quack science, misdirection and hysterical exaggeration of tiny risks. They have been doing this relentlessly in the US towards e-cigs but the evidence refuses to comply with their scare stories.

So their answer now appears to be - instead of looking at the real world evidence and changing their approach - to deny that the real world evidence is reliable.

It takes a special kind of liar to rubbish hard data from unimpeachable sources and continue to advocate for fantasy and fairy tales instead. This would be bad if it were, say, in the field of finance or transport, but to urge governments to ignore what is happening in real life in an area which will have an impact on the public's health is beyond the pale.

It also shows that tobacco control either cannot, or will not, understand the concept of market share. Just because Juul is taking off in the US it doesn't mean the market is increasing. It is a tool they used disingenuously in the campaign for plain packs in the UK, as I have written about before. The trick was to highlight a tobacco industry document talking about how their market share increased and pretend this was an increase in the market as a whole.

It's bunkum, of course. The scam centres on confusing (deliberately?) the tobacco industry with a monopoly instead of a collection of companies who fight like cats with each other for market share. Only in a monopoly is an increase in one product's sales volume an indicator of an increase in the market. And tobacco control is very happy to promote this confusion in how businesses work because they are never interested in the truth.

However, it's up to you to decide, in this case, whether this is a purposeful thing or that US tobacco control honestly doesn't have the first clue about what market share is, so have therefore confused themselves.

If it is the former, they are recklessly playing games with the public's health; if it is the latter, they are woefully fucking stupid, should be roundly ignored by policymakers and defunded immediately.

But there is a deeper flaw in all this mendacious guff from American anti-vaping organisations. Because whatever they morally think about youths using e-cigs, it doesn't matter one iota.

Despite the constant warnings that increased experimentation with e-cigarettes would lead to more smoking, consumption of conventional cigarettes by teenagers stubbornly continues to decline, reaching a record low last year in the Monitoring the Future Study, which began in 1975. According to the NYTS, the incidence of past-month smoking among high school students fell from 15.8 percent in 2011 to 7.6 percent in 2017.

If all those anti-smoking organisations are so interested in people quitting smoking, why on earth are they fighting this?

Here is how youth smoking looks in the US according to the latest government data.

You'd think they'd be pleased, wouldn't you?

I can only agree with Reason when they say that tobacco control in the US is "only pretending to care about public health". Sadly, 'twas ever thus worldwide. 

Sorting The Lies And The Truth At #WCTOH2018

Following on from Wednesday's article here about happenings at the World Conference on Tobacco or Health (WCTOH) in Cape Town, I see that proceedings have now wrapped up. The congenital liars delegates are packing their bags as I write and heading to the airport for their state-funded flights back home, filled to the brim with military-style fighting rhetoric against industry but having achieved the grand sum of fuck all for the benefit of public health.

We learned from this conference - if learn is the right word - that the tobacco industry lies about many things. Apparently their insistence - along with accumulated global evidence over centuries - that prohibition doesn't work is nonsense.

Concerns about outlawing combustible tobacco sales being comparable to 1920s alcohol prohibition are absurd. Time for #EndGame #WCTOH2018

— Marita Hefler (@m_hef) March 7, 2018

We also 'learned' that e-cigs have had nothing to do with the dramatic decline in smoking in the UK since about 2012, in fact it's not even worth mentioning. Nope, tobacco companies saying harm reduction is good and plain packaging has had no effect is just another one of their lies. It's plain packaging - introduced in spring 2017 - which is the main driver.

And we were also educated that there is no downside to high tobacco taxes, because it is just an industry myth that they create black markets.

Tobacco tax increase, revenues goes up and consumption goes down. #TobaccoAtlas #WCTOH2018 #TobaccoTax pic.twitter.com/vFU8lJtksB

— The 12th APACT 2018 (@apact12th) March 8, 2018

OK, the percentages on that graph bear little resemblance to those measured by HMRC's latest measuring tax gaps report ...

... but that's just a minor detail because the tobacco control industry is a fine, upstanding bearer of the sword of truth! Whereas 'Big Tobacco' are big fat liars.  It's ridiculous that anyone could ever think high taxes cause illicit trade. You could ramp the duty up to £200 per pack and all that would happen is that revenues would rise and smokers would quit while criminal gangs remained oblivious to the profit potential of a huge global market starved of supply.

We 'learned' too that the tobacco industry's lies about the slippery slope when it comes to sanctions on tobacco are totally unfounded. You may remember Debs Arnott telling us this in 2012.

"The “domino theory” i.e. that once a measure has been applied to tobacco it will be applied to other products is patently false."

Yep, that is blatant tobacco industry propaganda too.

The tobacco controllers at WCTOH this week, however, never lie. They only tell truths.

Truths such as this.

Philanthropist Mike Bloomberg launched a $20 million initiative this morning to fight the “fake science” being spread by tobacco companies. The former New York City mayor announced the new initiative ahead of the 17th World Congress on Tobacco, which gets underway today in Cape Town. It’s dubbed the STOP campaign — Stop Tobacco Organizations and Products — and will fund nonprofit groups and researchers to monitor tobacco companies that are “lobbying governments with false information,” such as the safety of smoke-free products like e-cigs, Bloomberg says. His goal: "STOP is going to fight these practices and tell people what the truth is."

Yes, damn those e-cigs and their much-reduced potential for harm, they're just not "safe" and must be banned. Mikey is so passionate about spreading truth that his words even reached the Guardian.

The tobacco control movement has roundly denounced the [Foundation for a Smokefree World] and accused PMI of duplicity. Michael Bloomberg, now WHO global ambassador for noncommunicable diseases, said it was “an effort by Philip Morris to confuse the public and to misinform them deliberately”.

Yeah, you stick it to them Mike. PMI's unrestricted funding, over which they have no control and to which they are committed no matter what the FSFW finds, is just a way of "misleading" the public into thinking reduced harm products might, erm, reduce harm whereas tobacco control - truthsayers extraordinaire - are valiantly trying to tell the public otherwise.

“I understand the tobacco companies want to protect their business, but to deliberately go out and to misinform people where lives are at stake is just something that I think we should not permit. And so my foundation has committed $20m as a start to explain to people what’s going on.”

So what's going on Michael?

At a briefing, Michael Bloomberg accused the foundation of promoting “fake science as well as fake news”

Well considering the FSFW has not produced a single item of science yet and Mikey is so determined they never will that he's bunged $20m at the 'problem', that's an interesting theory and in no way can be considered "fake news".

See, funding by 'Big Tobacco' must, by definition, result in fake stuff, while tobacco control would never mislead the public and Mike is a stand-up guy so his $20m would never be used to promote propaganda, so completely disregard the statement at the bottom of his article.

The Guardian’s series Tobacco: a deadly business is funded by by support provided, in part, by Vital Strategies with funding by Bloomberg Philanthropies.

See? Now you're better educated. Thank you WCTOH delegates for your astonishing departure from reality sterling defence of the truth this week. Taxes well and truly not spunked up the wall, and no mistake.

Has there ever been a profession so fundamentally dishonest as tobacco control? 

The Power Of Ignorance

We are well into the new year and the 'public health' racket has leapt back into tax-sponging action, most notably in the pages of the Guardian.

Last week the tax-avoiding lefty rag was bemoaning the fact that Coca-Cola is resisting Public Health England's pointless plan to tax fizzy drinks which make up around 2% of a child's diet.

Coca-Cola is to use smaller bottles and sell at higher prices rather than alter its famous sugar-laden secret recipe, while Irn-Bru faces a growing consumer backlash over fears a new lower sugar version will ruin Scotland’s national soft drink. 

The changes are part of the preparations underway in the fizzy drinks business for the sugar tax. The cost of some “price marked packs” of Coca-Cola sold in newsagents and convenience stores will increase by more than 10% in March, just before the new tax comes into effect the following month. 

The plans will see a 1.75 litre bottle of Coke shrink to 1.5 litres and at the same time increase in price by 20p to £1.99. The price of a 500ml bottle is also increasing, from £1.09 to £1.25. The new price means the cost of a half-litre bottle will have soared 25% in a matter of months, as they were just £1 until last autumn.

Boo to the nasty big corporation! But considering the article mentions that Coke's bottling plant covers all of western Europe, it's pretty predictable that this is what was going to happen, as Timmy at the ASI points out.

If the public directs its anger at these price hikes towards those responsible - that being the government and its hugely overpaid quangoes - then that will be well and good. However, even now I expect the congenital liars in 'public health' are gearing up to persuade consumers that it is Coca-Cola being greedy and killing kids with their "toxic" "poison" (yes, that is the kind of batshit crazy hysteria anti-social health lobby maniacs have fostered in some on social media). The 'public heath' lobby know there will be some anger at rising prices, and that many won't have any idea that it is solely down to the government instead of corporate greed. It's the kind of ignorance that the overwhelmingly left-leaning - some even blatantly radical socialist - 'public health' scamsters will be eager to encourage.

Meanwhile, this week saw the anti-alcohol arm of the 'public health' tax drain also use public ignorance to their advantage.

Only one in 10 people know that alcohol causes cancer, according to findings that also show strong public backing for cans and bottles of drink carrying warnings about the link. 

Cancer Research UK (CRUK) said widespread ignorance of alcohol’s role as a carcinogen was “very worrying”, while Alcohol Concern said the lack of knowledge was costing lives. 

“Alcohol is a major cause of cancer but this survey clearly shows that the vast majority of people don’t know this, which is very worrying,” said Prof Linda Bauld, CRUK’s cancer prevention expert.

It's not a "major" cause of cancer, as Snowdon highlights in his Speccie article today, in fact it's decidedly minor.

The cancers associated with drinking are mostly quite rare. The lifetime risk of dying from these diseases is mercifully small and, for people who drink moderately and do not smoke, the increased risk from alcohol consumption is trivial to non-existent. 

The exception is breast cancer, which appears to be linked to drinking even at low levels – hence the Chief Medical Officer’s claim that there is no safe level of drinking – but the evidence for this has only appeared in recent years and there are reasons to be sceptical of it. Even if the statistical associations between moderate drinking and breast cancer are real and causal, the magnitude of risk is so small that it is unlikely to persuade many women to go teetotal.

By only talking about cancer and speaking to the public's deepest fears - while not acknowledging that moderate drinking is beneficial to overall mortality - it is 'public health, once again, lying by omission to bring in whatever pet policy they are badgering politicians about at any give time. In this case, it is warning labels on alcohol.

Bauld said CRUK agreed. “We urgently need to raise awareness. Requiring warning labels on alcohol products making clear the cancer link would be one way to do this, and this survey shows that the public support this measure.”

What a surprise! And can you imagine the poll that came to this conclusion that the public is in favour? It will have hugely exaggerated or skipped past the pitiful level of absolute risk and you can bet your mortgage it wouldn't have mentioned the fact that teetotallers die, on average, earlier than those who like a drink every now and then.

Just like the utterly pathetic sugar tax folly, warning labels on alcohol will have no effect whatsoever either. Those who are worried about the risk will already know that alcohol can be risky, and those who are less risk-averse won't care and won't even read the warnings. But at least it will keep the 'public health' state-funding bandwagon going for that little bit longer on their journey towards full prohibition of everything.

This is what is so very rotten about 'public health; that they destroy people's choices and pull society apart by harnessing ignorance and encouraging it. They are jubilant when the public swallows their daily vomiting of lies, and they trade on it, with campaigns relying on and nurturing exactly that ignorance. And to top it all off, after spreading falsehoods and whistling innocently as the public is educated wrongly, they then rely on the general fallacy that 'public health' is actually interested in the public's health, rather than chasing the "next logical step" in useless - and often counterproductive - policy recommendations just to keep their taxpayer funds rolling in.

Another article in the Guardian this week seems to believe that this government is surreptitiously squeezing the 'public health' cartel by starving it of funding. If so, this is a very good thing for the country. The more 'public health' groups are defunded, the more chance of the public being better informed and less ignorant of what is being done to them against their will by state-funded shysters. 

A Healthy Dose Of Common Sense

Today I was in Puddlecoteville town centre for some Christmas shopping. Mrs P went into New Look in the shopping mall for some vouchers and - as men do - I hung around outside instead. Sat on a bench outside the shop I took a quick vape on my 18mg 50/50 Lime Zest at 8.9 watts (so no big clouds). Just as I did so a security guard - as wide as he was tall - waddled over to me; the conversation went exactly like this:

"'Ere, fella, you can't do that in here"
"Oh right, so you've changed policy then? Is that why the two vape shops have gone? You kicked them out?
"Well, they left"
"OK, you know it's not illegal don't you?"
"Yeah"
"So why has the centre banned vaping?"
"Well, erm, the children" (vaguely waving to where some children had been but now weren't)
"You know that they're not dangerous, don't you?"
"Well, in my book they are far more dangerous than cigarettes"
"You should do some Googling then and get an education"
"I have done, that's how I know they're dangerous"

And you know what? That's not the first time that someone has said that to me. This is the false perception that years of tobacco control lies has fostered in a significant proportion of the public. I've always said that e-cigs had the potential to expose the abhorrent nature of the tobacco control industry, and that conversation shows just how much of a threat they are to the public.

That someone has been convinced of something so comprehensively untrue should make the 'public health' movement utterly ashamed of themselves, but I don't think many care.

The world in 2017 is a place where private innovation and enterprise is leading millions of people into doing what tobacco control has demanded for decades - quitting smoking - yet the main obstacles placed in front of them are the very same people who've been nagging for all that time, and the petty and counterproductive restrictions that have grown up around the incessant 'public health' lying.

Last month, the Freedom to Vape campaign produced a report on policies towards e-cigs in 391 councils up and down the UK. It showed that the attitude of authorities has got worse in the past 12 months instead of better. The steamroller of authoritarian pettiness and control - created and nurtured by disingenuous tobacco controllers - has gained pace rather than receding. So the NNA has launched a campaign entitled "Challenging Prohibition" which I urge you to read and share widely.

Also last month, in front of an audience packed to the gunwales with state-paid 'public health' grandees and activists, Sarah Jakes of the NNA was afforded a very rare (for 'public health' events) opportunity to speak as a consumer about the damage this environment of mendacity is causing, as perfectly illustrated by the ignorant security guard I had the misfortune to meet today. Or, in her words, how 'public health' is "fucking it all up".

It is 20 minutes long but I highly recommend you switch off X Factor Dancing Talent In The Jungle or whatever passes for Saturday night TV these days, pour yourself your most favoured beverage and watch what Simon Clark described as "a masterful speech" (transcript here if you prefer). I couldn't agree with him more.

Nicotine, Public Health, And The Profit Motive

It's taken me a few days to get round to writing this but there was a BAT Investor Day held in London last week that threw up a small, but vital, nugget of information.

Wells Fargo Securities circulated a summary of the event via email and described the presentation on next generation products (NGPs) as "the highlight". It spoke of how the global NGP category is likely to reach £30bn by 2020 and how both BAT and PMI expect NGPs will represent 30% of their revenue by 2030. Between them, the companies are now operating in 43 markets (PMI 31, BAT 12) after investing literally billions in R&D and roll-out, and both companies have struggled to reach manufacturing capacity to fully satisfy demand.

But this particular piece of info tells a huge story:

"In terms of profitability, BAT expects tobacco heating product (THP) margins will be higher than combustible cigs and sees vapour margins even higher than THP given that vaping taxes are lower."

You have to bear in mind that this is financial information the company is under an obligation to report truthfully to their shareholders, and there are stiff penalties if they mislead them (just look at Tesco recently). It's not the kind of airy-fairy say-the-first-thing-that-comes-into-your-head propaganda more preferred by the tobacco control industry. No, instead BAT have looked at profitability and identified that e-cigs and heat not burn both offer them more potential profit than traditional combustible tobacco, with the highest margin being derived from vaping products.

I've mentioned this before, but if you seriously want to know why the tobacco industry has gone headlong into reduced risk products in the past few years, there is a very simple reason. It's because they will earn more money out of them. Period.

Cigarette profit margins v E-cig profit margins

Cigarette profit margins v Heat not burn profit margins

Now, considering this hierarchy of profit within the industry, you have to wonder at the mentality - and motivation - of tobacco control conspiracy theorists who claim that it's all a plot to keep smokers smoking instead of quitting. Here's an example from one such cretin who still makes this same claim to this day:

Only the most naïve or captured advocates for vaping could fail to acknowledge that the tobacco industry wants people who vape to smoke and vape, not vape instead of smoking.

Erm, why would any company want its customers to continue using its least profitable products when they have more profitable ones to offer? In reality, much of the reason that the tobacco industry isn't bombarding smokers globally with marketing to make them switch to NGPs is because governments - aided and abetted by tobacco control lobbyists fearful of losing their lucrative seat on the gravy train - have banned them! So if they can't sell their most profitable products they are locked into a situation where they can only, by law, sell their less profitable ones.

We are therefore in this bizarre new world where industry is desperate to sell less harmful products because they are more profitable, while 'public health' runs around spreading misleading information and lies to ensure that the more dangerous combustible tobacco is the only product available. It's a simple and classic case of "follow the money".

Many in public health will often condemn industry for putting pursuit of profit ahead of health, yet all over the world now, it is clear that 'public health' is the greatest threat to the public's health when it comes to nicotine. And, in much the same way as we are on the side of the angels here, it is increasingly also clear that it is now industry working to reduce harm, while the tobacco control cartel works furiously to prolong it. 

Scream Test Update

It's been just over a week since it was announced that PMI were unconditionally throwing $1bn at a former WHO cabinet director to conduct research into reduced risk nicotine products, and the squealing from 'public health' has been a joy to behold.

Let's just revisit what that world-renowned tobacco control expert, Simon Chapman, says about this phenomenon.

When it comes to tobacco control, you can determine the most effective policies by using the litmus test of how the tobacco industry reacts. This has long been called the “scream test”. 

So when they cry blue murder about the civilisation-ending potential of a policy, it’s not rocket science that they appreciate its threat to their bottom-line.

One can only assume, then, that by Simon's own logic, tobacco control must be absolutely shitting themselves about the project and - by extension - the threat to the cosy cartel they have built up from decades of junk science and lying.

At time of writing, there are 116 'health groups' who have signed a letter to PMI demanding that their initiative can only be taken seriously by the company "immediately ceasing the production, marketing and sale of cigarettes". It's the kind of maturity and considered understanding of the world you'd expect out of an eight year old, but then you have to take into account that they are all very scared, bless 'em.

These people are supposedly 'experts' in the field of public health, and so will have studied the industry intensely over the years. They know very well that instantly cutting off supply of cigarettes would cause carnage. Organised crime would burgeon overnight, pension funds would be decimated, supply chains of wholesalers, packagers, retailers, and even entire national economies would be destroyed. Enforcement costs would skyrocket, perfectly law-abiding people would be criminalised and imprisoned, and people would - undoubtedly - die, in their thousands.

They know this, but suggest something absolutely inconceivable and irresponsibly damaging anyway. Complete prohibition of tobacco is an extreme position that not one of those 116 groups would ever advocate openly, but they are pretending to suggest that PMI do it. Yes, that's how very scared they are.

They are scared because - despite their lame protestations that the tobacco industry is only interested in alternative products because they want to drag people back to smoking - they know that industry is only doing what any other sector would do when faced with a "Kodak moment": following the consumer. What's more, they know very well that innovative products are more profitable and that any business would be foolish not to pursue the opportunities, as these graphics from Bloomberg show.

Cigarette profit margins v E-cig profit margins

Cigarette profit margins v Heat not burn profit margins

I don't remember 'public health' complaining too much when food companies took salt out of their products, in fact the salt loonies actually took credit for forcing them into it. But when the tobacco industry invests heavily and produces new products which take harm out of consuming nicotine, the tobacco control lot scream. You have to ask why. It's because they are scared.

They are scared because they know that they have fucked up. 'Public health' science ceased to be real science a very long time ago. They have simply spewed out all manner of partial bullshit for decades. They discovered that persuading politicians to do their bidding didn't rely on actually producing academically admirable work, it just relied on sounding plausible and getting politicos to believe the lies.

So we entered the era of research that generally went like this, if they were honest:

"Taking funding from a source which was seeking a biased conclusion, we took a pre-conceived policy idea and decided to carefully design a study which promoted it. We threw out any data that didn't fit, and scoured what was left to find something - anything - that remotely hinted at an association with what we wanted to do. We did send it for peer review on this occasion - though sometimes can't be arsed - but only after we released it to the press to grab a cheap headline. We don't even care if what we told the press is true, because if the study says something completely different - which it very often does - no-one will read it anyway, especially since we keep most of it behind a prohibitively expensive paywall so the public can't see the shit we send MPs for free. And even if they do, by the time our scam is debunked the headlines would have already flown around the world and millions will believe it.

We then concluded from our bollocks study that this is incontestible proof that the public need to be battered by more illiberal laws; that we want more cash more research is needed; and that if politicians don't listen to us we will tell everyone they want to kill little children."

It is into this stultifying and perverse environment of professional liars that e-cigs just happened to stumble.

Here was an alternative that was attractive to smokers and was threatening to make the tobacco control industry look a bit foolish. Their tired 'quit or die' gravy train was stalling, public sector cash was being squeezed, and along comes a product which, for many, was just as much enjoyment but without the harm. It even prompted forums, vape meets, festivals, and competitions, something never seen with patches and gums for some weird reason.

Faced with this clear threat to the livelihoods of many a comfortable, ruddy-faced 'public health' careerist, there was only one option. Attack it.

So they did. They believed that the same approach they used with smoking would work with vaping. Why not, it did before, didn't it? So they lied, and lied, and released junk science, and press released scary stories, and, and, and ... showed themselves up to be liars to a far bigger cohort of the public. Because, for the most part, the public don't care about e-cigs like they did about smoking, so they saw that they were being lied to.

The lies were so gobsmackingly ridiculous that some of their own even splintered off, perhaps wisely noting that history would judge who was being at least superficially sincere and who was just protecting their income to the detriment of the public's well-being.

In the case of reduced risk products, though, tobacco companies were employing proper scientists and doing proper science. The kind of stuff that may as well be written in Sanskrit as far as the assorted sociologists, psychologists, public policy advisors, aircraft engineers and self-declared 'experts' in tobacco control are concerned. Big Tobacco employed true global experts in their field, tobacco control just relied on their tried-and-tested ploy of pretending tobacco controllers were experts despite being woefully underqualified {waves at Martin McKee}.

But despite producing real science, the tobacco industry was ignored and sidelined because Big Tobacco, innit. The charlatans were gaining headlines for their biased crap, while the real deal was being ignored. If the tobacco control industry hadn't been so arrogant as to think that they could lie their way to banning e-cigs and other less harmful products, the PMI deal would probably not have happened.

It's said that Aristotle was the first to note that "nature abhors a vacuum", so considering that tobacco control were so cavalier about how they imagined, conceived, tabled and presented reseacrh in this area - while imploring everyone to ignore far better quality stuff from industry - is it any wonder that PMI said "Fuck it! Let's shovel a load of cash at people who will do it impartially".

'Public health' had their chances to do impartial science; proper science. But instead decided to just lie and cheat their way through it. Well, now there are a billion reasons why they should have acted more honestly in the past instead of deciding that with risk-reduced nicotine their policy should be "doubt is our product".

We know that they will scream - as the 116 stuck pigs mentioned earlier are doing - but this just shows that the research is something they are terribly afraid of. Why else try to obfuscate with something as facile and pathetic as a demand for a new worldwide Prohibition which would cause chaos? It's a last flailing of a cabal which is fearing its sepulchral end.

If those 116 'public health' organisations want to blame anyone for why it has come to this; that a tobacco company is firing a billion crispy oncers towards real unbiased research with no conditions, they only have to look at the garbage they have been foisting on the public for the past 30 years, then look in the mirror. 

Spot The Difference

You will often hear tobacco controllers talk about how the tobacco industry is evil and has a history of deceiving the public. It's a central ingredient of everything they do and they have used this to persuade governments to ignore the industry entirely, portraying big tobacco companies as untrustworthy.

The theme was explained in this BBC article last year.

In 1979, a secret memo from the tobacco industry was revealed to the public. Called the Smoking and Health Proposal, and written a decade earlier by the Brown & Williamson tobacco company, it revealed many of the tactics employed by big tobacco to counter “anti-cigarette forces”. 

In one of the paper’s most revealing sections, it looks at how to market cigarettes to the mass public: “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.” 

Proctor found that ignorance spreads when firstly, many people do not understand a concept or fact and secondly, when special interest groups – like a commercial firm or a political group – then work hard to create confusion about an issue. In the case of ignorance about tobacco and climate change, a scientifically illiterate society will probably be more susceptible to the tactics used by those wishing to confuse and cloud the truth.

If this kind of behaviour is reprehensible, how should we review research such as this by the tobacco control industry from last week? From the conclusions (emphases mine):

Although much is known about smoking‐induced cardiovascular toxicity, little is known about that of e‐cigarettes. This is an issue that continues to be a subject of debate. Nevertheless, based on the current body of evidence, e‐cigarettes are not emission free (as some believe) and, in fact, they emit various potentially harmful and toxic chemicals. Whether or not the levels of these toxicants are lower than traditional smoking remains controversial. In this connection, recent studies showed that e‐cigarettes‐emitted chemicals reach levels comparable to tobacco smoke, and those levels vary depending on multiple factors, including types of devices, e‐liquid, vaping topography, and vaping experience.

Isn't this, also, "establishing a controversy" by "those wishing to confuse and cloud the truth"?

Because, you see, there is overwhelming evidence to suggest that e-cigs are safer than smoking, and the authors know this. They are just choosing to try to perpetuate the mythical harms of vaping in the minds of "a scientifically illiterate society".

Although it was originally argued that e‐cigarettes are “harm free,” the present prevailing belief is that they are “reduced harm” alternatives to conventional cigarettes. This latter notion is still debatable and not supported by conclusive evidence, especially considering the wide variation between e‐cigarette products. Even if that were the case, their harm can still extend to innocent/bystander nonsmokers through secondhand and thirdhand vaping, including children, pregnant women, casino/housekeeping workers, and people with preexisting cardiovascular and other diseases.

Debatable? There is absolutely no debate whatsoever that e-cigs are "reduced harm" alternatives (note the scare quotes), they just are. And as for "secondhand and thirdhand vaping", that only exists in the fevered imagination of corrupt researchers such as the authors of this junk crap.

So, can you spot the difference between the behaviour of the tobacco industry in the 1960s and the behaviour of tobacco controllers such as these now? Because I can't. Creating false doubts about much safer products to put people off using them, and deceiving the public into thinking that they are dangerous, is exactly the same as creating false doubts about the high risks of smoking in order to encourage use, n'est-ce pas?

Just yet another example of how e-cigs are exposing the tobacco control industry as big a bunch of liars as the caricature they have painted of Big Tobacco for decades. Perhaps governments should cut off all tobacco control funding and stop listening to them too until they buy a dictionary and look up the word 'honesty'. 

The Illiberal Ruinous And Pointless Smoking Ban

As we approach the tenth anniversary of the smoking ban in the UK - otherwise known as "literally a confidence trick" by Debs Arnott - there will be a hell of a lot of unadulterated garbage in the media about how it has ushered in a world of rainbow-coloured unicorns and a national breeze of pixie dust.

So it's good that Forest have today released a report detailing how it has wreaked carnage on businesses, freedom of choice and property rights for no valid good reason whatsoever, you can read the report here.

Written by Rob Lyons, it runs through the major issues with the ban, and is fully referenced including this quote from Lord Lawson which sums up the whole ignorant charade perfectly.

"Passive smoking is an example in which [government] policy demonstrates a disproportionate response to a relatively minor health problem, with insufficient regard to statistical evidence."

Of course, there is no decent evidence whatsoever that passive smoking harms the health of others, however much the massed ranks of state-funded tobacco control industry parasites try to pretend it does. It's simply a pre-determined and long-concocted lie to bully smokers, and is backed up with junk science from soothsayers, mouth-breathers and snake oil salesmen waving shrouds while burying their snouts deeper into the trough of taxpayer cash.

The ban on smoking in private places - yes private, to say it is on public places is just another mendacious tobacco control sound bite - has also, as Lyons points out, never enjoyed popular public approval. There was no demand for it amongst the public, with the ONS data consistently showing that there was little support for the draconian and fascistic blanket ban that the hospitality industry had imposed on it, as I have written about many times before.

Since 1996, they have split the responses between those who approve of an outright ban, those who favoured some restrictions, and the numbers calling for none at all.
The figures up to 2005 were: 

2003: 20%, 70% and 8% respectively.
2004: 31%, 63% and 5%
2005: 33%, 61% and 5%  

Note that the first figure is those in favour of what has now been inflicted on us. The significant majority didn't want it.

Data taken from the ONS here

Lyons also comments on how the ban has had almost no discernible effect on smoking rates - the true reason for its implementation if you talk to any tobacco controller privately, it certainly wasn't about the health of bar workers - with evidence actually showing that, if anything, it slowed the long term decline in smoker prevalence.

He also runs through the barking mad and scientifically impossible 'heart attack miracles' and other trademark tobacco control industry junk science thrown together to try to justify the ban, but his assessment of the damage to the hospitality industry is truly damning!

- The smoking ban has however had a major impact on pub closures that increased significantly following bans in Scotland, England and Wales. 

- Since the introduction of the smoking ban in England in July 2007 over 10,500 pubs have closed, almost 20% of the pub estate a decade ago. In Wales over 860 pubs have closed, approximately 21% of the pub estate in 2007. 

- Pubs hardest hit by the smoking ban were in urban, inner-city or economically deprived communities. 

Far from 'celebrating' the smoking ban in a few days time, we should be appalled that something so illiberal, regressive and incredibly socially damaging was passed without public support - and without any credible scientific evidence to back it up - all at the behest of a small clique of greedy elitist snobs working to continue being in receipt of state cash, or as Lyons put it:

In effect, those who seek to prohibit smoking are placing their own views and prejudices ahead of those who choose to smoke. Not only do anti-smokers have an aversion to smoking – a perfectly reasonable question of taste – they also think other people shouldn’t smoke, that it is wrong to enjoy something they themselves dislike or have weaned themselves off. 

Lyon's Forest report doesn't forget to note the huge role the ban played in greasing the slippery slope, either. Can anyone, for example, imagine that e-cigs would be banned in pubs if it weren't for the fact that cigarettes have been. Yet it is increasingly more difficult to find pubs that allow vaping. As vaping ban after vaping ban is implemented in bars, clubs, hospital car parks, beaches and squares up and down the country, tobacco controllers who claim to be supportive of e-cigs remain totally silent. For them, the jewel in the crown of the smoking ban is too precious for them to lift so much as a finger to protect vapers.

This is why I continue to say that the Health Act 2006 was the most socially destructive legislation the country has ever had to suffer. It wasn't about bar workers, it wasn't about health, it was about a small bunch of prohibitionist fucksticks taking control of civil society and ripping apart the fabric of tolerance and free choice. Lyons make the very same point.

What we are seeing is creeping prohibition driven by the precautionary principle, the idea that if something is potentially harmful it must be regulated out of existence regardless of the evidence or concepts such as choice and individual freedom. Whether we smoke or vape, consume alcohol or sugary drinks, adults must be free to make informed choices for ourselves. Moreover it’s in the interests of non-smokers to support the right to make informed choices because once we establish the principle that governments can intervene to prevent us from doing perfectly normal (albeit potentially ‘unhealthy’) things like smoking we’re on a slippery slope that will inevitably lead to further restrictions on personal choice.

Quite.

The report ends with a call for a more liberal and sensible policy, and for a properly independent assessment of the damage the ban has caused rather than the disgraceful tobacco control industry whitewashed farce that tried to pass itself off as one.

As Snowdon quite rightly observed yesterday in his article astutely entitled "10 years of lying about the smoking ban":

There is nothing to celebrate in this act of cultural vandalism. We should be having a wake. 

Indeed we should.

Do go read the Road to Ruin report in its entirety by clicking here, it is highly recommended. 

The Plain Packs Farce Is Confirmed

Before heading out this morning, I read this stunning statement in a BBC article about a new review of evidence (pfft) about plain packaging.

There was no evidence that changing packaging affected the number of young people taking up smoking, [Jamie Hartmann-Boyce, co-author of the report] said.

This is hardly surprising, because it is true. In fact I have written often about how the tobacco control lie-machine has tried very hard to avoid this unfortunate (for them) outcome of possibly the daftest 'public health' policy ever to have crept past lumpen-brained wooden-tops in parliament.

Remember that campaigners for plain packaging insisted till they were blue in the face that it was exclusively designed to stop kids taking up the habit ("protect our children") and nothing at all, oh no, with making smokers quit.


There are a few quotes I collected at the time here but they all went a bit like this from Andy Lloyd of Fresh NE.

"Plain packaging is not about stopping existing smokers but everything to do with protecting children"

But according to this new review, that hasn't happened at all. So it's a 100% cast-iron failure then, as we saw in Australia.

Undeterred, the authors of this review came out with a load of fanciful nonsense to get their headline anyway.

Plain cigarette packaging could lead to 300,000 fewer smokers in the UK over the next year, a major review suggests. 

The Cochrane Review team, led by researchers from London and Oxford, estimated that the number of people who smoked in the UK could go down by 0.5% by May 2018, although they said the current evidence was limited. 

The findings were backed up by a report from the Australian government, which showed a similar drop in smoking prevalence - 0.55% - following the introduction of plain packaging there in 2012.

It's rather disappointing to see that Professor Ann McNeil was involved in this worthless garbage. McNeil was also the lead author of PHE's evidence review of e-cigs which concluded that they are 95% less risky than smoking. The lazy extrapolation of 300,000 fewer smokers ... in a year ... doesn't reflect well on the methods being employed, does it?

The Australian decline in smoking was nothing unusual, and was more likely to have been brought about by savage increases in the price of smokes than what colour the pack came in. It's quite absurd to suggest anywhere close to those kind of numbers will quit in the UK solely because of plain packs.

I expect any decline will be claimed as such though, and I reckon that is entirely the point of the rubbish produced today. If 300,000 smokers do quit in the year following plain packaging, tobacco controllers are going to boast that it was all down to their inconsequential policy. It won't be because of large increases in tobacco duty; it won't be a natural decline fitting with current trends; and it sure as shit won't be because of the enthusiasm about vaping (which ASH and their chums tend to keep very quiet about in their smoking cessation estimates). Nope, the tobacco control scam will make a grab for the lot and say it was the glitzy packs being binned wot done it.

Yet consider how stringent the criteria is that they apply to vaping. There are approximately 3 million vapers, 1.5 million of which are former smokers who now vape instead; if tobacco control had advocated e-cigs from the beginning, they would be claiming the full 1.5 million as a result of their state-funded efforts. In fact, they'd probably take credit for a percentage of the dual users too!

But they don't.

Instead, they rely on a convoluted and extremely complicated analysis of exactly how many vapers quit exclusively because of vaping who would not have otherwise quit by another method (well explained by the NNA here). That figure is around 16,000 per year.

It is called "added value" and the tobacco control industry is very assiduous about calculating that when it comes to e-cigs. This is exactly the correct thing to do and Professor Robert West, whose analysis led to the 16,000 per year figure for vaping, should be congratulated for looking at the figures in detail.

Yet here are McNeil et al sullying the reputation of Cochrane by hinting that 300,000 smokers will quit smoking in the coming year solely because of plain packaging. Why do they not attempt the same sophisticated analysis of added value to assess the value of plain packaging?

I think we know the answer. It's because if they did they would have to reluctantly come to the conclusion that the real projected added value of quitting due to plain packs is somewhere in the region of zero. So double standards it is then.

What a farce.

Taps Drip, Clocks Tick, Tobacco Controllers Lie

Back when the tax parasites in tobacco control set their sights on plain packaging for tobacco, they were very clear about why the policy was required.

If you live in the south west, you may remember this advertising hoarding at the time, paid for by government to lobby government in early 2012.

There are other examples here and here

In case you can't quite make it out, it says:

"Support plain packaging and protect our children"

Cancer Research UK ran a similar campaign, with an almost identical tagline, complete with video featuring loads of cute kids.

"Support the campaign to protect children from tobacco marketing"

This was emphasised further on its campaign page.

"It doesn’t matter if you’re a smoker or not, this campaign isn’t about telling people to quit, it’s about stopping the next generation from starting in the first place."

Smoker-hating MP Stephen Williams was certain about the reason for the policy.

"I was pleased to help launch Europe's first major campaign to raise awareness of the dangers of glitzy tobacco packaging to children"

As was Fiona Andrews of Smokefree South West (link has since been removed, as has Smokefree South West funnily enough).

"Smoking is an epidemic that affects children and moving tobacco products into standardised, plain packaging is designed to protect them; it is not about current smokers."

Andy Lloyd of Fresh NE went further.

"Plain packaging is not about stopping existing smokers but everything to do with protecting children"

As did Stewart Brock of NHS Somerset.

"Smokers start as children and continue as adults. Smoking is an epidemic that affects children and moving tobacco products into standardised, plain packaging is designed to protect them and is not about current smokers."

Every one of those statements above was a lie to a lesser or greater degree to mendaciously sway public opinion and to hoodwink politicians. Because, as we see from ASH's Amanda Sandford this week, there was only one real reason for plain packaging.

Why is the packaging changing?

Ms Sandford said: "This is to make smoking less appealing. 

"There is evidence that from the changes that have already been made to packaging that it has made people quit smoking. 

"And that is because people are faced with very harsh health images every time they pick up a pack of cigarettes."

Pretty unequivocal, I think you'll agree.

There are a few rules in life that will always serve you well. One of them is that if you hear or read anything from a tobacco controller, assume they're not telling you the truth. 

Simple Simon Blatantly Lies To Australia

As I touched on in the last article, the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) yesterday decided to continue with their ban on e-cigs containing nicotine. Part of their flawed reasoning cited evidence from the US which is hardly surprising.

You see, one of the prime Australian 'experts' in tobacco control Down Under is the vandal-turned-clown Simple Simon Chapman, whose prejudice against e-cigs runs so deep that he has scoured the globe for straws to clutch in his attempt to obstruct vaping.

Increasingly he has been drawn to the US where the CDC continues to lie about the subject by classifying e-cigs as a "tobacco product" despite containing no tobacco. That way, they are able to pretend that tobacco use remains unchanged as more youth vape and fewer smoke.

I highlight 'tobacco use' because it is a clever manipulation of statistics, however it's quite clear when you look into the data that youth smoking in the US has been falling to record low levels. For example, here is a graph taken from CDC data by Reason's Jacob Sullum in April last year.

Yesterday, though, Chappers appeared on Australian national broadcaster ABC's PM show and declared this to the nation.

"The fall in youth smoking that we saw for many many years in the United States last year, for the first time, stopped falling; and while that was happening, e-cigarette use was rising dramatically."

As you can see above, even if the CDC may try to argue that tobacco use remains overall the same if you fraudulently include e-cigs in the same category, it is completely untrue to say that youth smoking has stopped falling.

It's the same if you look at National Youth Tobacco Survey data, as Chris Snowdon did last month ...

... and also if you look at US Monitoring The Future surveys.

Contrary to what Simple Simon told Australia yesterday, nowhere is there a hint that youth smoking rates have stopped falling in the US. Yet if you're an Australian citizen who is largely uneducated on the subject of e-cigs, yesterday you would have heard someone called Professor something-or-other declare a falsehood as fact on Australia's state broadcaster.

In many professions, this kind of behaviour would be punishable by suspension or even dismissal. But in the unregulated Wild West world of 'public health' - where you would think accurate information should be far more important than in any other sphere - Chappers will get away scot-free with deliberately lying.

Sadly, he is just one small part of a broken and corrupt profession in which lying is viewed as an acceptable tactic, and which is actively harming social cohesion and liberty the world over.