Western Governments Prepare To Kill Millions Of Their Citizens

It recently came to light that there are approximately 2.5 million electronic cigarette users in the US. Far too many for the US Food and Drug Administration, apparently, since they're trying their doggone damnedest to make it impossible to get hold of them.

In what may be it's push into the endgame for e-Cigarettes, the FDA announced public comments will come to a close on December 8th for "Non-Face-to-Face Sale and Distribution of Tobacco Products and Advertising, Promotion, and Marketing of Tobacco Products." The FDA will be considering in the very near future what actions to take to regulate how tobacco products (including new-fangled devices like e-cigarettes) and how they are marketed.

SUMMARY: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is issuing this advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM) to obtain information related to the regulation of non-face-to-face sale and distribution of tobacco products and the advertising, promotion, and marketing of tobacco products. FDA is taking this action as part of its implementation of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (Tobacco Control Act). FDA is requesting comments, data, research, or other information related to non-face-to-face sale and distribution of tobacco products; the advertising, promotion, and marketing of such products; and the advertising of tobacco products via the Internet, e-mail, direct mail, telephone, smart phones, and other communication technologies that can be directed to specific recipients.

As you're probably aware since you're here online, most good e-cigarettes come from the Internet, not local merchants.

Depending on how the FDA regulates e-cigarettes and other tobacco products, the offline versions may become the only things we can get.

E-cigs are a predominantly online phenomenon, offering harm reduction in the order of around 99%. You'd think a governmental body would be ecstatic about them, wouldn't you?

But then, they're not made by pharmaceutical companies, so a 100% figure is the only acceptable one. Please just forget the well documented risks associated with pharma products like Champix at this point. It's vital you do so, or else the carefully crafted corporate suspension of belief shatters, the whole house of public health cards comes crashing down, and you'll never trust a politician or furrow-browed health professional again!

I digress.

So here we are with a US governmental agency using every means at its disposal to prohibit something which millions use as an alternative to smoking, despite their general mantra that smoking should be avoided at all costs. Many have given up entirely thanks to 'vaping', whilst a vast number of others alternate between e-cigs and tobacco, but still effectively reduce their intake of a plant that governments worldwide have sworn to eradicate.

Now then, children. What do you think the 2.5 million users in the US are likely to do when vaping becomes all but impossible in the 'Land of the Free'?

Get your money into US tobacco stocks sharpish, I'd say, there's likely to be an imminent bounce in share prices if the FDA get their way.

Meanwhile, the EU - as explained by The Ashtray - continue to maintain a ban on snus which is deeply harmful, and will almost certainly get round to banning e-cigs at some point.

They tell us that smoking kills half of those who partake - that's the regularly touted figure, remember. Their 'evidence', not mine. Yet millions upon millions of people around the world are having their harm reduction choices reduced, seemingly to protect pharmaceutical company profits. Well, it's either that or superlatively retarded decision-making from politicians. You decide.

And they say tobacco companies are evil? Those who spout that garbage should look at their own methods of mass murder before casting stones at others. The message really is "Quit (the right way), or die".

If you're from over the pond, you might want to tell the FDA precisely what you think of their crashingly stupid idea here. Nicely, of course. They may well be weapons grade bell ends but I don't think they'd look kindly on being reminded of the fact.

Meanwhile, the rest of us can feel safe in the knowledge that we're firmly on the side of the angels if this is the level of 'care' such obsessed, hysterical, corporatist freaks aspire to.

YOUR Property, You Say? Think Again

Yes, it's that scrupulously principled 'liberal', Clegg, again.

"We need to get tough on irresponsible and unjustified behaviour of top remuneration of executives in the private sector," he said.

"What I abhor is people getting paid bucket loads of cash in difficult times for failure."

Abhor away, Nicky boy, but it's still none of your Goddam business. There's a clue up there in the word 'private'. You see, a 'private' company is beholden to no-one whosoever except the person (or persons) who own it. Or should be, anyway.

That someone calling themselves liberal could even contemplate interfering in how private businesses choose to distribute their - post-tax - cash is quite astonishing. As if our largely unaccountable legions of the state haven't burdened private companies enough already with eye-watering taxation, hobby horse regulation, and absurd health and safety hysteria!

But then, this nation is now just a collection of conveniently envious and busybodying collaborators, as perfectly illustrated by the first 'Editor's Pick' comment selected by the BBC.

"So, if I own a company and decide to pay my directors X amount salary and the government don't like it, i have to cut their pay? Who's money is it exactly? Nobody tells me what to do with my money, so I can't see anybody else allowing it either."

It should be a no-brainer, but the level of self-destructive ignorance now prevalent in our country requires, naturally, that such common sense is eagerly down-voted!

We have laws against what people can or can't do in their own property now entrenched by selfish dickwads, and serious attempts at extending the same to private vehicles and homes. Bylaws to tell you what you can and can't eat, and even the stealing of your kids by the state is commonplace if it feels like it.

Now we see moronic seal-like clapping and honking over plans to dictate how much private - yes, private - companies are allowed to decide their own remuneration policies.

The biggest problem the UK faces - after soundbite-seeking politicians who just can't quit the addiction of making illiberal legislation - is the lumpen idiots who are happy to see the freedoms of others eroded without a moment's thought that, one day, their own property is almost certainly going to be targeted.

Big Society? You're having a laugh! There's little left now but to lock your doors and prepare to repel the state, and anyone else, who thinks they are arrogant enough to pry into your family's life, your rights, and your property.

None of it is yours anymore, after all, apparently.

Policy Exchange Embarrassed Again

You'll probably be well aware of the blow to Policy Exchange's reputation last March thanks to an execrable report by their ASH stooge, Henry Featherstone. It was nonsense from start to finish, as reported here and, as such, destroyed by organisations usually friendly to PE.

'Feathers' has since left PE, but his legacy is continued embarrassment for his former employers. You may remember his making these claims in what looked suspiciously like a paid-for commercial for Pfizer products.

Varenicline is the most cost-effective treatment option in the NHS Stop Smoking Service. Studies consistently demonstrate it to be superior to any other therapy, but it is only used in 20% of cases. Varenicline should be offered as first line drug treatment for all patients wishing to quit smoking

[...]

The NHS Stop Smoking Service should offer varenicline as first line drug treatment for all patients wishing to quit smoking.

[...]

the [NHS] only prescribes varenicline in 20% of cases, since it is often confined to patients who have failed with NRT. There is no good reason why all patients should not be offered it.

Well, Feathers may have seen 'no good reason', but then considering the pre-determined outcome he was aiming for, he didn't look very far.

A study just out couldn't be more clear how very wrong Featherstone was.

A new study finds that the smoking-cessation drug varenicline (Pfizer's Chantix) has too poor a safety profile to make it suitable for first-line use. Researchers from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, and other research centers in the US, found the drug, known as Champix outside the US, was 8 times more likely to result in reports of suicidal behavior or depression than nicotine replacement products. They report their findings in the 2 November issue of PLoS One, an online journal of the Public Library of Science.

Oh dear. Not good news for Policy Exchange, that.

[Study co-author Dr Curt D.] Furberg and colleagues found that 90% of all reported suicides linked to smoking cessation drugs since 1998 involved varenicline, even though the drug had only been on the market for 4 of the almost 13 years they covered.

Hmm. Pretty unequivocal then. And it just gets worse. It seems that Featherstone's advice was not just wrong, but deeply irresponsible to boot.

Lead author Thomas J. Moore, senior scientist at the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, says:

"While suicidal behavior or depression appear to be prominent side effects of varenicline, they are by no means the only safety issues."

He explains that the drug already carries a warning about the fact studies have found links between its use and aggression and violence.

"Its effects on vision, cognition and motor control and other risks have led to its being banned for airline pilots, air traffic controllers, military pilots and missile crews, and restricted for truck drivers,"

Plenty of 'good reasons' there, eh Henry?

It's been a year since Feathers left, but his vested interest idiocy is still making Policy Exchange blush.

What a plonker.

Link Tank 03/12

Enjoying that hangover?

McDonald's outwits San Francisco's ban on Happy Meal toys

"Never trust a charity to tell the unvarnished truth"

After Strauss-Kahn, France discovers sex addiction

Jeremy Clarkson: a public-sector worker speaks his mind

MMMhop: Hanson go into the beer business

Seasteading is "not a completely crazy idea"

A strike by the affluent and protected

It was never about health: Workplace e-cig ban introduced in Boston

Men don't think about sex all day long, after all

Beak gesturing Ravens

A Mascot Is Crowned, Shame About The Ceremony

Here is something of an exclusive for this blog. Behold a true liberal meeting someone who is just pretending to be one.


We acted to get Philip Davies the Reader's Representative prize at the Spectator's Parliamentarian of the Year Awards for his freedom-loving credentials, and were successful. Yet the 'guest of honour' (pfft) dishing out the gongs is at the opposite end of the political scale.

Davies earned his award for listening to the public and acting on their behalf, as we were all brought up to believe is a parliamentarian's purpose. Clegg is famous for being an illiberal moron who doesn't give a shit about what you think.

How ironic that Davies's principled liberal stance on the EU, smoking bans, and alcohol prohibition should gain him plaudits, only to be confronted on award night by a grinning idiot - wielding power - who seems to think being liberal is opposing personal liberty at every turn.

Irony is thick as treacle in that picture.

The restraint of our Phil, eh? The rest of us would have struggled not to lamp the pillock.

UPDATE: Just realised that I didn't add a caption for the picture, anyone care to provide one?

At Last! Unbiased Research On Smoking Bans

You'd have been staggered anyway, but emphases are mine just in case.

ATLANTA, Nov. 30, 2011 - As part of ongoing efforts to reduce disease and death caused by smoking and secondhand smoke exposure, the CDC Foundation and CDC have launched a new initiative to study the economic impact of smoke-free policies on restaurants and bars in nine states. While the health benefits of smoke-free policies are clear (debatable, surely? Ed.), the perception that they might negatively affect restaurant and bar business can pose a barrier to the broader introduction and acceptance of these policies.

This initiative, made possible by a partnership grant from Pfizer to the CDC Foundation, will assess the economic impact of local smoke-free laws on restaurants and bars by examining objective economic indicators.

Because previous junk science in this area didn't quite mop up those mould-infested dregs from the bottom of the barrel, obviously.

RIP satire.

"Regulate Junk Food As A Pollutant"

It's been mooted before here that Harvard occasionally get all righteous about food and drink, and blow me if they haven't been doing it again.

Health Experts: Regulate Junk Food as a Pollutant

M'kaaay. Not quite the measured response we'd expect from an intellectual institution, but let's see where it goes.

The U.S. government should deal with unhealthy ingredients in food the same way it deals with pollution: with cap and trade, a suggestion published Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The very same 'expert' journal which published Jill Pell's Scottish heart miracle nonsense, you mean? Oh I see, I think we understand better now.

In the imagined cap and trade policy, companies could manufacture products above a government-capped level of sugar and fat, but would be taxed for the additional unhealthiness at a cost passed on to the consumer.

The idea of government trying to regulate what people eat to improve public health, increase productivity, and reduce health care costs is not that farfetched. Denmark made headlines after implementing a "fat tax," adding a premium to things like sugary soda.

Err, they made headlines precisely because it is that far-fetched. And fundamentally wrong to boot. I'd have thought people living in the (cough) Land of the Free would recognise that.

Kristina Lewis, a doctor at Harvard Medical School's Department of Population, co-author of the report, recognizes that establishing such a policy would be an uphill battle. But she also believes something has to be done ...

Yes, she did say that. This is not satire.

... in the realm of public policy, because she said encouraging people to change their behavior is not enough.

Forgive me for offering a different viewpoint, but I'd say that not only is encouragement definitely enough, anything more is none of their fucking business, quite frankly.

Fortunately, there are still a dwindling number of health professionals who don't seem to have entirely given up on common sense and reason.

[...] health secretary Andrew Lansley launched a new goal to bring down England's obesity levels by 2020. He said Britons should be eating five billion fewer calories a day and urged people to be honest with themselves about what they eat and drink. The government has also been calling for 'fat' taxes on unhealthy food and a ban on advertisements aimed at children.

[Elaine George, specialist bariatric nurse at BMI The Clementine Churchill Hospital] is very against this idea: "I don't think that's a solution, I really don't. It's ostracising people. I do believe that the fast food chains shouldn't be as unhealthy, there should be more healthier options or just take them away. I don't think making things more expensive is going to change anything. I think education is key from an early age. Teaching them good habits and how to cook. There's a lot to be said for education rather than just penalising people."

I fear for the career of Elaine George, however bloody perfect her argument and understanding of the human condition is. She seems blissfully unaware of the modern denormalisation agenda surrounding lifestyle choices.

A heretic burning beckons.