Remote Control Begging

Yesterday saw the rare occurrence of those weekday nine-to-fivers finding something urgent to tweet about on the day of rest.

ASH up nice and early on a Sunday eager to bully and impoverish smokers #Vile https://t.co/hlnS1oMDMU

— Dick Puddlecote (@Dick_Puddlecote) October 11, 2015

This is because the BBC faithfully covered the pitiful sight of a vacant MP holding out a begging bowl for ASH.

Tobacco tax increase urged by parliamentary group

Tax on tobacco should be raised to persuade more smokers to quit, a parliamentary group has said. 

The tax rate currently goes up by 2% above inflation each year, but the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health wants that increased to 5%. 

It says an extra £100m per year would be generated to spend on anti-smoking projects

Would this be the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health which is secretaried by ASH and is just a mouthpiece for whatever their latest piece of anti-smoker gobshitery happens to be? Indeed it is.

So he wants his government to raise tobacco taxes so that an extra £100m per year would be raised to spend on anti-smoking? Like projects that his puppet-master ASH might benefit from you mean? What a fine example of democracy in action that is, I'm sure poodle Bob has also been instructed how proud he is supposed to be with himself for this selfless display of getting ASH's noses further into the tax trough.

Meanwhile in Ireland.

What this means is that, over the past eight budgets and two governments, much-vaunted tax increases on tobacco have, in reality, left Ireland with a budget gap of €367 million.

Is that so?

As the price of a pack of cigarettes has risen over the past decade or so, tobacco smuggling and non-Irish duty paid cigarettes – sometimes sold at half the retail price – have undergone something of an explosion. 

In 2007, the percentage of cigarettes coming from untaxed trade was 6.7%, according to market research company Euromonitor International. 

Over the next two years, successive tax hikes increased the price of a pack by 50 cents, 30 cents, and 75 cents. 

And the untaxed share of the market rocketed to 19.8% by 2009. In 2014, it was just over 23%.

Who cares though, eh? It's not really about health is it, just about how much ASH can screw out of government - and now, smokers - to stuff their fat pockets with.

UPDATE:

Simon Clark had some excellent points to make on BBC Breakfast about Bob Blackman's pathetic simpering on behalf of ASH. Definitely worth a watch.

Crappy Gilmore

Like a spoilt little brat in Asda, Europe's most prolific anti-smoking junk scientist and regular feature on these pages - Anna Gilmore - is still banging her fists on the floor and screaming about how unfair it is that governments are made to consider the consequences of their actions.

Via the Observer:

Revealed: how ‘big tobacco’ used EU rules to win health delay  

Analysis carried out by the University of Bath’s Tobacco Control Research Group (TCRG) ...

So perfectly objective and not biased at all, of course.

... has found that the companies played a key role in pushing the European commission’s Better Regulation agenda, which places business interests at the heart of policy drafting. They then used the new laws to block and delay a series of major health reforms, including UK introduction of plain packs.

A key role eh? Sounds terrible.

Under the terms of the Better Regulation agenda, which internal tobacco industry documents reveal was enthusiastically supported by British American Tobacco, European governments, including the UK, must conduct public consultations and impact assessments when introducing laws that affect business. 

Erm, I think you'll find that just about every company in Europe, large or small, would have "enthusiastically supported" a rule which says they should be consulted on laws which will affect business and that the impacts should be properly studied. Businesses, and I mean every one, have to conduct cost/benefit analyses or they die from making bad decisions, who except a gurning muppet would believe that governments should not do the same?

So what are Bath saying here? That businesses should just shut the fuck up and take whatever nonsense some vacant politician thinks up on a whim? Yes. Yes, I do believe so, fascists that they are.

And for why?

Leaked documents show that Philip Morris identified the Better Regulation laws as a key weapon in its battle to derail the 2014 EU tobacco products directive which introduced large-scale health warnings on cigarette packets and a ban on flavoured cigarettes and packs of 10 - both popular marketing initiatives with young smokers (only tobacco control fruitcakes say this - DP). The tobacco giant employed more than 160 lobbyists and spent £1.25bn opposing the directive’s introduction. The European commission department responsible for drawing up the directive was swamped with 85,000 submissions.

This is called democracy by anyone else, and is the same process used by developed nations all over the world. Only banana republics and dictatorships believe it is acceptable that laws can be passed by government without scrutiny, but that is exactly what Bath Uni are suggesting the EU should do. Maybe they'd be happy if the EU passed an enabling act or something like that, I dunno.

It really is desperate stuff.

Many of the claims that they made were based on dubious evidence. According to the TCRG analysis of the submissions, “the research was of significantly lower quality than research supporting the measure. For example, the tobacco companies’ arguments were not supported by any peer-reviewed journal articles about standardised packaging.”

Politicians didn't think so. Tobacco control has so perverted the term "peer review" that proper scientists must despise them for weakening any case a scientist has these days. It's a sham and has been admitted as such by the British Medical Journal, no less. Mostly because the tobacco industry has been excluded from "peer-reviewed journals" but I think Gilmore knew that when she wrote this deliberately mendacious bilge.

"The tobacco companies played a key role in implementing Better Regulation, anticipating that it would help them delay, block or weaken public health legislation,” Gilmore said.

No they didn't, this is right up there with the most hilarious of conspiracy theories. I've heard more believable guff from anti-vaxers and people who believe airplane wind shear is the New World Order doping us all. Tobacco companies were just a tiny proportion of the entire cohort of European business which supported better regulation in order to make sure corruption in government is accountable and bad laws are open to challenge. Only a moron would believe otherwise, and only an idiot would read this Observer rubbish and accept it as serious analysis.

“They have now gone on to exploit it to prevent life-saving regulations. They are flooding consultations with massive numbers of responses to give a totally misleading impression of opposition to public health policies."

Yes, because apparently tobacco companies - which we all know are part of the most trustworthy and revered of all industries in the eyes of the public Europe-wide - were able to play on their enviable popularity to mobilise tens of thousands of people to oppose something they actually believed was fantastic.

This is weapons grade woo. The product of either a depraved and incoherent mind or that of someone who gets paid shitloads of money to produce disingenuous and misleading tobacco control industry propaganda to order. You decide which.

The EU is, and always has been, primarily designed to assist cross border trade amongst member states. It's why it used to be called the common market. What the tobacco control industry's prime tax-sponging starlet seems to be saying here is that the EU has applied regulations to protect trade - which every business in the EU would support - but these particular businesses have used the regulations as they were intended, so are therefore evil.

And do you know why? Because they supported the regulations which protect every single business in the EU against corruption, government over-reach and dictatorship.

In other words, only people who agree with whatever tobacco control liars are proposing at any particular time should be allowed to talk to politicians. And they wonder why some people call them health nazis? Go figure.

On Vapers Helping Smokers Quit

Writing for Forbes, Sally Satel has highlighted an interesting new approach to encouraging smokers to quit.

Why not assemble a loose network of potential vaping sponsors? True, some vapers communicate informally with smokers already, but if we can build a vaper-smoker buddy system into the public health landscape, we can further arm the fight against smoking. 

The local health department or area hospitals could run public service ads on TV or radio and post billboards advertising the availability of vaping buddies (or sponsors, navigators, etc). A website would contain the name of local vapers who volunteer to serve as sponsors or direct smokers to local vape shops where those names would be listed, too. 

Civic-minded vapers could sign up to be sponsors through the local vape shop or health department. 

It need not be a long-term relationship, but it would be a great way to introduce a patient to vaping if his or her physician determines that the patient intends to keep smoking for the foreseeable future or has had little to no success in quitting with the help of conventional anti-smoking aids.

Former smokers talking to current smokers and giving them the benefit of their advice. An informal way of quitting smoking for those who choose to, and without it costing the taxpayer more than a few pennies in leaflets. What is there not to like if you're a professional committed to reducing smoking prevalence, eh?

Well, maybe this bit.

Unlike many abusers of intoxicants, nicotine-dependent people don’t need to learn to live without a drug, they need to learn to use it in a safer form. They need practical advice (best local vape shop, how to maintain equipment, how to find high quality e-liquid); they need to know what they can expect (e.g. that dual use – vaping while continuing to smoke, at the beginning is very common) and which puff techniques lead to maximal satisfaction. They need a fair assessment of the known and unknown risks associated with alternatives to cigarettes and some need general motivational support if they are ambivalent about relinquishing cigarettes.

This all relies on the 'public health' cabal ditching the idea that nicotine is some evil that must be eradicated at all costs. Do you see that happening anytime soon? No, neither do I.

There is also the fundamental problem that tobacco control is called tobacco control for a reason. Control is the part which pays the wages, which funds careers and shonky science. Without the control element, there is no tobacco control.

This initiative may very well - in fact I'd say it definitely would - deliver a dramatic increase in smokers switching to vaping. The reason being that most smokers do not want to sit across a desk with some stop smoking adviser in a clinical setting and receive schmalzy, twee advice on how to stick a patch on their arm so the local NHS trust receives its financial kickback from Pfizer or whoever.

It's the same concept as people generally hating hospitals. They know a hospital is a good thing and would scream if theirs were shut down, but it's not an environment anyone enjoys staying in for very long. A stop smoking "clinic" - for most smokers who have thought about quitting - is about as enticing a prospect as an evening in the company of E. L. Wisty.

It is precisely why quitting cold turkey is still, and always will be in the current state of play, the overwhelmingly most popular choice for smokers.

Then, of course, Satel points out another big drawback with the concept.

Take public vaping. Vaping has already been banned from offices, public parks, restaurants and airports. But at the very least, it should be allowed in non-smoking adult establishments with well-marked vaping areas. While not emission-free, any “second-hand” vapor that wafts several feet, unlike smoke from a cigarette, will be virtually undetectable as the subtly “flavored” odors dissipate rapidly. Studies show that emissions, such as propylene glycol, formaldehyde, and acrolein, are at negligible levels, thus below clinically meaningful thresholds for otherwise healthy bystanders. 

The idea is for people who smoke to be exposed to vapers as often and as visibly as possible. The infiltration of vapers into non-smoking environments where there are temporarily abstaining smokers (that is, smokers who are, at the moment, banned from lighting up) is a great way to spur curiosity and conversation about vaping.

I can almost hear you giggling from here.

We have Welsh 'public health' currently spreading all kinds of evidence-free shit at assembly level in pursuit of a ban on vaping in public places and - to my knowledge - there has yet to be a single tobacco control industry worker come out and aggressively condemn a vaping ban anywhere in the country.

Not. Even. One.

E-cigs are banned on trains, for no reason; on station platforms, for no reason; in pubs, bars, cafes, for no reason; in Premiership football and rugby grounds, for no reason; at the recent Ashes cricket series at the behest of the ECB, for no reason; and e-cigs are being included in outdoor smoking bans too, for no reason (to compound there being no reason for banning smoking outdoors either).

Where is the outrage from people who are supposed to be a friend of the vaper? Where is the commitment to reducing smoking prevalence where e-cigs are concerned? Where is the vehement objection to stupid bans from people who have been accustomed to bullying businesses for the past decade over smoking bans?

All we hear, instead, is mild platitudes about how it is up to businesses to decide their own policies.

The idea of vapers helping smokers to quit is an extremely good one, and it will work, but unfortunately it rests solely on stubborn, self-interested, trouser-stuffing tobacco control freakery to evaporate first. And that ain't gonna happen anytime soon.

It's a simple fact that smokers will be more likely to quit by chatting to a knowledgeable vaping friend in a pub than they would in a clean sterile office opposite some patronising detached stop smoking adviser, with a target to meet, who hasn't got the first clue how e-cigs work.

However, I'll tell you how it's going to go. Public Health England will like the idea, they will get round a table with ASH and all the other tobacco control tax-spongers  and spout about how game-changing this great initiative could be. But in the back of their mind they will be thinking about how such an approach will make many of their kind redundant so will insist on it being delivered by stop smoking services in a clinical environment, thereby killing the thing stone dead.

Just watch it happen.

"I Can't Think Of A More Damaging Policy"

File this under "unintended consequences that the tobacco control industry couldn't give a toss about". Because they don't get paid to.

Via Prisoner Ben - someone who knows about what happens in prison thanks to 32 years' experience of it - here is an assessment of how well thought-through the impending prison smoking ban is (emphases mine).

[W]hen the national smoking ban was introduced several years ago, and smoking was restricted to cells in prison, procedures were put in place to address this concern. Staff were meant to give a heads-up shout to prisoners as staff were conducting daily cell-checks, so that prisoners could air out the cells. Just to be very clear on this point: procedures were put in place to address staff safety, but staff have never used these procedures. There is no need for any member of staff to enter a smoky cell – unless they allow it to happen. And they do. And in the face of this lazy whine, a total ban on smoking in prisons is planned.

So the ban is a solution to something which has already been solved. You can also bet a hefty amount that tobacco controllers were consulted on the measures above in the first place, so are fully aware that there is no risk of danger - even the mythical one they promote - to prison staff if they wish to avoid it.

Hmm, no mention of that in ASH's briefing paper on 'smokefree prisons'. Fancy that!

Ben continues ...

Unlike tobacco in the wider society, tobacco in prison plays a huge role in prisoners’ lives. Tobacco isn't merely a diversion. It is the default prisoner currency, the standard unit of trade that all other commodities are valued against. As such, banning it would have the same social effects as if Government suddenly banned the cash in your wallet or purse. Sans tobacco, some other substance will become the default currency and the only candidate is heroin.

Considering a prime justification for the ban is "the need to improve prisoner health", that's a huge step forward, quite obviously. Slow handclap for ASH and their chums at Public Health England, jolly well done!

With the current medium of exchange prohibited, waves of disruption will flow through the social structure. Those who "baroned" tobacco – burn, snout – will be worthless, their ability to calm a stressed prison gone. In their place will rise, to a more embedded level than currently, those who deal in the "powders". But tobacco barons have always been a stabiliser, a bank, a bureaux de change, with the flow of tobacco being largely consistent. Heroin, in contrast, leads to some prisoners wielding undue influence – "powder power" – but inconsistently. Supplies of drugs are far more uncertain and temporary, leaving the suppliers in a shaky socioeconomic position and as such as likely to prompt instability as anything else.

Instability, eh? Just what a prison environment needs. But it'll be a 'smokefree' instability, so that's all right then.

50,000 smokers deprived of their fix will be a fearsome thing.

In a prison? What could possibly go wrong?

Tobacco is also used by the Prison Service as an intelligence tool. Every Wing Manager has traditionally had a few packets of tobacco to hand, to dish out to the passing casual informers. This will now end. On a wider scale, by tracking tobacco purchases from the prison shop – the "canteen" – managers have been able to discern economic activity. This activity is often tied to broader prisoner activities and can highlight the wheelers and dealers. A non-smoker buying lots of tobacco is obviously "up to something"! Whether this oversight of prisoners’ economic activity has ever led to more substantial intelligence is unknown; what is known is that this source of intelligence will now cease.

Well done tobacco control industry. You've 'helped' the prisoners in a very meaningful way.

Banning tobacco, then, will have the key consequences of instantly dismantling economic structures which have stood for decades; will destabilise the social structure; reduce intelligence; tempt staff to smuggle; and throw social power into the corrosive and unstable hands of heroin dealers. 

I can't think of a more damaging policy.

Who cares? Tobacco control and Public Health England - who collectively sponge close to £1 billion per annum in taxpayer funding - have ticked a box and been paid for it. Why should they give a shit what happens once their lobbying bandwagon moves onto the 'next logical step' in justifying their hefty salaries at the public's teat?

In every measurable sense, we are at the stage where anti-smoking organisations do nothing but cause net harm with every dingbat policy they promote. And they do so for one reason and one reason only ... to enrich themselves. Why government is handing out our taxes to such toxic, anti-social and damaging troughers is anyone's guess. They need to be cut off without a penny, and soon, for the good of society and the public at large.

A "War" On 80% Of The Public

Here's more of that non-existent slippery slope we keep hearing about.

An international expert on tobacco control is calling for Scotland to lead the way in a global ‘war’ to tackle alcohol problems, similar to the efforts which have been made to reduce smoking across the western world.

A "war", no less! So who is this caped crusader against a consumer product enjoyed harmlessly by the vast majority of the population?

Professor Gerard Hastings, who founded the Centre for Tobacco Control Research at Stirling University, and has advised governments and the World Health Organisation (WHO), said tobacco and alcohol were examples of an “industrial epidemic”, where health issues are being driven by commercial interests. 

He wants Scotland to take a leading role in urging the WHO to introduce a framework which will outline how countries can take action to address alcohol problems by introducing measures around advertising, packaging and the way it is sold.

Oh I see, it's far left wing anti-business nutcase Hastings, a guy (along with others) who came to the attention of Peter Oborne of the Telegraph last August.

Linda Bauld and Gerard Hastings are academics from Stirling University, where they contribute to something which calls itself the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies. Generally speaking this taxpayer funded group is in favour of heavy regulation and blanket bans.

But Prof Hastings also has a wider political and social agenda. Here is his latest anti-business rant:

At the time, Frank Davis offered an accurate description of this lunatic.

But I watched the YouTube video of Professor Gerard Hastings embedded in the text. It was one long emotional rant (he seemed like he was about to burst into tears) against not just smoking and drinking and fatty food, but against marketing, big business, inequality, profit, everything. Here was someone who had looked at the world around him and did not like it one bit, and desperately wanted to make it into a better world. He wanted to completely reconstruct it. For him, public health was not just about smoking and drinking and fatty food: it was about absolutely everything, and he wanted Public Health to be running absolutely everything. 

A century ago he would have been a bomb-throwing anarchist, like Gavrilo Princip. But now people like him are professors of public health, paid handsomely to interfere in everyone’s lives.

Indeed they are. And, as Frank says, not just on behaviours which are harmful, but on ones which are more often than not beneficial to society in general and arguably healthy. Predictably, he hates e-cigs too.

So how is this public-despising degenerate extremist planning on conducting this "war" then? Well, in the same way as with tobacco of course.

Hastings said: “With tobacco, public health has eventually got its head round it and said if you are really going to tackle tobacco, you have to do something about the business side of this. 

“Initially that focused in on advertising, as that is a very visible part of what they are doing. 

"But it is actually having to look at the whole marketing environment - which is not just the advertising but the product development, the pricing strategies, the distribution, the point of sale, the packaging and also indeed all the stuff that big business does to curry favour with government as well as customers. 

“To deal with that, the route that was taken was to produce the (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.” 

Hastings said a similar treaty should now been put place for alcohol

Oh dear, that very much contradicts what Debs said a while ago, doesn't it? (emphases mine)

[T]he “domino theory” i.e. that once a measure has been applied to tobacco it will be applied to other products is patently false. The same argument was used against the ban on tobacco advertising, but 9 years after the tobacco ban in the UK, alcohol advertising is still permitted with no sign of it being prohibited. Tobacco is a uniquely dangerous consumer product which is why there is a WHO health treaty (the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control) to regulate tobacco use.

Which is precisely what Hastings' (and presumably Bauld's too) new "war" on alcohol intends to set up. I suppose it's too much for us to hope ASH will issue an apology for declaring this domino theory a myth when it has now been proven to be 100% true? Nah, thought not.

As an aside, I was also mighty amused with this from fellow finger-wagging lefty twat Richard Simpson, a Labour MSP.

Simpson said he would support Hastings in terms of having an international campaign to limit the advertising of alcohol in a similar way to tobacco. 

“The harms are not quite the same, but there needs to be further restrictions on advertising,” he said. 

“It is about trying to de-normalise alcohol as well – it may be used by over 80% of the population, but having almost ubiquitous advertising and spending vast amounts on advertising is not acceptable.”

Admitting to being part of a tiny minority of 20% but declaring that it's "unacceptable" to abide by the choices of the 80% is astonishing from a politician. But then, hatred and bigotry does so cloud the faculties, doesn't it?

ASH Can't Bite The Hand That Feeds Over E-Cigs

Last week, Lord (Matt) Ridley wrote an article in The Times which was unanimously welcomed by e-cig users on Twitter and elsewhere. Here are extended highlights of his salient points.

Egged on two years ago, I am sorry to say, by British ministers (incompetent ones, Matt - DP) and some MEPs (including compromised ones, Matt - DP), the EU has agreed a tobacco products directive, which has to be implemented into law by next spring. Its Article 20 concerns the regulation of devices for vaping nicotine. And it hits them much harder than it hits cigarettes. 

For a start, it is bizarre to include vaping devices in a “tobacco products” directive at all. It’s like regulating coffee in a hard-drugs law. Remember the evidence is now overwhelmingly strong — and the British government has recently, but belatedly accepted this — that vaping is a really effective way to quit smoking and that, far from being a gateway into smoking, it is a highway out. By some estimates, approaching three million people now vape in this country, nearly all of whom are smoking less or no tobacco as a result. 

Gobsmackingly, the directive specifically outlaws the very vaping devices that are most useful to heavy smokers trying to quit: the ones with more than 20 milligrams of nicotine per millilitre. Heavy smokers need high-strength nicotine vapour to quit smoking, so the people with the worst health are going to be denied help. And by insisting that refillable devices are leak free, the directive will effectively kill 90 per cent of the devices sold by independent firms and hand the market back to the struggling non-refillable “cig-alike” ones made mostly by the tobacco firms. 

It gets worse. The directive outlaws most vaping advertisements, which will certainly slow vaping’s advance at the expense of smoking — ie, cost lives. It creates a six-month “standstill” period for new vaping products, following notification by the manufacture of an intention to sell a product. This will slow innovation and is asking for a black market to thrive: Chinese websites will be selling new devices into Europe while regulated manufacturers here twiddle their thumbs for 26 weeks. 

But all of this pales into insignificance beside the truly shocking idiocy in the directive, which is this. From next spring a manufacturer of a vaping device will have to submit far more information about its emissions than a tobacco company will have to submit about emissions from smoking devices. 

Under the new directive, e-cig makers are going to have to measure and list “all ingredients contained in, and emissions resulting from the use of, the product, by brand name and type” — including toxicological data — even though these emissions are far lower and far less toxic than tobacco smoke. Remember, the best evidence suggests that vaping is 20-100 times safer than smoking. But here we have regulation falling far more heavily on the safer product 

The result will be a slowdown in the take-up of vaping and therefore more premature deaths from smoking

Now, the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) is a dire piece of legislation in its entirety, but Article 20 is quite simply a staggering disgrace.

The TPD was drawn up by an alleged crook who was fired by the EU and its Article 20 was written in some Brussels back room to purposely avoid democratic process and without consultation, evidence base or an impact assessment [PDF]. The disastrous problems Article 20 will inflict on e-cigs and vaping are fundamental and will utterly destroy their effectiveness at luring smokers away from tobacco (Clive Bates explains why in full here).

So you'd think, wouldn't you, that ASH - you know, the vaper's new friend - would be a trifle worried about such an undemocratic, corrupt and damaging set of regulations which can only harm 'public health'. Well, no, they absolutely love it!

Here is ASH's Hazel Cheeseman writing a haughty letter to The Times in response to Ridley's wisdom.

Sir, Matt Ridley misses the point on proposed European regulation of electronic cigarettes. Under the new tobacco products directive, electronic cigarettes and their contents will be regulated to ensure they are safer and more effective.

By safer, I can only assume because fewer people will use them and by effective, I presume she simply doesn't understand how they work.

The evidence is now overwhelming that vaping is safer than smoking and offers a good chance for many smokers to quit. 

Well yes, Cheeseyperson, they certainly used to, but that was when levels of nicotine over 20mg were allowed to wean smokers off of tobacco. It won't be the case after the TPD has been implemented because 20mg is simply not enough to hook smokers unless they are incredibly committed to quit. It's almost like ASH still want there to be a rump of hardcore tobacco users to justify their jobs, isn't it?

The EU has therefore rightly rejected the approach of other parts of the world where electronic cigarettes have been banned altogether. Instead, EU regulations will provide a safe framework through which electronic cigarettes can be sold, giving their users confidence in these products. This is likely to save many thousands of lives.

Sorry, Hazel, but that's bollocks. Your support for Article 20 will - let's slip into your vernacular for a minute here - cost many thousands of lives. Because, y'see, every smoker who can't get the buzz of e-cigs containing under 20mg of nicotine will continue to smoke and the cost differential will be dramatically degraded by the onerous regulations being placed on e-cig manufacturers and vendors. I know ASH are fucking shit at economics but even they should be able to work out this simple piece of maths. 

For every penny added to the cost of an e-cig starter kit, a smoker will be dissuaded from switching away from tobacco. 

Smokers will benefit from having electronic cigarettes on sale that meet reasonable consumer standards.

Article 20 is not reasonable and does not set consumer standards which are in any way fit for purpose. The only effect of Article 20 will be to put smokers off of e-cigs, the only debatable stat is about exactly how many will be deterred. Will it be hundreds of thousands or only tens of thousands? 

So how does this square with ASH and their exalted new position as the vaper's friend? Well it doesn't, obviously. Just the fact that Cheeseman felt motivated to attack one of Westminster's most vociferous supporters of vaping is very telling.

You see, ASH are a central element of the Framework Convention Alliance (FCA) - a lobby group allied to the World Health Organisation - which hates e-cigs. They are also beneficiaries of a hefty grant each year from the UK government whose official position is that e-cigs are a bit icky. 

You simply don't rock the boat if your occupation relies on pallying up to pharma-enthralled WHO and a government which hands you free taxpayer cash. 'Public health' be damned.

ASH is the vaper's friend, but only when it doesn't involve biting the hand that feeds them. Yet another reason why they should be cut off without a penny, it would help focus their minds on what works for harm reduction instead of acting on what benefits their salary bill. 

Link Tank 03/10

A little of this and that.

Laws against 'extremism' risk criminalising us all

I went to a vape conference to mock it - then the vapers changed my mind (pic)

The repugnant myth of the poor’s unhealthy eating habits

If women have a right to choose, then that must include the right to sell their bodies

Brighton beach smoking ban "shows that this is not about ‘passive smoking’ or public health"

Transport for London’s taxi conspiracy against Uber

Aussie state has banned over 50,000 books

CIA and British MI6 agents are getting drunk at Oktoberfest

‘Discriminatory’ sombreros banned from University of East Anglia

Samoan Rugby World Cup team banned from fast food, Tonga's encouraged

Roast potatoes and a gravy fountain. Yes! A gravy. Fountain.