Sunday Psychopaths

Tobacco controllers will often tell you that they don't hate smokers, oh no, merely smoking. The problem is that with just about every utterance they exhibit the utter contempt that they have for smokers. Here's a cracker from Australian BMJ Tobacco Control Journal editor, Marita Hefler.

Smoking is as *informed* a choice as snorting powdered asbestos. @GrahamGords1001 @AdamCleave

— Marita Hefler (@m_hef) February 14, 2016

Erm, hands up who isn't aware of tobacco control advice that smoking is dangerous. Anyone, anyone?

Now, I don't know about the Australian education system but considering the UK one promotes mandatory tobacco control advice on the national curriculum - and Australia is arguably more authoritarian than here - I'd guess they probably do too.

The little Ps had their first state-funded anti-smoking lessons around about the age of 5, and every single year from then upwards. So much so that they and their classmates are sick of it. The elder of the two is currently revising for GSCEs and going through past papers. The deleterious effects of smoking is included in science and they have to learn it inside out and backwards to get their grades because - yes - it is a question that can come up because it has many times before.

How any tobacco controller can possibly say that smokers who started in the past few decades were not aware that smoking carries the potential for harm is quite ridiculous! But if they say kids of today aren't aware then they are clearly insane.

This is because the tobacco control industry lives in this self-indulgent cuckoo-land world where admitting that smoking is a personal choice would seriously threaten their jobs and salaries. If they have to concede that there is more than enough information now for the public to make an informed choice, they would instantly make themselves unnecessary and not worthy of government grants.

So their only recourse is to suggest - as Hefler has above - that no matter how much blanket and incessant coverage of tobacco control rhetoric; no matter how ubiquitous the advice from them; anyone who smokes obviously started because they are too stupid to understand it, therefore they are urgently required to provide more.

That, really, is what tobacco control thinks of anyone who considers their advice and chooses to smoke anyway. It's very enlightening, isn't it?

If this is pointed out to them, they always wriggle, of course.

In general terms, yes. But most don't understand full range of diseases and relative risk @j_orelma @GrahamGords1001 @AdamCleave

— Marita Hefler (@m_hef) February 14, 2016

No, they really do. In fact, the public believes that smoking - and especially the myth of passive smoking - is far more dangerous than it actually is. And, I have to add, to read someone in tobacco control talking about the public's misunderstanding of relative risk when they have relied on exactly that for decades to spread junk science bullshit is as jaw-dropping as it is laughable.

Unless, of course, that by saying the public doesn't understand they are admitting that they are useless and that everything they have done has been a roaring failure? Well, you know, it's one interpretation isn't it?

Meanwhile, in America, one of the adoring fans of the secular church of tobacco control lunacy makes a brilliant argument for banning e-cigs too.

@GrahamGords1001 @CaeruleanSea @Hifistud I
am 7th cousin of Lady Diana; Royals are often chem-sensitive. You make fun of a disability? WOW!

— Carrie Kelly (@CarrieHKelly) February 14, 2016

Not that she's mad or anything.

Let's #Twittershame #smokers who refuse to put out! Take a photo & call #police if it's N/S violation! #nosmoking pic.twitter.com/v3yq4rQhic

— Carrie Kelly (@CarrieHKelly) February 5, 2016

Elsewhere, their faithful hate-filled foot soldiers continue proudly exhibiting their mental health problems on blogs, message boards and comments sections safe in the knowledge that smokers are untermensch and therefore valid targets for abuse like tobacco control has instructed. Because all smokers are stupid, aren't they? We know this thanks to people like Marita Hefler who tell the world so.

You will never, ever, hear a tobacco controller condemning such vile anti-smoker behaviour ... because they hate smokers, and they rely on it. Always have, always will.

We're on the side of the angels, remember that.

UPDATE: Apparently, tweeting publicly isn't meant to be regarded as public, so please disregard the above.

A Whole New Level Of Denial

Regular visitors here will be aware that I've often remarked on the marvellous capacity of e-cigs to expose irrational hatred from condescending, anti-social, psychotic smoker-haters, as exhibited nicely by Duncan Bannatyne in 2010.

Of course, he didn't know exactly why he despised e-cigs back then because he knew absolutely nothing about them and probably still doesn't. He just despised them. I theorised as to why at the time.

I can now understand why they boil anti-smoker piss so much. After nearly three decades of fabricating a scare story to eliminate others enjoying a substance (nicotine) of which they personally disapprove, the righteous have next to nothing on the e-cig, and it must really - no, I mean really - grate. 

Having dreamed for years of that orgasmic final boot in the face of those they jealously hated for enjoying a benign pleasure, they can see a few wriggling free, still putting hand to mouth, and with the two fingers still defiantly up. 

Some have found that vaping is a way of ditching tobacco for good; anti-smokers would prefer to ban e-cigs to force them back to being smokers where they are easier to hit. As Bannatyne shows above, they're not really bothered about health, or the chiildren, or harm reduction - they just enjoy the hunt, the superiority, and the self-righteousness. 

E-cigs threaten to deprive them of that, all of it - after 30 years of intense obsessive effort - and the psychos don't like it one bit.

Since then, though, e-cigs have also exposed the cant, hypocrisy and methodological lying of many in the 'public health' and tobacco control trough-slurping industries too. The huge surge in e-cig popularity in the past five years has been matched only by the surge in ever more desperate - and almost proudly corrupt - junk science from researchers who care not a jot about health if it threatens their grants and/or salary and state-funded Merc.

Just in the past couple of months, for example, we've seen baseless smear-jobs to undermine a favourable government review, along with appalling, easily-debunked junk-science-by-press-release designed specifically to create hysterical anti-vaping headlines all around the world.

This, remember, from the same people who have condemned 'Big Tobacco' for decades for misleading smokers, perverting science and putting personal gain over health. Their hypocrisy really is quite staggering, isn't it?

However, even I am now becoming amazed at how far these arrogant establishment liars are prepared to go to put a positive genie back in its bottle and get back to their comfortable state of smug, self-centred finger-wagging. The latest development - and the reason for the blatant mendacity being stepped up to a whole new level - is the recent approval by the MHRA of an e-cig which could, theoretically, be prescribed on the NHS.

This has caused a bit of a problem in Wales.

The path has been laid for e-cigarettes to be potentially made available on free prescription in Wales after a brand was granted a licence by a UK medicines body. 

The decision by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency on the e-Voke e-cigarette applies across the UK and includes Wales.

This is the same Wales where - despite not a shred of credible evidence in its favour - the assembly is still planning to impose bans on public use of e-cigs. Awkward, huh?

Well apparently not, because like a teen caught doing something they shouldn't, a weak excuse has been cobbled together.

But the Welsh Government says the Public Health Bill which would put the ban into law doesn’t prevent the use of e-cigarettes as an aid to stop smoking. 

A Welsh Government spokeswoman said: "The Bill proposes to restrict the use of e-cigarettes in certain enclosed public places because we are concerned about the risk they pose to children in terms of normalising smoking behaviours."

And what of these medically licensed e-cigs, what are they like?

[A spokeswoman for the MHRA] added: “The e-Voke is the second product that looks like a cigarette meeting the definition of an e-cigarette to receive a marketing authorisation"

Oh I see. So to stop the "risk they pose to children in terms of normalising smoking behaviours", Wales will now have a law which allows e-cigs "that look like a cigarette" but will ban those which look absolutely nothing like one. Those funny provincials, eh?

I'd say you couldn't make it up, but ignorant, vapid, ideological establishment bansturbators and their useful idiots are doing exactly that almost on a daily basis about e-cigs now.

By way of exhibit B, consider this from the weekend as well.

Dr Tim Ballard, the vice-chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners, called for more research to be carried out before patients are told they can get e-cigarettes on the NHS. 

"Potentially, there may be a place for the prescription of e-Voke as part of a smoking cessation programme, but GPs would be very wary of prescribing them until there was clear evidence of their safety and of their efficacy in helping people to quit," Dr Ballard said.

This is stunning! For years those ranged against vaping have clutched at the straw of there being no medically-licensed e-cig as a reason why their use can't be trusted and why bans are justified, but now there is a medically-licensed e-cig - even an intangible one which isn't yet on the market - they don't like that either!

The entire point of MHRA approval is that evidence of safety and efficacy must be established before it is given a green light.

A spokeswoman for the MHRA [...] said the licence “means it is a product of acceptable quality and can be an effective aid to smoking cessation.”

So what we are now seeing, believe it or not, is entrenched ideologists in the medical establishment effectively implying that the MHRA is incompetent; that medical approval is no guarantee of safety; and appearing quite willing to throw the entire British medicinal classification regime under the bus to defend a stance opposed to vaping based on nothing but a whim and a smile.

I really don't know how much further these weird people can go with such astounding denial, my crystal ball is all burned out. Five years ago, I predicted a very optimistic scenario where anti-smokers would be shown up by e-cigs to be absurd for adhering to hatred and baseless belief systems rooted in bigotry. This, however, has gone beyond my wildest dreams, the medical establishment transparently and publicly illustrating that it doesn't give a llama's spit about its own integrity and collective competence on the back of dogma and rumour-mongering is entirely unexpected.

The only thing we can be absolutely sure of, again, is that it's never been about health.

"Against Smokers"

If you've ever wondered how disgusting pieces of shit like this are created, or how human beings are encouraged to spew revolting bile such as this towards fellow law-abiding citizens, you only need to look to the vile tobacco control industry who promote it.

Last week, anti-smoking organisations gathered for the Oceania Tobacco Conference in Perth, Australia. These people, for want of a better description of them - who routinely claim to respect and want to 'help' or 'support' smokers  - had some great ideas like this to impart.

What a wheeze, eh? Humiliating smokers (in a youth support facility in this instance, of all places), and they "Love it!".

It seems these anti-social, tax-spongers don't actually care much for smokers at all. Instead they seem to believe they are now in some kind of war, it's them against us. Quite literally.

The plain packs sporting gruesome pictures are a starting point, according to New Zealand researcher Professor Janet Hoek who was speaking at the Oceania Tobacco Conference 2015 in Perth last week.

This is the same Janet Hoek who wants to see plain packaging for fast food and fizzy drinks, by the way, in case you were wondering.

Her research investigates how to better use cigarette's own packaging against smokers

Against smokers, eh? Not smoking, smokers. Says a lot doesn't it?

She means to do this by way of poo sticks, which I've written about before.

This is a euphemism for suggesting government mandate that - at the same time as turning the outside of packets into a B list gore film - the cigarettes inside should look like bile, sick and shit.

She continues ...

"[W]e are directly linking these unpleasant connotations, feeling of dirt and filth, to this very act of consumption"

Can't you just feel the love and care for smokers in her words? You know, her undying respect for the individual's freedom to consume legal products should they so choose?

If only we had a word for people like Hoek and her pals who use force, threat, or coercion to abuse, intimidate, or aggressively dominate others, eh?

It seems there is nothing too extreme for tobacco control industry shitsacks. They're happy to torture mental health patients; to dismantle the precarious status quo in prisons; to destroy businesses; to pervert research for their own ends; as well as perverting democracy in many imaginative ways while using our taxes to do so, and some even go so low as to perpetuate smoking amongst children because they are ideologically opposed to something for no decent reason. As long as they get paid, they don't seem to care what havoc they wreak.

Still, it's good to have it confirmed that many of them are - at heart - exactly the same kind of repulsive crazy as those who they prompt to abuse perfectly decent people in public.

Twitter Curiosities

Despite following the weather and club updates online, when I turned up to watch some cricket at lunchtime on Sunday, it had started raining again. As irritating as that was, I whipped out the trusty smartphone to pass some time catching up on what was happening on Twitter.

Someone had (wrongly) mentioned that tobacco duties don't cover cost to society of smoking - citing a steaming pile of horshit from Policy Exchange in 2010 - so, naturally, I attempted to send them this article by Snowdon, and this one by your humble host which show why it was blatantly biased (and perhaps even pharma-sponsored) balderdash. However, Twitter refused to accept the tweet and it took nigh on 20 minutes to get them on there by being a sneaky bastard.

The reason became clear when I clicked on Snowdon's link myself to see if it was correct and was met with this warning.

As we all know, it is safe to ignore the warning and click through for the article, but it was disturbing that someone might have flagged a well-researched, well-written and factual blog as "potentially harmful". That isn't the end of the story though, because later the same day I found that this blog, too, was subject to the same Twitter warnings and still is now.

The first thought was that it was a general glitch with the blogspot domain, but it doesn't seem to have affected any other Blogger accounts apart from one guy who rips into the notoriously censorious SNP. It is also isolated only to blogspot.co.uk and not the hundreds of country-specific suffixes that Blogger employs. Therefore if you were tweeting the links from Ireland, Germany, Spain etc, there was no discernible problem, meaning that only the British versions of the blogs were deemed "unsafe".

Now, why would it be that two British bloggers who talk about the cant, hypocrisy and lies of public health - and tobacco control in particular - were flagged as unsafe on Twitter, on the same day, and only for the British domain suffix? Probably just a coincidence, eh?

If - and it is a big 'if' - there is something nefarious behind this, it's amusing that it was counterproductive. I've personally noticed no downtick in visits and, in fact, my Twitter mentions have rocketed as followers were drawn to the gossip and the articles behind it. Monday's article, especially, has flown past the visiting stats I'd have expected to see and is on course to be the most viewed of the year so far. If there was some attempt to damage mine and Chris's blog - hard to believe considering there are no anti-smokers anywhere who are obscene and in need of psychiatric help -  it was less successful than someone putting their fist into a bucket of water to see what kind of hole they could make.

Apropos of nothing, I thought more recent readers of this blog might be interested in a similar Twitter palaver from February last year. A Twitter account called @_TobaccoTactics had been parodying the laughably inept Tobacco Tactics website - which you pay for, by the way - and had therefore raised the hackles of tobacco controllers who find it impossible to tolerate dissent or debate.

A guy called Nicholas Chinardet, who was working for ASH at the time, took it upon himself to object to Twitter on some spurious premise and have the @_TobaccoTactics account closed down. They were irked by images such as this, y'see (click to enlarge).

Most people thought them very funny, but state-funded ASH - in their miserable wisdom - had decided that playtime was over. As Carl Phillips remarked at the time, this was just par for the course.

The tobacco control industry is so desperately worried about anyone criticizing what they are saying that they will take (illegal) legal action to try to stop it.  They realize they are incapable of defending their claims on the merits.  They do not engage in any public debate with their critics (they will talk to a few pet “critics” in stage-managed settings, but pretend that their real critics do not even exist). Censorship is the tactic of someone who has only power, not truth, on their side.

Of course, this is not to say that an organisation which advocates silencing of differing opinions; whose industry has spent the last few months smearing any MP who voted against plain packs; which has rubbished the dead in protection of its favoured sponsors; and whose Director tried to force MPs to ignore the public's objections to plain packaging in a public consultation had anything to do with my and Snowdon's opinions being censored on Twitter over the weekend. I just post that as a curiosity.

Because they wouldn't dream of doing such a thing. Except when they did last year, of course.

A Million Ways To Die In The West Of Europe

For your Friday treat, French anti-smokers have come up with an 'amusing' ad campaign on YouTube which is laugh a minute. Apparently, you should quit smoking because otherwise you are bound to suffer a violent and immediate death.

Those Frenchies have always been arty, haven't they? I just didn't know they were so creative with their imagined killing of smokers.

These are just the first three of an ongoing series, you can subscribe to their channel for weekly episodes here.

I suppose being employed to think up regular gory deaths for people who smoke must be a bit of a busman's holiday for anti-smoking obsessives, as anyone who's read our psycho anti catalogue will agree.

Enjoy the weekend, and try not to get beheaded during a quiet moment, eh?

Out Of The Woodwork

So, it seems that the London parks smoking ban suggested in a report commissioned by Boris isn't quite the slam dunk it first appeared.

Boris says no to parks smoking ban: "To ban people from doing something that is legal in a big open space is taking bossiness too far. "
— Ross Lydall (@RossLydall) October 15, 2014

But the period of time between the press release going out in the early hours and Boris's statement at lunchtime was open season for every irrational smoker-hating whacko, psychopath, and berserker to spew their bile on every possible platform. Lord Narzi and Sally Davies effectively signalled to thousands of society's most vile that hyperbolic hatred was officially sanctioned by the authorities.

Prime pick of a host of nasty screwballs calling in to a phone-in on Radio 5Live this morning was a doctor who revelled in the proposal because "if I tell a smoker not to smoke, he says he has as much right as me to use the park, but this law would entitle me to approach smokers and tell them to put their cigarette out".

A writer in the Metro considered he'd been given the green light to refer to smokers as "dis-gus-ting!".

It’s going to be welcomed by the silent majority of Londoners who scream in their heads ‘you’re dis-gus-ting!’ whenever anyone near them lights up. 

I know because I'm one of them. I think smoking is one of the most revolting things devised by humanity. 

It’s worse than that, though, because of the unpleasant knowledge that the stink of their revolting habit has passed through their tar-encrusted innards before washing all over you.

Meanwhile, over at the Mirror, Fleet Street Fox was penning similar stuff.

They stand outside pubs, puffing a fug to poison others trying to get through the door for a very important gin. 

They stand on street corners, exhaling wildly at passers-by. 

And they meander slowly along pavements leaving a trail of nasty nicotine to enter the unsuspecting nostrils of their fellow pedestrians. 

If smoking is your choice, then NOT smoking is mine. Keep it to yourself, you ill-mannered walking bonfire of suicidal stupidity.

Including bringing up a psycho anti-smoker favourite, the smoker-whacking snipers.

They are determinedly addicted and insensible to public health messages so the only effective method of stopping them lighting up in parks would need to involve snipers in trees, a method of removing their oxygen until they repent, or enabling vigilantes to set them alight and see how they like it. 

All of which, even a professor and a dame would have to admit, is a lot of effort when the rate of smoking is in a long-term steady decline and will probably sort itself out, if only because all the stupid people end up dead.

Everywhere on social media schizoids felt almost compelled to talk of "clouds of smoke" clogging up acres of parklands; that there is "nothing worse" than being near a smoker; that smokers were "killing children"; and, of course, that the ban doesn't go far enough ... smoking should be banned completely.

It's not that the state and their quangoes create these sick people, irrational smoke-haters have been around forever along with temperance fruitcakes, racists and anti-semites. It's just that civil society normally demands that they keep their odious, spittle-flecked bigotry to themselves. But when the state and/or its institutions legitimise these hateful views, we get Carrie Nations, Jewish businesses joyfully being vandalised and South Africans talking openly of their hatred of kaffirs.

It's an effect we've seen today, and one which ASH - who claim not to like smokers being attacked or condemned - say they are absolutely "delighted" about. Even Simon Chapman recognises that bans outdoors are "ethically unjustifiable", but ASH's ethics fly out of the window when an opportunity arises to express their joy in bullying others.

This is why it's becoming a mantra here now that we are most definitely on the side of the angels. What can be more civilised than respecting the preferences and life choices of others, and organising our own lives to fit in happily around them?

By contrast, ASH and their fellow professional finger-waggers only encourage the intolerant, anti-social and vile in society, while state bodies which listen to them pander to the most disgusting, base and grubby of human flaws.

E-Cigs To Be Classed As Tobacco

It appears that the World Health Organisation has jumped the shark and is now entirely under the control of their pharmaceutical industry paymasters.

Via the Financial Times, I challenge any tobacco controller to say that this is a proportionate response to something which is helping hundreds of thousands of smokers to quit tobacco.

Electronic cigarette users are set to be banished to the pavement alongside their tobacco-smoking cousins – and face similar hefty prices – if the World Health Organisation pushes ahead with plans to regulate e-cigarettes in the same way as normal tobacco. 

Attendees at the meeting, which included representatives from the WHO’s six global regions, said that e-cigarettes “would be considered as tobacco products as per the WHO FCTC” if they contained nicotine made from tobacco leaves, according to the minutes. 

The move would see e-cigarettes face the same advertising bans, public smoking limits and hefty excise duty that apply to normal cigarettes, potentially stymieing the products’ rapid growth.

Conveniently, this is just what the pharmaceutical industry needs to halt a dramatic decline in sales of their useless, but expensive, rival products. What a coincidence, eh? And what's the betting that if this is true, the WHO commission 'science' to justify it from someone like, oh I dunno, mad Stan Glantz?

Now, I hate to crow (actually, I don't) but I saw this coming way back in 2008. It has been written in the public health scriptures that the only supplier of nicotine shall be the pharmaceutical industry, even though they too procure their nicotine from tobacco leaves.

Bravo to e-cigs and vapers everywhere for flushing these charlatans out. Their claimed care for health is merely the front for a charade which often resembles a shilling exercise for Big Pharma. If not, I dare ASH and chums to prove me wrong by objecting to these proposals in the strongest possible terms. In fact, scratch that, I double dare you.

Quite how throwing vapers out into the street is supposed to protect those poor choice-free bar workers from the already mythical secondhand smoke terror, the article doesn't say. Just a hunch, but I'd say bar workers have been used like a cheap whore by a tobacco control industry which has never been about health.

The message this is sending is that you may as well carry on smoking - if anyone tries to put you off, just advise them that the World Health Organisation told you to.

E-Cig Ad Whac-A-Mole

Sigh, here we go again.

An advert for an e-cigarette brand has been banned after the advertising watchdog ruled that claims including that it was "the healthier smoking alternative" could not be substantiated.

Of course it can be substantiated. Even the tobacco control industry as a whole has had little option but to concede that e-cigs are safer than tobacco; only the certifiably insane amongst them are claiming otherwise.

The ASA's ruling is facepalm stuff.

We noted that the advertisers had not provided any documentation from the MHRA in support of their claims. We acknowledged the quote from ASH, but noted it was not supported by further documentation or substantiation showing the effects of electronic cigarettes or the Ten Motives products specifically. We understood that the presentations provided also referred to general information and documentation about e-cigarettes, but noted we had not been provided with any documentation or studies which detailed the effects of the Ten Motives products featured in the ad or which had considered their effects compared to smoking or on the user's health. 

In the absence of supporting evidence which showed that the Ten Motives products featured in the ad were less harmful than smoking and did not have any negative effects on the user's health, we concluded that the claims "The healthier smoking alternative" and "you can still enjoy smoking without worrying about the effects on your health" were misleading.

Eh? So because the MHRA haven't yet officially stated the bleeding obvious, and because quotes about e-cigs in general - which all work in precisely the same way through a very simple process - are not exclusively about Ten Motives products, it means Ten Motives can't state the bleeding obvious themselves?

Good grief. A perfect example of stupid regulatory obstinacy if ever I saw one.

Still, the Guardian is simply reporting on the latest in a long line of frivolous complaints routinely filed against e-cigs whenever a new ad pops up via any media (the one described above was just a leaflet, for Chrissakes). Which begs the question as to who is firing off these complaints.

In September I wrote about a slew of TV ads being banned, again for spurious reasons, with massively over-funded tax leeches Smokefree South West being one of the complainants. Their particular incompetent, dogma-driven whine was rejected out of hand, but the scattergun approach employed by dozens of other obsessive anti-looks-like-smoking cranks ensured that e-cig exposure would be delayed a little bit longer.

It seems like every time an e-cig ad is released, psycho antis are slavering at the opportunity it affords them to be egotistically offended. Just last month, judgement on an E-Lites ad was released by the ASA.

The complainant challenged whether the ad was irresponsible because it: 

1.   appeared in a magazine that appealed to children; and
2.   included an image of a penguin and the word 'Christmas', which could appeal to children.

The authority's response was withering.

The ASA noted the target audience cited by the advertiser and publisher and we also noted the articles submitted which consisted of reports on chemical weapons, drug trafficking and whistle-blowers.  We considered those articles and did not deem them or the magazine generally, to be of particular interest to children.

Ya don't say! They also implied that, you know, adults quite like Christmas too and generally consider penguins to be cute and associated with winter weather so told the joyless moaner to stick their complaint where the sun don't shine.

On the same day, though, it was revealed that another e-cig company was not so fortunate. You see, they learned that NHS anti-smoking campaigns are not really their friend after all after their ad was banned for having the cheek to mention Stoptober.

A national press ad for V2 electronic cigarettes stated "USA's #1 now in the UK. Feel the quality. Taste the difference ... For FREE ...". Halfway down the page, text stated "For Stoptober ... To get your Express Starter Kit, ... use promo-code ‘STOPTOBER’...".  

The ASA was concerned that, as the ad used the word “Stoptober”, consumers were likely to understand that the product was associated with or endorsed by the NHS campaign “Stoptober”, which we understood was not the case, and they were therefore likely to believe that the product was suitable for use as a smoking cessation device.

Bloody amateurs! Don't they know Stoptober is only for stopping in ways for which the NHS get paid?

It's starting to look like some farcical game of anti-smoking whac-a-mole with joyless bores (or, perhaps state-funded prohibitionists, who knows) desperately trying to prevent sight of a promising harm reduction product being noticed by people who might like to try it out.

As regularly predicted here since 2010, e-cigs are exposing many anti-smokers for the nasty, spiteful, self-centred pieces of work that they have always been.

The future will hopefully view them with the contempt they deserve.

H/T Jewel-robbing ASA monitor, PJH

What You Won't Hear From ASH

If you haven't yet seen it, there was a particularly ignorant and anti-social article at HuffPo earlier this week written by a psychopathic anti-smoker. Entitled "Why smokers must be shamed", it argued - amongst other nonsense - that smoking outdoors in public should be a criminal offence and that smokers should not be allowed to work with children. Oh yeah, and that e-cigs should be included too, just for jolly.

Yes, really.

Frank Davis and Redhead have filleted the piece nicely, but there is one group of organisations which will say absolutely nothing on the subject.

You see, ASH pretend that want the debate to be about smoking, not smokers - as they say on their website.

 We do not attack smokers or condemn smoking.

Yet you know damn well that they are happy for others to do so. Their silence about the HuffPo article - which is guaranteed - will speak volumes.

Because, for a rent-a-quote group like ASH, it's telling that they will get their comments into any piece about smoking - like this one this weekend about a school which values education above anti-smoking dogma - but routinely fail to intervene when nasty little fascists like the HuffPo author spout their bile.

They were also silent when a report claimed that anti-smoking policies are harming the less well off.

Smokers are like ‘migrant and indigenous groups’ in past centuries who were seen as contaminating the rest of society and threatening the way of life of normal, healthy people, Professor Graham, of York University, added. 

Her report calls for anti-smoking campaigns to be redrawn so they try to help the poor improve their lives.

Nothing from ASH or their friends. Nada. Zilch.

It's not like they're unable to do so, as we saw when Stephen Williams wrote an article for Lib Dem Voice about plain packaging. In that instance, ASH's Arnott and Phil Rimmer - along with other state-paid tobacco control lobbyists - were queueing up to get stuck into the comments.

The tobacco control industry also had absolutely nothing to say about a Luton Herald & Post article in 2011 - in the same week that Anders Breivik killed 69 people in Norway - which thought it hilarious to talk about shooting smokers on sight.

So let's set a squad of licensed snipers on the streets, with permission to pick off smokers whenever there's a clear shot. 

I confidently predict that the prospect of having your head blown off while enjoying what you didn't realise would be your last cigarette would give smokers up and down the country an extra incentive to kick the habit. 

And if they defiantly carry on puffing, when they are popped between the eyes it will save the health service all the costs of caring for them in their declining years. 

We know bans don't work if they're not enforced. My way is simpler, and a lot more effective. 

Alan Dee, Herald & Post (July 21, 2011)

They industry was, however, very quick to squeal about an equal and opposite reaction to it from Freedom2Choose.

Ask ASH - or any other anti-smoking organisation, for that matter - on Twitter to condemn anti-smoker hatred or blatant lies from fellow tobacco controllers and you'll be met with silence. I know because I've tried.

We can, then, only assume from this that they're quite content for the most repulsive and vile anti-smokers in our society to advance their disgusting ideas, and will barely shrug on the day that a smoker is actually killed by one of these psychos.

I suppose Debs and her cronies could prove me wrong when they're back in their tax-funded office tomorrow and post a withering condemnation of the HuffPo author's rancid views in the comments, but don't hold your breath. They'll probably send her a congratulatory email instead.

Dead Horse Flogging At Its Finest

After an incompetent, tripe-filled flight of laughable fancy on e-cigs earlier in the week, the Guardian have since produced a very balanced piece which - and I think this is the crucial difference - was not written by a screaming idiot.

I do urge you to read it as I've just spent a most enjoyable 40 minutes or so watching some of the country's most stubborn anti-smoking fantasists desperately displaying their ignorance to the world while having their lame fallacies being effortlessly dismissed. 

In the piece itself, Martin McKee shows us all that the tradition of rent-seeking fakery promoted by medieval barber-quacks and Victorian-era American miracle cure salesmen is still alive and kicking even in 2014.

"My view at the moment is that these are things that have been around since the 1960s and people had not paid attention to them. Then suddenly the tobacco industry got interested," he said.

Wrong, of course. The first marketable e-cig was only around five or six years ago and wasn't made by a tobacco company. BAT launched their Vype product in October last year after over a million UK citizens were already merrily vaping away. Just yer usual tobacco control industry lie, then?

Chief Medical Officer Sally Davies decided not to comment, which is probably wise considering she probably knows bugger all about e-cigs and didn't want to embarrass herself. Unlike some we could mention.

McKee acknowledges that a lot of people in public health say e-cigarettes are much safer than tobacco. "Absolutely, but that is not the issue here," he said. "They are missing the point."

Of course they are. The point is that McKee's brand of dinosaur would prefer to bash popular businesses for ideological or personal psychopathic reasons than devote their time to something as mundane as health.

But the real fun is in the comments as the increasingly vanishing hard core who refuse to quit their addiction to e-cig hatred - directly correlated with the vast increase in vaping proving to the public that there is nothing to mither about, I expect - pump out some hilarious nonsense in support of their lame prejudices. 

Do go read them yourself, especially Norm Blunt, a Comical Ali wannabe, who sees his every pathetic opinion - attracting barely an upvote amongst them - effortlessly batted away with inconvenient fact, only to then declare himself as victor in a debate where he was mercilessly embarrassed. 

I did think he was my favourite until saw this on page 2.

I may be wrong, but as an ex-smoker I believe that there is little satisfaction to be had from an e-cigarettte in the long term and that it is fad that will slowly, dare I say it, evaporate.

Yeah, that's what all the evidence says matey. 

Business Insider April 2013

Oops, sorry, that's an old one. 

Business Insider May 2013 forecast

Now, I've always said that e-cigs will expose many anti-smokers for the charlatans that they are, but even I didn't see this kind of self-humiliation coming.

Not that I'm complaining. At this rate it won't be long till creationists are viewed with more respect.

'Raping Lungs' And 'Cancer Semen'

A few years ago, we set up a catalogue of psychopathic comments from online smoking articles. Some submissions were magnificent insights into the minds of the mentally unbalanced - see here.

However, many months have passed - last time was July 2011, in fact - since we've seen an article-length example of pure, spittle-flecked anti-smoker insanity.

The wait is over, folks.

To protect those who don’t smoke, enclosed public spaces have been deemed totally smoke-free by many authorities around the world. 

Yet some people choose to violate those laws, lighting up and blowing their smoke around, as if nothing happened. 

When they do, they are raping non-smokers’ lungs. They are taking something from inside their bodies and forcing it inside someone else’s, just because they feel like it. 

They inseminate other people’s lungs with cancer-causing chemicals. 

They impregnate them with tumors. 

So here we are. Talking rape. Not your average fuck-you-and-cum-inside-you rape, but the light-up-and-make-you-breathe-in-and-swallow stuff. 

Rape has evidently evolved. Smokers that choose to smoke in smoke-free areas are practicing it without being called out for it. They are getting away with it. 

Venue owners who allow it are enabling it. 

Police who turn a blind eye to it are enabling it. 

People who say nothing about it are allowing themselves to be fucked in the lungs. 

Am I exaggerating?

Yeah, just a tad, sunshine. Just a tad. Now go see nurse as she has some Ritalin for you.

Good grief.

H/T James Dunworth via FB

They Don't Like It Up 'Em

Via Carl Phillips, We've always known that anti-smokers are no fan of free speech or debate, but they seem to be a bunch of spineless whingers too.

== Reported Twitter account: @TobaccoTacticss
== Description of original work: Several copyrighted photographs taken from our flickr account.
== Description of infringement: – Copyrighted image modified to misrepresent our views.
https://twitter.com/TobaccoTacticss/status/420866659708985344
(original image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ashuk/8740223787/)
- Fake newspaper article including one of our copyrighted images (also infringing the Telegraph’s rights): https://twitter.com/TobaccoTacticss/status/421670854020190209
- Fake book cover including one of our copyrighted images (also infringing Penguin’s rights):
https://twitter.com/TobaccoTacticss/status/420849895096864768
- use of copyrighted image without authorisation
https://twitter.com/TobaccoTacticss/status/420675013914533888
== Reported Tweet URL: https://twitter.com/TobaccoTacticss/status/420866659708985344
== Signature: Nicolas Chinardet

That'll be this guy, ASH's techie.

Now, firstly, the hypocrisy is stunning. Here they are moaning about copyright infringement while their current project - plain packaging - seeks to completely destroy billions of pounds worth of copyrighted trade marks and vandalise the places where they are currently displayed. But also, if I understand Twitter correctly, to challenge this childish tantrum from ASH, the person behind the quite brilliant @TobaccoTacticss parody account (well worth following) would have to give their name. So, as well as dummy-spitting from ASH over someone who refuses to fall in line with their totalitarianism, this is just more of the usual vile tobacco control industry intimidation.

That aside, it seems that the tweeted images in question irritate ASH so much that they don't want anyone to see them. So don't look at these, will you? Promise? Cross your heart and hope to die?

I'm glad you averted your eyes, because I'd hate it if you shared these images widely and created some kind of Streisand Effect or something.

God forbid!

The First Indoctrinated Vaper?

Via the Economist, it looks like the incessant pharma-defending lies by tobacco control industry dinosaurs and the ignorant, anti-social intolerants they pander to may be having an effect on some vapers.

terrestri Nov 29th, 18:44 

As a vaporer myself, I see no reason not to enjoy them in the terminal, and have never been asked to stop by anyone, although I do get funny looks sometimes. Indeed at DFW and many other airports in the US stores happily sell them to people within the terminal at places like Hudson News and more. 

However, on aircraft, even though it's not really "smoking", some people's e-cigarettes have utterly disgusting "flavors" that are very smelly and annoying, especially when they just keep puffing away endlessly right next to you for hours. 

I do not abuse them, prefer to do it out of the sight of others (like the bathroom) seldomly and with non-flavored stuff so as to not annoy my fellow travelers. 

Unfortunately, the rest of humanity often is not respectful, either willingly or ignorantly. Therefore they will be eventually outright banned, and I can't say I'd protest. Nobody will put up with the mixture of endless smells of cotton candy from the left, red hots from the right, and expired chocolate from behind on an international flight. It's nauseating.

It's an easily recognisable attitude, most recently seen during Radio 5's vox pops of smokers outside a northern hospital when asked about NICE's recommendations for bullying smokers on NHS open spaces last Wednesday (and I quote, from here).

"Why come out for a smoke, why do you need a cigarette that much?"
"Because I'm addicted to smoking" 

"You're on the street outside the hospital, not in a smoking shelter at the moment, why is that?"
"Erm, smoke going back into hospitals, I don't want to be too close"
"But you're inhaling yourself, you obviously need to smoke still"
"Yeah, I'm addicted but nobody else should suffer cos of my addiction"

After swallowing every piece of wildly exaggerated tobacco control propaganda on offer, smokers self-shaming - even when being courteous and avoiding others - is a sad facet of modern life. Quite the opposite of the argument you'll have heard from many a smoke-hater that anyone using tobacco is champing at the bit to smack them in the mouth if asked to be courteous with their smoke.

So now - after the recent whirlwind of hysteria, misinformation and denormalisation tactics towards e-cigs - are we seeing the first ever vaping self-shamer too? Or do you reckon this could be another psycho anti-smoker in disguise?

You decide.

On Bloomberg And Other Insane Nannies

When you're ignominiously scraping the bottom of a barrel for self-worth, you're inevitably going to drag up nothing but icky muck ... as nannies worldwide are starting to find out.

Appeals court upholds ruling striking down NYC’s large soda ban  

A state appeals court Tuesday upheld a lower court decision blocking the mayor’s controversial ban on sugary drinks over 16 ounces, ruling that the Bloomberg-controlled Board of Health had overstepped its powers.

He's not too happy, is apron strings Mike.

Bloomberg, in a statement, called the Appellate ruling a “temporary setback” and vowed to appeal the matter to the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals.

You have to wonder about the mental state of someone like this. To doggedly persist with hugely unpopular Alice in Wonderland-esque rules while also being publicly humiliated by the US court system is, well, the behaviour of a deranged psychopath, surely?

Still, what with plain packs being shelved, minimum pricing being ditched south of the border, and the Danish fat tax disaster finally being scrapped back in April, 2013 is becoming an incredibly bad year for increasingly absurd prohibitionist extremists. Happy days for us though.

Oh yeah, talking of the Danish fat tax, news just in from New Zealand.

Auckland University nutrition expert Professor Cliona Ni Mhurchu told the Science Media Centre that Denmark's saturated fat tax, which was in place for a year, reduced consumption of targeted fats by 10 to 15 per cent, but such schemes had to be carefully studied before introduction. "It is important to assess substitution effects to know whether or not food taxes have positive effects on the whole diet as opposed to just the targeted foods."

I presume they mean the huge fall in sales after the tax ... prompted by huge hoarding prior to the tax.

Yes, it's another public health lie (do they ever tell the truth?)

Prof Cliona seems to have forgotten, however, to mention that the Danish fat tax was one of the most comprehensive legislated fiscal and societal disasters from any developed nation in the past few decades.

Insane. Quite unutterably insane, the lot of them.

Ignore The Police And HMRC, What Do They Know?

It's customary to end a blogger's week with a bit of light comedy, so what better than tobacco control's increasingly laughable grip on reality?

We've already seen how they are so very mad that they deny the fundamentals of economics, but their insistence that plain packaging won't make life easier for counterfeiters is even funnier. It should be clear to even the simplest of minds that reducing 200+ pack designs to just the one government-prescribed one is a Godsend to criminals. But no, not in wibbly-wobbly tobacco control land.

Deborah Arnott was adamant in this Sky News clip (2:55 onwards) that anyone stating the bleeding obvious is quite barking.

See, they have 'covert markings' now. It's just a tobacco industry smokescreen, so it is.

Except, of course, that it isn't the tobacco industry making this argument. Long-serving police chief, Peter Sheridan, has stated that the markings are going to be pretty useless when plain packaging comes in unless plod are routinely given gadgets to check every packet they see on the streets (5:25 onwards).

He explained that "things like colours, embossments and shapes, all are defence mechanisms" against counterfeiting, before going on to describe plain packaging at HuffPo UK as an idea which "will create a fertile ground for tobacco smuggling".

Still, I suppose Arnott will dismiss a well-respected police officer with 30 years' experience of tackling criminal gangs as some kind of tobacco industry shill. But what about state-paid employees like Mike Norgrove who is Director of Excise, Customs, Stamps and Money at HMRC?

He gave evidence to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee a couple of months ago. Perhaps his professional experience is also inferior to the awesome fairy tale-spinning intellect of Deborah Arnott, eh?

Kate Hoey: Do you think there would be an increase, or what would you see as the effect, if this country was to follow the Australian line of going down plain packaging? 

Mike Norgrove: The Department has made representations, as everyone else has, on the consultation about the possible effects of plain packaging. 

Kate Hoey: Did you put in a submission? 

Mike Norgrove: We did. 

Kate Hoey: Is that public? 

Mike Norgrove: No, it was not a public submission. 

Kate Hoey: Right, okay; so you are not going to tell us. 

Mike Norgrove: I can say that the obvious danger from our point of view is that the ability to detect counterfeit or illicit material would be made more difficult by a system where there was no difference between one packet and another.

Good God! Do cranks like Peter Sheridan OBE and Mike Norgrove CBE not realise that Nanny Arnott is the font of all knowledge on law enforcement and illicit duty avoidance? Who do they think they are claiming to be experts? The bloody nerve!

It must be a tobacco industry plot. I mean, who could possibly believe Arnott is talking out of her tax-sponging backside ... again, eh?

A Halloween Shocker!

For those who get their knickers in a twist over a barcode on a red car flashing by at 200mph, this is going to come as a terrific shock. I warn you, if you are of a fragile disposition, look away now!

Being half-term, I was out with the little Ps today and came across this ... in plain sight!

Appalling, isn't it? And the people who brazenly put these on public display are profiting from their evil actions, too. It wasn't the only disgusting item of depravity either. Right next to it was ... this!

Won't somebody please think of the children? Because there were plenty there today. In fact, children were positively encouraged with hefty discounts - pocket money prices, indeed - in a blatant attempt to ensnare our young into seeing this filth and instantly tumbling into a lifetime of addiction.

The evil 'guide' even asked if the little Ps wanted to sit in it! To get a closer look at the obscene markings on the bodywork and earn his paymasters a new recruit, I should expect.

It is the only explanation for this disgusting wall presentation - quite obviously a sick ploy to get round the tobacco display ban.

These people call themselves motor sport historians, or something, but are actually tobacco industry stooges peddling death to our children. 

I'm appalled, so I am. Appalled! Something must be done!

(On a more serious note, 'twas a grand day out. Brownie points to whoever can guess where we went)

Know Your Place, Plebs

It was only last week that we learned about how damaging high sin taxes are for those on a low income.

Poor smokers in New York State spend about a quarter of their entire income on cigarettes, nearly twice as much as the national average for low-income smokers, according to a new study. 

The study, conducted by the non-profit research group RTI on behalf of the state's health department, found there was no statistically significant decline in the prevalence of smoking among poorer New Yorkers between 2003 and 2010, even as the habit declined by about 20 percent among all income groups.

As usual, the people who have enforced this are adamant that it's not their fault. Oh Lord no! What is required is more money for them, and - of course - more spanking of those who continue to ignore their diktats.

So the response to this study shouldn't be to deplore the "regressive" effect of cigarette taxes on the poor, but to address the regressive effect of tobacco industry marketing and resultant high smoking rates on the health and economic well-being of the poor. 

The best way to do that is to that is to return more of their cigarette tax dollars to the poor in the form of enhanced and expanded tobacco prevention and cessation efforts

That's right. To tackle the problem of poor people being hit hard by overwhelming taxation, the state should give more money to those who got us into this situation so that they can punish the poor further.

Meanwhile, another policy of theirs is similarly damaging to those on low incomes, as recently published (again, thanks to fellow jewel robber Alan B for getting past the public health secrecy wall). In fact, arguably more so.

CONCLUSIONS 

The move from restrictions on smoking in the workplace to non-smoker and, more recently, nonnicotine hiring policies represents an important shift in tobacco control that can have significant costs for smokers, those living with them, and those attempting to quit. That smoking is increasingly concentrated among disadvantaged groups who are also more susceptible to job insecurity suggests that such policies must also be assessed from a social justice perspective.  Tobacco control and health care organizations have sought to support this move by linking employment restrictions to their organizations’ commitments to broader antismoking goals, focusing on the requirement that employees act as advocates and role models and on the contribution that hiring restrictions can make to the denormalization of smoking. Neither of these arguments stands up to scrutiny, suggesting that nonsmoker and nonnicotine hiring policies may damage, rather than support, the fight against smoking.

Just to break that down for you, it means that policies demanding smokers are refused employment - which is something the tobacco control industry are actively pursuing - predominantly hurt those on low incomes. The study has - no shit, Sherlock - concluded that this is a bad thing.

Those in the tobacco control  industry whose only ongoing concern is where to take their skinny latte and goat's cheese pannini of a lunchtime don't care much, though. They don't just want to take as much money off of people on meagre incomes as possible, they are also trying their hardest to stop them earning it in the first place.

Such a caring profession, don't you think?

And all because their targets refuse to bow down to this self-installed middle class cognoscenti who - irony of ironies - leech their handsome salaries off the back of taxes paid by precisely the working class people they incessantly impoverish.

Know your place plebs. Obey your rich public health masters or end up on a park bench with your kids.

Britain Should Copy China, Say Indian Morons

What a shocker, eh?

Indian anti-smoking lobby hits out at London Olympic organizers

NEW DELHI: London has failed to do what Beijing carried out so successfully four years ago - make it smoke free.

Despite having the largest prevalence of tobacco use in the world, China had set an unprecedented standard by declaring the Beijing Olympics (2008) completely smoke free, including all outdoor venues.

How awful! Country which claims to value freedom and rights of the individual doesn't follow the lead of communist dictatorship which has a track record of human rights abuses and treats its citizens with suspicion, contempt and unconditional state control.

The tobacco control industry isn't picky about which regimes to claim as bedfellows, is it? Already swooning over racist and disgustingly brutal Bhutan's, err, compassionate smoking cessation efforts, China is now held up as an example of purity by the Indian chapter of hateful anti-tobacco freaks. They'd probably overlook the prison camps and summary executions too if North Korea were ever to bring in a smoking ban.

"It is shocking to know that despite England being declared smoke free in 2007 the LOCOG has allowed DSAs within the perimeter of ticketed competition venues and are also present in specified areas of the athletes village, exhibiting specific signage denoted as 'smoking areas'."

The more cynical amongst us would say that it's one of the few things that LOCOG have got right! It's certainly to their credit that they considered the comfort and convenience of law-abiding citizens and put plans in place well in advance, you sub-continental clowns.

Besides, what the fuck has it got to do with you anyway? If you're still smarting about that bird at the opening ceremony, this is not the way to express your frustration, you know.

Ganesha on a bike! If you're an example of Indian civility, the girl deserves a medal herself for pissing your country off.

Number One With A Bullet

When first suggesting a crowd-sourcing of vile online comments from mentally deranged anti-smokers, the idea was to someday compile a top ten. But any twisted pretenders to the title of "Sick Anti-Smoking Fuck Of The Decade" must surely bow in deference to this superlative psychopath in comments at the Mail.

"We could always just change the law to allow people to legally shoot dead anyone caught with a cig between their lips outside the four walls of their home, as long as it's not a rented home or presently under mortgage, since it's not technically their home. If people find a bullet through their head whenever they light up, they'll not light up. Simples. Probably won't happen. I can dream though. God, I'd have a field day if that ever came to pass..."

- Ken, Kent, 6/4/2012 16:28

Many thanks to reader Marthaj for the spot. I think we have a winner!

Of course, if you do come across anything more mentally unbalanced during your regular surfing - and, let's face it, you're going to have to go some - do remember to pop it in the comments here, won't you?

How proud our MPs must be of fine, tolerant, upstanding members of society, like Ken, that they have created.

Release The Psychos!

Anti-smoking campaigns and laws have turned smokers into a despised underclass, a study by a Department of Health adviser warned yesterday.

It said smokers have come to be seen as disgusting and dirty and are increasingly becoming regarded as outcasts.

The vilification is also stoking up prejudice against the poor because those who are already on low incomes or at a disadvantage are most likely to be smokers, the report by Professor Hilary Graham found.

Which is then followed under the line (click 'worst rated' and display all) by a stream of bile from our society's rancid underbelly of meddlesome, finger-wagging prigs.

Thereby illustrating that there are still vast swathes of the population not sophisticated enough to realise when they're being manipulated, and so daft that they'll post comments which conclusively prove the study which they are attempting to ridicule.

Kudos to the Mail for harvesting such a rich seam of catalogue entries.

H/T Dave A