++BREAKING++: Liars To Convene In The Hague 12 Months Later Than Planned

Today saw an announcement from the World Health Organisation that their biennial anti-nicotine shitfest has been postponed by a year.

In light of the COVID-19 global pandemic and its impact on the conduct of international global conferences and travel, the Bureaus elected by COP8 and MOP1, after consulting the host country, have decided that convening the Ninth Session of the Conference of the Parties to the WHO FCTC (COP9) and the Second Session of the Meeting of the Parties to the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products (MOP2), scheduled for November 2020, is no longer possible.

They have been moved back until November 2021 instead.

There is something quite fitting about a real public health emergency leading to postponement of a meeting full of pretend 'public health' tax-spongers who bleat about imaginary threats to the world when people are actually dying in real life instead of on cleverly-created computer models.

The WHO's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control had great plans for COP9 in the Hague. Increasingly irritated by the inconvenient propensity of safer nicotine delivery products, such as e-cigs, to decrease smoking rates all over the world - when loudly-hailed FCTC initiatives like plain packaging had done bugger all - they were all set to spout a load of junk science and lies to try to eliminate their far more successful competition.

If you want an idea of the utter donkey bollocks they were preparing to deliver, you just have to watch this from one of their most prominent officials. I could fisk it all but you might recognise the lies by yourself. There is basically not a single word of truth that slithers out of this WHO maggot's mouth.

Probably the most laughable claim he made was that vaping increases heart attacks. This was filmed at the end of February, by which time the joke study to which he relies on for his 'information' had been retracted due to including heart attacks that occurred before subjects had started vaping. It was widely reported in the popular and medical media, so you would imagine that a top-ranking WHO official might have noticed, but apparently this particular 'expert' was as blind to it as if someone had just told him there was a virus in China.

It's strange that they didn't just hold the thing virtually instead; that seems to be the way of other conferences. But, as has been pointed out on Twitter, that's not how the FCTC works.

They'd never switch to a virtual meeting for the same reason leadership in the US Congress doesn't want virtual votes -- it's a lot easier to twist arms, bully, and watch over people in person.

— Gregory Conley (@GregTHR) April 27, 2020

Indeed. Regular readers will know that the FCTC COP meetings are all held behind closed doors; the public and the press are excluded; deals are done in secret; delegates bullied and gaslighted; countries traded with incentives for repeating falsehoods; and junk science promoted over scientific fact. And that's not to mention the huge influence wielded by pharmaceutical sponsors and funders with conflicts of interests so huge they could swallow planets.

They won't put their conference online because it's not a transparent discussion or open debate, it is deliberately designed to be secret. Despite being funded by taxpayers, they have no wish to let taxpayers see what they are talking about. In 2014 in Moscow, they even turned off the WiFi so that delegates could not communicate with the outside world.

A $40,000 wifi facility was also wasted when tweets dried up on the second day, and Instagram accounts which had been sharing pictures went silent soon after. It seems that the WHO were desperate to ensure nothing escaped to the outside world about what they were discussing.

No, a virtual meeting would never do. They could have put controls in place to exclude people looking in - like they do physically at each COP they organise - and I'm sure they probably discussed it. But, I expect the potential for hacking was too great for them to consider and seeing as they are crap at just about everything else, they decided not to take the risk.

So, farewell then, COP9. We will see you in 2021 and will still be ready to counter your garbage. In fact, it gives us an opportunity. As we have seen recently with various political causes, the public is striking back against elite cabals ... and winning.

The WHO's COP jamborees feature up to 2,000 attendees, but vapers number in the tens of millions, and growing. Arguments are won by people who are infinitely more passionate about causes than their opponents. For the WHO, it's about money, for consumers it is far more personal than that.

We'll be ready for November 2021, slot it in your diary, folks. 

The Incomparable Deceit Of The WHO

Today saw a lot of media coverage over a new report from the World Health Organisation claiming:

Number of males using tobacco globally on the decline, showing that government-led control efforts work to save lives, protect health, beat tobacco

It further boasts that ...

[P]ositively, the new report shows that the number of male tobacco users has stopped growing and is projected to decline by more than 1 million fewer male users come 2020 (or 1.091 billion) compared to 2018 levels, and 5 million less by 2025 (1.087 billion).

Wow! A million globally, they say? That is a lot, isn't it? The Director General of the WHO - who once recruited Robert Mugabe as a goodwill ambassador before worldwide disgust forced him to backtrack - is ecstatic ...

“Declines in tobacco use amongst males mark a turning point in the fight against tobacco,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “For many years now we had witnessed a steady rise in the number of males using deadly tobacco products. But now, for the first time, we are seeing a decline in male use, driven by governments being tougher on the tobacco industry."

Is that so, DG? Really? That million reduction is entirely due to the policies dreamt up by the massed ranks of tobacco control? Well, I think that is debatable. A clue is there if you scroll to the bottom of the page (emphasis mine, cos they'd rather you don't notice it).

The WHO report covers use of cigarettes, pipes, cigars, waterpipes, smokeless tobacco products (like bidis, cheroots and kretek) and heated tobacco products. Electronic cigarettes are not covered in the report.

Yep, the WHO - for this report only - do not consider e-cigs as being tobacco use.

Now, in the UK alone we have approximately 1.9 million ex-smokers who now exclusively vape, and the law of averages suggests at least 50% of those are male. Globally, we know from the BBC that there are around 41 million vapers worldwide. Kinda knocks the WHO's pathetic 1 million into a cocked hat, doesn't it? Add those 20 million odd males who vape instead of smoke to the WHO's consumption figures and we're looking at the same old tired and failed tobacco control policies as always.

In The Hague next year, the WHO will insist at their biennial shit-fest - COP9 - that there is no difference between vaping and smoking, they will also insist that e-cigs are a tobacco product, that they do not help people quit and demand that governments across the world either prohibit vaping entirely or treat the products exactly the same as cigarettes, including slapping taxes on them, eradicating flavours and banning their use just about everywhere. There are no grants for these trouser-stuffing quangocrats from Mr Bloggs handing his own cash to a vape shop to buy a Vype or an Eleaf.

Yet, for the sake of a headline, they will admit that vaping isn't smoking just long enough to claim credit for a revolution which was absolutely none of their doing.

This report from the WHO is weapons grade nonsense. Plain packaging, for example - the WHO's big ticket item of recent years - has had no effect anywhere it has been tried, in fact all evidence points to it increasing the black market and leading to more people smoking. Wherever vaping is treated favourably, by contrast, has resulted in record declines in smoking prevalence never seen in hundreds of years. It is absolutely nothing to do with Tedros and his blinkered, Luddite, stick-in-the-mud troughers and their goalpost-shifting, cherry-picked junk statistics.

The deceit of these people is quite astonishing. If they were so confident that their policies are so fucking marvellous, they would include e-cigarettes and show that despite the massive uptake of vaping their interventions were still robust, but they can't. So instead they exclude vaping and try instead to claim credit for what they had absolutely nothing to do with, and in fact are straining every sinew to exterminate on behalf of their generous conflicted funders.

Christ, if Carlsberg did lying, even they couldn't do better than this. It's never been about health, and it's never been about truth. 

Popcorn Poppycock

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The answer, of course, is absolutely none. 

Popcorn Time: Australia Is Wobbling On E-Cigs

The Australian Guardian reported on Tuesday that the Aussie government is to set up a new inquiry into e-cigs.

The health minister Greg Hunt has agreed to an independent inquiry into the health impacts of nicotine e-cigarettes after a concerted push in the Coalition party room over several months to legalise vaping. 

Several MPs raised the issue in Tuesday’s party room meeting, saying there was widespread support within the government for making nicotine e-cigarettes legally available.

This is significant considering Greg Hunt famously said that legalisation of vaping would never happen 'on his watch' last year. It may be political pressure which has forced his hand, but I reckon deep down he's quite relieved that the decision has almost been taken away from him because Australia - and, consequently, Greg Hunt - is fast becoming a laughing stock while all other developed nations are moving to sensibly regulate safer nicotine products.

This announcement has, of course, been welcomed by tobacco controllers keen to find out if vaping can lower smoking rates, just as they have always wanted. Oh, I'm sorry, my bad. I was confusing tobacco control with other professions who have integrity, of course they didn't welcome it, they reacted in their customary manner. By issuing veiled threats.

The prospect of a truly independent inquiry absolutely terrifies the tobacco control industry, which is why they routinely rig evidence-gathering for policymakers, as I have written about many times. My personal favourite is, coincidentally, from Australia as explained by Catallaxy Files.

In 2012 Professor Melanie Wakefield of the Victorian Cancer Council was awarded a $3 million contract to conduct a national tracking survey of tobacco consumers (and recent “quitters”) immediately prior, during, and after the implementation of plain packaging. Professor Wakefield has previously been a member of the National Preventative Health Taskforce that had recommended the implementation of plain packaging, she was a member of the Federal Government’s Expert Advisory Group on plain packaging, and was then was commissioned by the Health Department, in the absence of a tender process, to investigate the efficacy of the very policy she had recommended, designed. and implemented. Unsurprisingly the results of her research (with several co-authors) supports the efficacy of plain packaging as a policy to reduce the prevalence of tobacco consumption.

And yes, that's exactly how the tobacco control scam has worked for decades. Imagining, preparing, setting questions for, and marking their own homework. It's corruption, basically.

So of course the desiccated Sydney pensioner is going to feel threatened. After all, truly independent inquiries don't cherry-pick rare outliers and try to build doubt about products on the basis of pure prejudice like a Sydney pensioner would. A truly independent inquiry takes the body of evidence and weighs up costs against benefits to come to a sober policy conclusion. Tobacco control industry 'independent' research is always - and I mean always - conducted by state-funded anti-smoking lobbyists with huge conflicts of interest, is preconceived to come up with a certain result, and counts only costs, never benefits.

If tobacco control is scared of this inquiry, it could well be properly independent and could be a massive embarrassment to the bunch of senile dinosaurs in Oz who still cling to the idea that e-cigs can be banned forever in order that they can proudly remain in the elite club of basket case nations who continue to do so.

Australian tobacco controllers will also be scared about a truly independent inquiry because it might show that they have been paid barrels full of money for pathetic and inconsequential tobacco control ideas, while nations which have permitted alternatives have left Australia in their wake.

You know what the likes of the Sydney pensioner and his geriatric old farts need right now? Some real world statistics to prove that their policies are wildly successful. Yes, that would be the ticket! Something to show those federal MPs that they are barking up the wrong tree with vaping and should just carry on listening the old guard, like always.

Cue South Australia, then, and their latest stats on smoking prevalence, also released on Tuesday.

Oh dear. Not a good look, is it?

Yep, despite huge regular 12.5% tobacco tax increases and plain packaging, South Australia's smoking rate is almost exactly the same as it was in 2012. And what are they going to do about this? Incredibly, they are planning to legislate to follow other states down the regulatory path of equating e-cigs with smoking and banning vaping in public places as well. The stupid is very strong down under.

While smoking rates have been plummeting in countries like the UK and US since 2012 when e-cigs went mainstream, in Australia they have just trodden water despite the most hardline authoritarian anti-tobacco policy environment of any developed nation in the world. Just as in perfect population level experiment in the UK and Ireland, Australia - to its embarrassment - is proving that coercion is not successful, while encouragement and harm reduction is.

No wonder, then, that Greg Hunt is probably mighty relieved right now. He will have had people urgently whispering in his ear that he and his government are starting to look like clowns, and that maybe he should back pedal a bit. And politicians really don't like looking like clowns.

This should be incredibly interesting to watch - fortunately from 10,000 miles away - so I'm breaking out the popcorn. If Australia does a U-turn on prohibition of e-cigs, we are going to have sooo much fun! 

None Of Your Business, Boston Council

It is odd that recently the establishment seems pretty confused as to why the public despises them. They don't seem to understand that if they act like petty dictators, sooner or later they will piss the entire population off in some way.

Here is a perfect example from Lincolnshire.

Council discuss banning market traders from smoking and vaping at their stalls

We're only on the headline but unless you're an arsehole you should already be thinking, erm, why is it any of the council's business? Well, here's why they think it is, anyway.

Councillors in Boston have discussed whether market traders should be banned from smoking and vaping while working on their stalls. 

The suggestion to ban smoking and vaping from the Boston market was suggested by students from Boston Grammar School, Haven High Academy, Giles Academy and Boston High School, during a recent consultation.

Can you believe that? Market stall holders are taxpayers and also pay rent to the council; their customers are taxpayers; kids at fucking school are not taxpayers. Who did the council listen to? Yes, the ones who don't vote and don't pay taxes.

It is also another example of authorities who are clueless as to current recommendations around vaping. They are entrusted with power at a local level but are exercising it without even bothering to read up on the subject matter.

That aside, this is still quite insane. It is absolutely no business of the council what market stall owners do with their stalls, they are beholden only to their customers. There is no law against smoking or vaping outdoors and Boston Borough Council have no power to implement one. So what fucking right do they think they have interfering?

June Rochford from Frampton said: “I don’t think people should be smoking behind their stalls, especially if it’s a food stall. But then it is still a public place where people can smoke. I have seen a few traders smoking but they often move from behind the stall. 

"If this was imposed they would have to stop everyone from smoking in the Market Place as it wouldn’t work."

Well, yes June, you'd think people entrusted with running a council might have the brains to work those things out for themselves, but they obviously can't.

How this ever reached the level of becoming a council proposal beggars belief. A bunch of propagandised kids think up some hare-brained nonsense and the local authority leaps gormlessly into action despite it being an utter absurdity.

Now, do you think they consulted the market traders or their customers before embarking on such a wild goose chase? No, of course they didn't.

Fortunately, the idiotic policy dreamed up by a load of spotty indoctrinated kids has been shelved because the thick-as-shit council eventually had to concede that it was a waste of everyone's time and money to even consider it. But doesn't it show you the mentality of the modern politician? It is now a definitive them (who think they know better) versus us (who they see as ignorant and incapable of making our own decisions). No wonder voters all over the country are increasingly eager to give the political class a kick in the balls when we get to the ballot box. One day they might get the message and start respecting the people they serve. I'll repeat that, the people they serve.

As one trader pointed out, instead of a daft policy which will require rigorous enforcement, why not just leave it up to a natural - and free to taxpayers - method of regulation which has worked for millennia. That is, the customer is always right.

“Customers will enforce that – if somebody is selling goods and they have a fag-end hanging out their mouth then customers will make their own decisions.”

Quite. If customers are still buying regardless, they are obviously not bothered and the council are just dreaming up makework to justify their existence. Readers at Lincolnshire Live certainly don't give a penguin's pecker about it.

It looks like Boston is another council which has far too much time and money on its hands and could do with more government restrictions on their budget. Slash away, Chancellor, on this evidence there is still much more council waste left to cut. 

Five Years On And The EU Has Learned Nothing

Today Snowdon reported that the EU is set to travel to COP8 in Geneva and demand that vaping be treated exactly the same as smoking for advertising purposes.

In fact, more than that, it will demand that even scenes in films portraying smoking and vaping should be classed as advertising.

In preparation for the event, various documents have been circling the global anti-smoking community to get a consensus on what to ban next. The depiction of tobacco use in the arts is one candidate. You can read the WHO's proposal here. The most notable part of the document is the WHO's intention to include tobacco use on film and television as tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship (TAPS) because:

Entertainment media content such as movies, music videos, online videos, television programmes, streaming services, social media posts, video games and mobile phone applications have all been shown to depict and promote tobacco use and tobacco products in ways that may encourage youth smoking uptake... Therefore, policies that reduce youth exposure to entertainment media depictions are required.

Note the word "may" in there. Because, as usual with tobacco control, there is no evidence whatsoever except for archetypal junk science from - you guessed it - Stan Glantz. They're interfering in the public's entertainment on the say-so of criminally-conflicted and arguably insane single-issue maniacs.

As Snowdon points out, the EU delegation to the FCTC's COP8 in Geneva - of which the UK will be a part - is actually trying to get e-cigs included in this daft policy.

The EU is one of the FCTC's members and, due to its size, it is rather influential. So have they objected to this? Yes, they have. But not because the proposals are too extreme. They object because they don't go far enough. In particular, the EU wants vaping to be included.

The EU welcomes the report of the Expert Group on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship and supports its recommendations... [The EU] stresses that TAPS [tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship] regulatory frameworks and their implementation at national, regional and international levels do not only cover all tobacco products, both traditional and emerging ones such as heated products, but should also consider tobacco-related products such as ENDS.

Isn't that incredible? Five years ago the EU were forced to abandon total prohibition of e-cigs - apart from medically licensed ones with a maximum of 4mg nicotine - in their Tobacco products Directive (TPD) but not without a massive struggle.

At the time ASH were arguing for exactly that too. It was only once a lighter touch was applied and Public Health England - acting on recommendations from the Nudge Unit - turned guns away from vaping, that they apparently had an epiphany. The results we have seen since on smoking prevalence are astounding.

Now, you'd think that the EU might look back on 2013 and recognise that they regulated from a position of laughable ignorance back then, wouldn't you? They should be deeply embarrassed about it. But no, today's revelations suggest that they still haven't a fucking clue.

Five years on and the EU has learned absolutely nothing, judging by this

Vapers saw back then how intransigent, opaque, anti-democratic and abusive the EU is. It is why a vast majority voted for leave in the referendum. All this is doing is proving that they were right to do so.

As I understand it from COP7 in India, any EU proposal will be subject to approval from member states in meetings prior to the event. Once a position is agreed, no member state (including the UK) will have any power to object at COP8 because the EU represents all 28.

I guess we will see how serious the Department of Health really is about its Tobacco Control Plan if it allows the EU to do this. The ASA is already working on proposals to relax advertising restrictions on e-cigs rather than prohibiting all marketing outright, so direction of travel in the UK couldn't be further removed from the EU's position. And as for the proposal to ban all media online, this could mean that even bodies like NCSCT (involved in smoking cessation) would not be able to produce films for Facebook and Twitter.

If, as I suspect, the UK Department of Health - who, remember, are advised by ASH about FCTC matters - doesn't nip this in the bud, all arguments that we are better in the EU because we can have input will be washed away. If UK government policy which has produced brilliant results can be undermined by an anti-democratic gravy train urging an entirely unelected and unaccountable global cartel - both of which entirely cut the public out of their discussions - to prohibit vaping adverts worldwide, you have to ask what is the point of being in the EU delegation when we could represent the UK instead. And boy would we be hassling the fuck out of the Department of Health if they proposed this unilaterally. We tried that with the EU and they just cocked a deaf 'un.

We're watching you DoH and ASH. Very. Closely.

This is as daft as it gets and makes me 100% certain that I voted the right way in June 2016. The more of this sickening behind-closed-doors bureaucracy we can chip away at, the better. 

Is Barnsley The Doziest Council In The Country?

With councils squealing about 'austerity' and 'savage cuts' at every opportunity, the BBC reported yesterday on a vital public service being promoted by Barnsley Borough Council.

Smoke-free zones are set to be introduced outside 80 primary schools in Barnsley. 

The move is an extension of a council scheme which has already been implemented in the town. 

Each of the schools will be given signs, letters to send to parents and "tool kits" to help staff set up the zones around the premises. 

Kaye Mann, senior health improvement officer, said: "The aim is to make smoking invisible to children."

So it's a council scheme, is it? Because that's not what was conveyed to the media in May. 

ABOUT 150 children staged a peaceful protest imploring parents not to smoke near their school kick-starting a project to make smoking ‘invisible’ to school children across Barnsley.  

Pupils from Laithes Primary at Athersley South linked arms to form a chain on front of the school’s entrance, waved placards and shouted chants at the event on Wednesday - some even took to the megaphone. 

Yep, it was all the kids' doing, even down to the professionally printed banners. They bought those out of their pocket money, natch. 

Let's leave aside for a moment the vile manipulation of children here - completely oblivious to how it must make kids with parents who smoke feel to see their loved ones treated like that - and look at what Barnsley is actually doing. Because, as is quite obvious, it's fuck all to do with the kids, and not really anything to do with health either. 

Mawsley of POTV has been asking the council some searching questions.

Planet of the Vapes contacted Barnsley Council for comment. 

A spokesperson told us: “It's not an outright ban, more of a request, but yes, vaping is included."

So it's the usual 'voluntary ban' which I hope many will completely ignore. And erm, why is vaping included? 

"We want to encourage a smoke free generation and make all smoking invisible to children so they don't see it as a regular adult behaviour.”

If every kid at that school took up vaping at 18, they would still be "smoke free". Don't Barnsley get that? 

Well of course not. Because Barnsley Council is run by utter morons, as we can see from last year's Freedom to Vape survey of local authority policies on vaping in the workplace. 

Barnsley was one of the most committed councils in the country to ensure that smokers don't switch to e-cigarettes instead. 

Whilst the Council acknowledges PHE's statements that e-cigarettes carry a fraction of the risk of cigarettes; have the potential to help drive down smoking rates; improve public health; and help to denormalise smoking; and accept that current evidence indicates that the risk to the health of bystanders from exposure to e-cigarette vapour is extremely low, the use of e-cigarettes in the workplace: 

- Is a matter of professional etiquette and projection of a clean and healthy image for our premises
- May lead to ‘lookalikes’ (e-cigarettes made to resemble cigarettes) being misconstrued as cigarettes
- May have an impact on public perception of the Council and its employees
- May affect people with asthma and other respiratory conditions who can be sensitive to a range of environmental irritants, which could include e-cigarette vapour
- May be a distraction for those vaping and also a nuisance or distraction for people nearby
- Would be contrary to the Council’s aim of inspiring a ‘smokefree generation’ in the borough 

The council also requires vapers (and smokers) to remove their Council ID card and lanyard so they cannot be immediately associated with the Council. Employees are not allowed to vape (or smoke) whilst wearing a council uniform.

OK, they are quite entitled to set their own vaping policies, however retarded they might be. And Barnsley's is one of the most jaw-droppingly ignorant in the country. But none of those barrel-scraping excuses justifications above have any bearing outside of schools. 

Now, remember that only a couple of weeks ago the government's Science and Technology Committee made this recommendation. 

Many businesses, public transport providers and other public places do not allow e-cigarettes in the same way that they prohibit conventional smoking. But, there is no public health (or indeed fire safety) rationale for treating use of the two products the same. There is now a need for a wider debate on how e-cigarettes are to be dealt with in our public places, to help arrive at a solution which at least starts from the evidence rather than misconceptions about their health impacts.

The Government's Tobacco Plan - subtitled "Towards a Smokefree Generation", yes the same words used by the cretins up in Barnsley - aspires to "help people to quit smoking by permitting innovative technologies that minimise the risk of harm". and Public Health England says "e-cigarette use is not covered by smokefree legislation and should not routinely be included in the requirements of an organisation’s smokefree policy". 

Yet Barnsley Council is blissfully unaware of any of this. Here's what their bone-headed council lead said on the subject. 

Cllr Jim Andrews, Cabinet Spokesperson for Public Health, said: “We want to ensure smoking becomes almost invisible to protect children’s health. Children and young people are influenced by adult behaviour and are less likely to start smoking if they do not view it as a normal part of everyday life."

So why are you 'banning' devices that smokers are using to stop smoking, you bellend?

“We’ve brought the latest campaign to the school grounds and it’s fantastic to see the children get involved too. We’re soon to see more schools across the borough take up this scheme and hopefully it will see parents listen and be more considerate about where and when they smoke, if not make them consider stopping completely.”

By 'prohibiting' devices that "have become the most popular stop smoking tool in England" according to CRUK? How does Barnsley get such dipshits as councillors? Are they selected by way of a lucky dip? Jesus wept!

It's clear that Barnsley has no clue about the subject and are just spunking taxpayer money up the wall on pointless, and arguably damaging, vanity projects.

In April, the local MP was bemoaning the fact that Barnsley is suffering from government cuts.

“Once again, local authorities are being forced to shoulder drastic cuts in funding through this government’s continued obsession with austerity. 

“Barnsley Council has seen its budgets slashed since 2010, but demand for vital local services in our community continues. 

“It’s grossly unfair and unrealistic to expect local authorities to continue providing the same level of local services with ever-dwindling resources. 

“This government needs to take responsibility for their cuts and provide the resources local authorities like Barnsley desperately need to continue providing for local communities.”

I'd say there is huge scope for further savings if Cllr Jim Andrews and his equally ignorant - and probably highly-paid - staff are an example of how Barnsley Council operates. They could start by sacking the lot of the useless idiots at no detriment to local taxpayers whatsoever. 

Science And Tech Committee Lifts Up A Stone To See What Crawls Out

I'm sure you've already seen it, but today the government's influential Science and Technology Committee released a report which will have capslock cretins, lardarse Irish academics, follicly-challenged no-mark physiotherapists and crusty Sydney pensioners spluttering their purified water all over their disinfected keyboards.

In the report - carried by, erm, just about every media outlet and heavily featured on the BBC - the committee makes a number of recommendations about reduced risk nicotine products which I summarise below:

- A simpler and cheaper system for manufacturers to get e-cigs approved for medicinal use
- Increasing information about e-cigs so that they can be used in far more public places
- More government-backed research into e-cigs and heat not burn products to be added to PHE's current annual review of e-cig evidence
- A review of the stupid limits on nicotine strength and tank sizes thanks to the inept EU's TPD
- To look at allowing e-cig adverts to make health claims (which, of course, are 100% true)
- A shift to a "risk-proportionate regulatory environment", meaning a joined-up government policy to co-ordinate approaches to regulations, advertising rules and tax regimes to accurately reflect relative risks of harm reduction products
- Vaping to be allowed by default in mental health institutions unless there is a damn good - evidence-based - reason not to
- And to look again at the absurd ban on snus

In the words of Committee Chair Sir Norman Lamb, "E-cigarettes are less harmful than conventional cigarettes, but current policy and regulations do not sufficiently reflect this and businesses, transport providers and public places should stop viewing conventional and e-cigarettes as one and the same. There is no public health rationale for doing so."

Of course, the reason many of those mentioned are confused is due to a longstanding and continuing campaign of misinformation by organisations - many state-funded - based on ideology and with little care about health. This cuts through all that and will send shivers down the spine of anti-vaping denialists up and down the country; their deliberate lies and fabrications have been nailed. The new age merchants of doubt - in the UK at least - have been rumbled.

They should, of course, take this as a chance to change their ways and move into the real world where safer nicotine delivery devices are doing their job for them but ... oh hold on, perhaps that's the problem!

What has also become clear today is how brutally e-cigs have, yet again, shown up the hypocrisy, cant, dishonesty and prejudice surrounding smoking ... or should I say, anti-smoking.

Norman Lamb has released a report saying that policies should be based on the evidence about e-cigs, that the public should be better informed, and that this is vital for the good of the nation's health. The response from the ever-decreasing band of anti-vape denialists and much of the public has been - effectively - "fuck health, I don't like them".

As Carl Phillips has written before on this subject, 'public health' campaigners who desperately cherry-pick evidence and sling ad homs around to avoid having to admit the obvious benefits of harm reduction are nothing but dangerous extremists.

About ten years ago, I coined the term “anti-tobacco extremists” to refer to those who take the most extreme view of tobacco use. This was an attempt to push back against anti-THR activists being inaccurately referred to as public health, given that they actively seek to harm the public’s health. I have since given up on that, and recognize that “public health” is an unsalvageable rubric, which should just be relegated to being a pejorative. But the extremist concept remains useful. The test for anti-tobacco extremism is the answer to the following question: If you could magically change the world so that either (a) there was no use of tobacco products or (b) people could continue to enjoy using tobacco but there was a cheap magic pill that they could take to eliminate any excess disease risk it caused, which would you choose? Anyone who would choose (a) over (b) takes anti-tobacco to its logical extreme, making clear that they object to the behavior, not its effects.

The same goes for the public who are squealing about the very thought of vaping being allowed anywhere. The very same miseries will have furrowed their brow and insisted that the smoking ban was to save the lives of those poor, put-upon bar workers. They absolutely, most definitely, honestly didn't want to interfere in your choices, but, you know, it's about health. Innit.

But now a report is produced stating - having looked at the evidence and taken testimony from a range of health bodies such as PHE, MHRA, NICE, ASH, and even the Department of Health - that there is no harm to bystanders from vapour, the mask slips.

"I don't give a shit", they shriek, "I don't want it in my pub!". Evidence be damned. The nation's health begone. Choice for all, get out of here. But then, it was never about health anyway.

Of course, the committee's report said that there needed to be better education of the public about these devices, so all the vitriolic bitching and whining proves - apart from that there are a hell of a lot of self-absorbed anti-social arseholes in the UK - is that what the report says is absolutely true. The public are ignorant on the subject and they do need to be better informed of the evidence, and maybe the government have to step in and do something about it. Ignorance doesn't cure itself, after all.

Anyway, you can read the report here, unlike the self-professed bar room experts screeching on social media about how e-cigs "STINK" (remind you of anything in the past?) will do. It's a great piece of commonsense which is causing a lot of butthurt anger amongst anti-vaping 'public health' extremists and the vilest anti-smoking prodnoses in the population at large.

The FDA Blatantly Hands E-Cig Market To Big Pharma

Around about this time last year, the FDA's Scott Gottlieb made a public statement about e-cigs that many vapers thought was a new dawn in how reduced risk products would be treated in the US.

You may remember that I thought it was just a cleverly-worded hill of beans.

The FDA's announcement relents on some e-cig rules but only on the proviso that it might make vaping more attractive to smokers who will be deprived, by force, of nicotine from their combustible cigarettes. That is nothing more than vile coercion and should have no place in a land that claims to be free.  

I cannot possibly cheer the FDA's overall plan and I don't think there is anything particularly concrete to be happy about yet anyway. Smokers are being thrown under a bus but apart from that everything else is up in the air and subject to change.

Despite many vapers rejoicing at this "huge" announcement, and describing it as "momentous",  a "reprieve", with some even saying they had "every confidence" in Gottlieb, it stunk to high heaven in my book. The emphasis seemed to be more on pointlessly reducing nicotine in regular cigarettes rather than promoting e-cigs.

Nothing I've seen since has made me think that the FDA has any intention of taking harm reduction seriously as a policy to encourage smokers to quit. In fact, the evidence is all pointing in the opposite direction.

The FDA is incredibly slow in regulating #ecigs but lightning quick on advocating low nic cigarettes based on poor evidence. Hate to say I predicted this carve-up, but I did https://t.co/q1Nd0cfWKC

— Dick Puddlecote (@Dick_Puddlecote) July 10, 2018

However, the whole thing has since taken an even more sinister tone with the release of another Gottlieb FDA press announcement on Friday.

Statement from FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D., on new steps the agency is taking to support the development of novel nicotine replacement drug therapies to help smokers quit cigarettes

"Novel nicotine replacement drug therapies"? Is he talking about e-cigs here? Well, yes he is.

We’re working on multiple fronts to recognize the role that more novel forms of nicotine delivery could play in achieving our public health goals, as part of an appropriately regulated marketplace. This not only includes encouraging innovation of potentially less harmful tobacco products for those adults who still seek to use nicotine (such as e-cigarettes), but also taking a closer look at our overall approach to the development and regulation of NRT products that are regulated as drugs, and designed to safely reduce withdrawal symptoms, including nicotine craving, associated with quitting smoking. 

The development of novel NRT products, regulated as new drugs, is a critical part of our overall strategy on nicotine.

I added the emphasis because it's quite clear he is not talking about a free market in e-cigs sold from vape shops.

Instead, he has issued some guidance on how to get e-cigs approved by the FDA (emphasis again mine).

This draft guidance, when finalized, is aimed at providing sponsors with recommendations on the nonclinical information appropriate to support development and approval of orally inhaled nicotine-containing drug products. It recognizes that a great deal of toxicity information is available for nicotine. But such information may not be available for other compounds contained in e-liquids and delivered by these products. These include the flavorings and heat-generated chemicals. These products can be used for six months or more over the course of a lifetime. So, it’s important to understand the risks to humans from these exposures, including developmental and reproductive toxicity and carcinogenicity.

Drug products? Six months over a lifetime? I've been using my non-drug e-cigs for about 8 years.

But then when you look at the guidance, it is quite clearly intended for a different subset of businesses than those which currently provide e-cigs for the US market.

It is guidance for a therapeutic product and nothing more. Such a product doesn't currently exist and any company which decided to have a go at it would have to have millions of dollars to spare. It is designed in a way that pharmaceutical companies would understand because it is a route to a pharmaceutical, or 'medicinal', e-cig. This would likely take the form of some ridiculously safe and bland cigalike which is so far removed from the products which are finding favour with smokers and driving the lowest smoking prevalence figures in US history, that it will be practically useless.

OK, it's fair to say that tobacco companies have the resources to throw huge amounts of money at getting a product of this type approved, but it will still be a therapeutic, medicalised e-cig designed for complete nicotine cessation, so it barely matters who manufactures it.

Gottlieb’s approach is cigarettes stripped of nicotine coupled with medicalisation of e-cigs. Because almost all of the products currently being sold in America by independents will disappear in 2022 thanks to the imposition of a predicate date.

It's important to note that Gottlieb has not issued guidance to current e-cig manufacturers on how to produce an independent product which could be sold on the open market as a consumer product. He has hinted that there may be some on the horizon but, for now, he has bypassed that and gone straight to issuing guidance - which heavily leans towards the pharma industry - on what is acceptable for a therapeutic product. At the same time as still insisting on rules which will effectively remove competition from anything recreational that is currently on sale.

It is, to all intents and purposes, a co-ordinated effort to make e-cigs a medical product and one which should only be used as a means to quit nicotine entirely. It is basically handing the entire market to the pharmaceutical industry. In other words - and especially considering the parallel regulations to take the good nicotine out of cigarettes and leave the harmful elements in - 'quit or die' on steroids.

Many were of the opinion when Gottlieb took over the job that he'd just end up being a pharma shill. He seems to be living up to those predictions quite spectacularly so far.

It is so blatant that it's astonishing. One can only assume that this is a result of the American disease of corporate lobbying, with pharma front and centre. I don't know about you but I don't think it's wrong to call this organised crime.

So, no, Gottlieb's announcement in July last year wasn't a new dawn for e-cig use. It was the start of a process which will see a brilliant innovation crushed and handed to corporate interests to destroy. It also proves, once again, that none of this crusade against smoking has ever been anything to do with health. They really couldn't care less.

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

A Perfect Population Level Experiment

The NNA spotted a superb statistic on Friday at the government's Tobacco Control Debate. I don't know about you but I think this deserves more attention.

Yesterday in a debate on the government’s Tobacco Control Plan in the House of Commons, Sir Kevin Barron highlighted the gulf between the UK and Ireland, two countries with identical traditional tobacco control policies but with differing approaches to e-cigarettes. Between 2012 and 2016 smoking dropped by nearly a quarter in the UK . In Ireland, where e-cigarettes are viewed with suspicion, the smoking rate actually went up in this period. 

Here is the Hansard entry for it.

I want to give a comparator and to refer back to my intervention on the Minister. I chaired the Health Committee in 2005, after we had fought an election on a manifesto commitment by the Labour party to introduce a ban on smoking in public places. I stood on that manifesto, but the ban proposed was not a comprehensive one. The Health Committee, of which I became the Chair, investigated smoking in public places. We went to Ireland to take evidence, because it had had such a ban for about two years. 

I will now demonstrate the effectiveness of e-cigarettes by comparing smoking rates in the UK versus those in Ireland, where every other approach to tobacco control is identical to those in the UK, such as plain packaging, retail display bans and marketing promotions all stopped. In recent years in the UK, smoking rates have dropped by almost a quarter—according to the Office for National Statistics, 24.4% of UK adults smoked in 2012 and 15.8% in 2016—and the UK now has the second lowest smoking rate in Europe. In Ireland, which has exactly the same tobacco control as we put through this place over many years, smoking rates have stagnated: 23% of adults smoked in 2015 and 2016, dropping to 22% in 2017, according to Healthy Ireland stats. That shows how the use of e-cigarettes has been good in reducing smoking in this country.

As the NNA has shown with their links, Hansard and Barron are actually wrong here. In Ireland the rate was reported as 22% in 2012 (chapter 3) and 23% in 2016. Maybe Barron was confused himself, perhaps it didn't compute. But both figures are derived from the same source, Tobacco Free Ireland.

But whether it is down by 1% or up by 1% matters not, this is a real life experiment which is just about perfect. In the UK smoking rates have nosedived, while in Ireland they have barely shifted. In the UK we have a supportive environment to e-cigs, in Ireland high profile politicians are doing everything in their power to turn smokers away from them.

We are not comparing the UK with a country with vastly differing levels of disposable income here, far from it. Ireland is a country on a par with the UK as far as the economy goes.

What's more, we're not comparing with Africans, south east Asians, Indians, Scandinavians, Americans north or south or antipodeans. We are comparing with our nearest cultural neighbours, so closely aligned are we that we don't even enforce passport requirements between the two countries.

The British and the Irish are about as good a comparison for ecological purposes as there can possibly be.

And, as Barron said, the only difference between UK policy and Irish policy is that over here our government cautiously welcomes new nicotine products whereas in Ireland they don't.

As I mentioned only yesterday, if politicians really want to get smokers to quit smoking - because that is really what they want, isn't it - this should be compelling stuff.

For a political class who consistently say they always wish to act on evidence, this is about the best quality evidence they can get. A population-level, real life study of two almost identical countries - with just the one difference in nicotine policy - but with vastly differing outcomes.

So why are other countries not scrambling to emulate the indisputable success of promoting safer alternatives to smoking that this inadvertent experiment proves? Well, I guess it also shows that the other tobacco control policies legislated for in that timescale - of which there have been many - are completely and utterly pointless. And I suppose there is always the fear that if smokers actually did what politicians pretend they want to see, tobacco tax receipts would also plummet, and they are fully aware that the economically fraudulent propaganda tobacco controllers spout about smoking harming the economy is utter bollocks.

So bravo to Barron for highlighting such a stark comparator in the House of Commons chamber. You just have to wonder why the tobacco control industry and other politicians, both sides of the Irish Sea, have been so silent about it, whereas if the results were the other way round they would be screaming it from the rooftops.

It's never been about health, you know. 

EU Wants To Tax Vaping, Don't Let Them

Via new vaping media source Vapetrotter (which you should bookmark, by the way), it won't surprise you to learn that a vast impenetrable bureaucracy which lives solely on the basis of tens of thousands of employees earning their living by doing nothing but regulating, wants to regulate e-cigs further than the absolute shit-shower they did with the TPD.

The EU seems to have decided it wants to tax e-cigarettes. They don't have any moral or scientifc basis for doing so, but hey, salaries have to be paid and vaping is killing the treasuries of many an EU country.

They have published a consultation and - whether you vape or not - please respond to it and tell them (nicely) that they are taking the right royal piss.

There is also a petition organised by the Collective of EU Vaper Associations which is quite cool and and has been translated into a number of different languages. It's up to about 18,000 so far so do consider supporting that too.

Oh, and remember, as you can see from this, the state is not - and never will be - your friend. 

Scotland Plans To Gold-Plate The TPD And Further Restrict E-Cig Advertising

Yesterday I wrote about the tobacco control industry's habit of cherry-picking evidence and - more recently - disbelieving real life evidence because it doesn't agree with their wild, junk science-led fantasies of how the world works.

Today sees a new low, though, as the Scottish Government released its Tobacco Control Plan. Snowdon has highlighted some of the blinkingly barmy aspects of it, so do go read his piece.

He said that he had only skimmed it and that there is bound to be more crazy in there, and he's correct. There is. For example, how much does this send your hypocrisy detector buzzing?

In the ministerial foreword, Minister for Public Health and Sport Aileen Campbell boasts about NHS services and how "there are new, more effective medications and our services are now more e-cigarette friendly", while further down the document it states:

On the basis of current evidence vaping e-cigarettes is definitely less harmful than smoking cigarettes. So, e-cigarette use as a means to quit should be seen by health professionals as a tool which some smokers will want to use. 

It also says about "smokers in mental health settings":

Raising awareness of the need to take a new approach in these settings and particularly about the possibilities which e-cigarettes being made available in appropriate non-NHS prescribed ways could have a big impact on the physical health of these patients.

So what are they going to do about these products which they have obviously recognised as being something which smokers are choosing to use and which have led to smoking prevalence tumbling?

Well, they're going to ensure that almost no-one knows about them, of course.

Providing protection through regulations and restrictions 

We will consult on the detail of restricting domestic advertising and promotion of e-cigarettes in law.

The key word there is 'domestic' because the EU's article 20 of the TPD specifically banned cross border advertising, therefore broadcast and online media. Domestic advertising such as posters, leaflets, direct mail, cinema and ads on buses are not covered by EU law.

So, the Scottish government is consulting with a view to gold-plate the EU regulations by placing further restrictions on 'domestic' advertising; that very e-cigarette advertising which is currently not burdened by the ignorant, lobbyist-led stupidity of Brussels.

With the UK's advertising regulator recently having given evidence to the UK government's Science and Technology Committee that they are looking at allowing e-cig vendors to make truthful claims about the safer nature of vaping - as in, relaxing the regulations - the Scottish government is planning to go the other way and make sure as few people know about vaping as possible.

The Calvinist puritanism being displayed in Scotland right now is jaw-dropping, but this takes the biscuit. We have a tobacco control plan for England committing to "maximise the availability of safer alternatives to smoking", at the same time that Scotland has decided it only wants safer alternatives available via state-run channels. If they can't control it, they'd prefer you don't even try.

There are also sinister hints that they intend to go even further down the rabbit hole of anti-vaping moral panic.

Over the course of this action plan it is likely that the markets for e-cigarettes and novel heated tobacco products will develop further. This could mean that the current focus of tobacco control enforcement changes over time to take account of these newer markets. For example if there were changes to the law on restricting the sales of non-nicotine containing e-liquid for e-cigarettes this would have implications for enforcement.

If markets for e-cigs and heat not burn increase, that is a good thing! But not for Scotland, it seems. There is also a hint there that there might be more regulations on the horizon for nicotine free e-liquid, again not covered by the EU TPD.

Have I got your attention yet, Scottish vape reviewers? Yep, that could be the end of short fills.

There may also need to be programmed initiatives on ensuring e-liquids are authorised products ...

Well, considering the TPD created a new category for e-cigs so they are already kinda "authorised", could they mean yet another gold plate layer on top of EU regulations? Or maybe they just mean the whole hog and enforced medicinal licensing. We shall have to see.

... and perhaps even on whether these age-restricted products are being marketed in a way which primarily appeals to young people. 

They've really swallowed the anti-vaping Kool Aid in bucket loads, haven't they?

And as for this ...

During the summer of 2018 we will work with health boards and integration boards to try to reach a consensus on whether vaping should or should not be allowed on hospital grounds through a consistent, national approach.

It's not illegal, it's not dangerous, the same document talks about smokers using e-cigs to quit. Where is the debate?

I reckon the best take I can offer to you is that if you are Scottish and a vaper, remember that ASH Scotland - who will have advised the government in detail on production of this plan - is not your friend. Neither, I would suggest, is the SNP. Worth remembering next time some politician asks for your vote.

Like Snowdon, I have only skimmed the document and - like him - I think "these people are off their heads". I'll leave it there for now, though, but I'm sure I'll be coming back to this utter insanity, maybe tomorrow. Watch this space. 

Inconvenient Evidence For Tobacco Control

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Public Health England's Ratchet

Here's a puzzler.

A hospital in Swindon wanted to get all that ghastly (dahling) smoke away from those who complain about smokers doing so. So they came up with a very calm, common sense solution.

Head of health and safety Mark Hemphill said: “The trust did have a plan to install visitor smoking shelters, and a policy was drafted and installation of three smoking shelters outside of the atrium, west and emergency department entrances were specified and costed for installation by Carillion last summer."

Wise man. Everyone is catered for and there is no longer any problem. Well, there wouldn't be until Public Health England chipped in.

“The plans changed three months ago at the direct request of Public Health England, who wrote to each trust chief executive and stated the importance of relaunching the Smoke Free NHS.” 

All NHS trusts in England will go smoke free by the start of 2019, with smoking banned from hospital grounds.

Might I remind you that there is no law against smoking at any NHS hospital so therefore they have no enforcement powers behind this. Nor should there ever be. The idea that an establishment owned by taxpayers - of which smokers are some of the highest paying personally - can ban people from using a legal product without any evidence whatsoever of harm to others outdoors, is absurd. The fact that these bans include the car park, where the NHS is happy for instantly lethal carbon monoxide to be generously spewed out, just makes the whole thing laughable.

Yet despite non-existent enforcement, PHE is issuing demands rather than guidance.

Now, the reason I find this curious is because PHE have often been asked why they cannot instruct hospitals and other organisations to allow the use of e-cigs. The stock answer is always that they can issue guidance but that they cannot demand that it be adhered to.

So why the difference here? Why are they all of a sudden able to get heavy with hospitals while not doing the same when it comes to demanding them to treat vaping favourably? I expect it's the usual authoritarian public sector disease that the ratchet only goes one way. And every time away from any semblance of liberty.

In fact, we can see this in the response from the hospital.

Dr Ian Orpen and Dr Christin Blanshard, co-chairmen for the clinical board of the Bath, North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire Sustainable Transformation Partnership, which commissions NHS services, said the changes were part of a bid to stop patients and staff smoking. 

The doctors said: “We understand that some people may not wish to stop smoking and we will be providing them with assistance to ensure that during their stay in hospital or whilst at work they can abstain by using nicotine replacement therapy and support from our stop smoking advisors.”

So where the fuck was PHE's 'guidance' or demands about e-cigs to that hospital? There is absolutely no mention of other products except pharma NRT. Remember this is the organisation that announced to the world they'd be happy with vaping products being sold in hospitals.

Did they conveniently forget?

More Junk Science From Glantz

There may well come a time where the name Glantz is used as a byword for production of the worst kind of deliberate junk science, such is his expertise in the practice.

A merchant of doubt explains merchants of doubt

Just like we derive the term gerrymandering from the grubby antics of Elbridge Gerry, so we may - nay, should - in future refer to research fraudulently contorted to achieve a preconceived conclusion in any discipline to have been 'Glantzed'.

Brad Rodu has highlighted the latest in a long line of Glantzian chicanery on his blog this week. Publishing in the Paediatrics journal, Glantz once again came up with a conclusion that vaping amongst adolescents drives them towards smoking. Except for one thing, he had discounted prior cigarette consumption altogether.

Erm, I know that tobacco controllers understand smokers less than the general population, but this is a pretty fundamental error. Of course people dabbling with e-cigs are more likely to smoke afterwards if they have smoked before, yet Glantz chooses to completely ignore this vital piece of information.

As Rodu comments:

In their analysis, the authors ignore the fact that their study group consisted entirely of experimental smokers with widely varied experience – one or more puffs but never a whole cigarette, one cigarette, 2-10, 11-20, 21-50 and 51-99 cigarettes.  

It is well established that past smoking (in this case, LCC at Wave 1) predicts future smoking (one year later).  Chaffee, Watkins and Glantz ignored this information in order to claim that e-cigarettes are a gateway to smoking.  Their study should be retracted. 

Well, yes. In any legitimate area of research, a fundamental flaw such as this would have been discovered during peer review, but then tobacco control has never been a legitimate area of research, it is just political policy-based evidence-making. Why a journal like Paediatrics would continue to allow such a blatantly shonky piece of research to contaminate its pages is anyone's guess.

Rodu reproduced the analysis taking into account prior cigarette use and - lo and behold - the claims made by Glantz entirely disappeared. The data had been comprehensively Glantzed.

This was pointed out in the responses page at Paediatrics by Rodu, and Glantz fiercely defended his study ... by launching an ad hominem attack. Under Dick's Law, this means Rodu has already won. However, the victory is even greater considering Glantz's response admitted that he and his colleagues deliberately treated kids who had smoked only one puff and never a whole cigarette just the same as those who had smoked 99 cigarettes. Only a charlatan would do something like that and, as charlatans go, Glantz is as mendacious and deceitful as they come.

But then tobacco control has long since departed from having anything to do with science, it is in fact anti-science and its journals are increasingly also of the same mindset. It's a cult to which you are either within or without. Glantz is one of the cult leaders so is duty-bound to promote whatever quasi-religious anti-nicotine hegemony that his colleagues wish him to, and at the moment in the US it just happens to be an ignorant and quite absurd dislike for e-cigs based on no reasonable foundation whatsoever.

How ironic is it that someone still banging on about the behaviour of tobacco companies in the 1960s can so brilliantly encapsulate the actions of tobacco control doubt-spreaders in 2018?

The tobacco industry has long since abandoned any pretence that their core product is harmless, but some in tobacco control are employing exactly the same doubt creation methods now towards e-cigs! Glantz has become everything he has spent decades condemning. He propagates ignorance, obscures truth and deliberately creates confusion. And if Paediatrics doesn't retract a blatantly and deliberately false study such as this one, they are complicit in the fraud and their integrity is in the gutter.

As I mentioned earlier this week, there's a very good reason why vapers don't believe a word that tobacco controllers say, and Glantz has just provided them with another prime example.  

++Breaking++: Vape Marketing Discovered At A Vape Marketing Event!

On Sunday I wrote about one of the funniest pieces of anti-vaping 'science' I've seen so far. If you remember, the 'researchers' - I use that description in the very loosest sense - from North Carolina wanted laws to make all e-cigs the same so that it made it easier for the lazy buggers to study them.

You'd think they must be bottom-feeders in the tobacco control community, but it's a field where absurd morons jostle for position with laughable ones. I reckon this, from the Tobacco Control Comic Journal, beats it for stupidity.

World Vapor Expo 2017: e-cigarette marketing tactics

A newly emerging public health issue is the surge of ‘vaping conventions’ for e-cigarette marketing and sales. 

E-cigarette marketing strategies such as those observed at the 2017 World Vapor Expo echo earlier cigarette promotions infamously used by the tobacco industry to attract consumers, most notably teenagers. E-cigarette marketing strategies should be closely monitored to guide policymakers on how to regulate e-cigarette marketing and sales. Further research is needed on vaping events to document the age range of attendees and how social interactions at such events affect e-cigarette risk perceptions, vaping behaviour and perceived norms.

Vape marketing discovered at an age-restricted Vape Expo? Wow! Hold the front page!

Apparently, these two wide-eyed man-children believe this glimpse of reality that has just been revealed to them "may have serious public health implications". I think they may have got those words in the wrong order there. They mean vaping will have serious implications for those who laughingly call themselves 'public health'. After all, who needs parasitic junk scientists spunking public money down the drain like this when e-cigs are making their industry look like an expensive, ineffective and fraudulent disease?

Our Job Is Difficult, So The World Must Change

We've known for a while that anti-smokers - in fact, any person with a beef about what other people enjoy that they personally dislike - want the world to revolve around them. They want the moon on a stick and a unicorn for Christmas, you see, so they demand that society re-orders itself to fit with their individual likes and dislikes.

The most prominent example is the smoking ban where a system of smoking and non-smoking pubs was not acceptable; anti-smokers wanted them all, without exception. Another, more recent, example is the case of fast food where odious snobs pretend they are worried about the health of working class people while, in reality, they just find other people's choices grubby and, well, common. Just because they wouldn't be seen dead in a McDonald's they want as many restrictions placed a successful business despite often enjoying far more unhealthy 'niche' or 'artisan' food themselves.

However, I've never seen this leaking into 'public health' research before. Well, not until now, anyway. I laughed out loud when I saw this.

Electronic Cigarettes: One Size Does Not Fit All

Electronic cigarettes (EC) have been rapidly growing in popularity among youth and adults in the US over the last decade. This increasing prevalence is partially driven by the ability to customize devices, flavors, and nicotine content and the general notion that EC are harmless, particularly in comparison to conventional cigarettes (CC).

Firstly, I'd argue that there isn't a "general notion" that they are harmless, more's the pity. Especially "in comparison to conventional cigarettes" which is indisputable.

But get this!

The hurdle presented by diverse device designs and [e-liquid] permutations, which contribute to inconsistency of available data, also highlights the need for legislative standardization of EC.

Yes. These idiots from North Carolina are actually of the opinion that their job is made more difficult because there are so many different e-cig product combinations which enthuse and attract smokers to alternatives that will suit them. So they want the law to change what they are studying so it makes it easier for them to do so.

Three lazy spongers who really believe that the world should stop being so diverse because it makes their gathering of junk science for the FDA more difficult.

If I didn't provide the link, you'd have thought I made it up, wouldn't you? Go on, admit it. 

Simon Chapman: Expert Merchant Of Doubt

As the evidence mounts up as to the harmlessness - and even the benefits - of e-cigarettes, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the tiny few denialists still remaining to foretell a future of 'public health' catastrophe as a result of vaping. It might be something to do with the fact that e-cigs have been around for over a decade now and there still hasn't been a single case of death or significant disease, throughout the world, attributable to using vaping equipment as intended.

In Australia, particularly, their backward government is coming under increasing pressure to legalise the use of nicotine in e-cigs while all developed nations around them - most significantly neighbour New Zealand - are realising that the campaign against new nicotine products is mostly vested interest lobbying and hot air.

However, if you're a narcissistic Aussie pensioner who cannot bear to admit you're wrong, the futile struggle still goes on like some Jap soldier still fighting the Second World War. Perhaps sensing that it's inevitable that Australia will have to join the real world and legalise e-cigs with nicotine at some point, Simon Chapman has begun a rearguard action to try to make sure that, if they are, that there will be nowhere to use them ... and his reasoning is hilarious!

Groundhog day as vapers try to talk their way into our smokefree public places 

Over the 30 years between the time we banned smoking in cinemas, buses and trains and when it was finally banned in all public indoor spaces, we saw many truly bizarre attempts to justify its continuation in offices, then in restaurants and finally in the last bastions, pubs and bars.

The last bastion, Simon? Surely that's private homes where mouth-frothing anti-smokers have always demanded that smokers be confined to. Is that campaign on hold now then?

Tobacco industry sponsored “courtesy” campaigns told us that smokers would be considerate and not smoke near others. That worked so well. The it was proposed that the laws of physics did not apply to smoke: it would simply not cross a magic line two metres from the bar so it couldn’t harm bar staff. Breathing it 2.02 metres away for the rest of us was OK, apparently. Secondhand smoke from very wealthy gamblers in high roller rooms where smoking is sometimes still allowed (as when the Barangaroo casino opens) is not harmful to others. It’s only harmful when it comes from ordinary mortals’ cigarettes, apparently.

It's not harmful even then unless you believe the hysteria over passive smoking entirely constructed by tobacco control junk scientists, some of the most accomplished liars the world has ever seen. And Simon knows that very well.

Still, let's set that aside for now and ask instead why the old duffer is going on about smoking when the headline is about vapers. Well, it's to conflate smoking with vaping, of course.

Today we are seeing the same sort of nonsense being rehearsed to twist the arms of state governments to allow vaping in spaces where smoking is banned. 

What, that vaping is harmless to bystanders? How is that nonsense when it is true? Unless Simon has some proper evidence to the contrary, it is absolutely no business of any state or national government to ban their use in public.

Vaping advocates first tried to argue that vape was as benign as exposure to steam in your shower, a sauna or from a kettle. The sometimes massive cumulonimbus-like billows you see blown by vapers consist of yes, water vapour, but also particles and nanoparticles of partially vapourised flavouring chemicals, propylene glycol (PG), nicotine and traces of metals shed from the battery-activated metal heating coil that vapourises this brew. Despite their small mass, such particles may have significant toxicological impact because of their increased propensity for deep penetration into the pulmonary and cardiovascular systems.

A lot of scary words there but - and this is quite important - has there been any observable or recorded proof that any of these "particles" and "traces" have or will in the future cause harm to vapers themselves, let alone non-vapers in close proximity (or from a distance considering many jurisdictions ban vaping in the open air!). The answer, of course, is no. And, again, Simon "doubt is my product" Chapman knows this very well too.

Vaping has only been widespread in some nations for 6-8 years. Chronic respiratory and cardiovascular diseases typically have latency periods of 30 or 40 years between the beginning of exposure to noxious agents and the first clinical signs of disease. So it is far too soon for anyone to be making calls that any apparent absence of health impacts from active or passive vaping means they are either benign or dangerous.

This is regularly trotted out by denialists but simply isn't true. You see, it may have escaped the old geezer's attention but we have advanced technology nowadays and an acute understanding of how chemicals react with the human body. We no longer need 30 or 40 years to observe what will happen because all these elements are well-known and their effect on humans understood. And considering  the volume of the "particles" and "traces" Simon refers to are so vanishingly small that it is only because of advanced technology that their existence can even be noticed, only an imbecile would try to pretend they present a realistic danger. This is why PHE can say with a huge degree of confidence that "there is no evidence of harm to bystanders from exposure to e-cigarette vapour and the risks to their health are likely to be extremely low", because it's true.

However, our intrepid tobacco industry useful idiot soldiers bravely on, determined to sow doubt and confusion till his last breath.

The recent 680 page door-stopper report on e-cigarettes from the US National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine repeatedly describes the extent and quality of the evidence about vaping as scant, immature and often of poor quality. However, it noted that “there is conclusive evidence that e-cigarette use increases airborne concentrations of particulate matter and nicotine in indoor environments compared with background levels.”

It would be surprising if they didn't, but Simon has still not come up with anything to say that this increase has any significant effect on health. But then, that isn't the point of the piece, he just wants to sling mud and hope some sticks.

Next up, we see Simon's legendary ignorance about how businesses work.

The Dow chemical company which makes PG advises “Dow does not support or recommend the use of Dow’s glycols where breathing or human eye contact with the spray mists of these products is likely”.

Well of course Dow is not going to put its name to anything like that. Why would they? Any business which did would be run by morons. There is no need for Dow to do so, so why do it? I'm sure privately they'd be very pleased that their products are being used in an emerging market but vaping is pretty niche considering the huge use of their chemicals in other global industries. It's not even worth their while investigating it considering they know others will do so without them having to invest a single dollar.

Note how Chappers has scratched around for something, anything, which agrees with his prejudice against vaping. It's almost like he sees a flicker of hope for his dying campaign and just grabs it, no matter how tendentious it is. While dominoes fall all around him - the UK BMA and the American Cancer Society recently cautiously jumped his ship and made favourable noises about e-cigs - someone should tell Simon about this thing called confirmation bias. Oh hold on ...

Oblivious to his double standard considering he slates climate change deniers for clutching at straws, he then cherry-picks once more by citing the fantastically absurd study - published in the Tobacco Control comic he used to edit - of junk scientists undercover at a vaping convention.

Compared head-to-head, cigarette smoke emits far more of most of these ingredients than does vape from an e-cigarette. But when you get lots of vapers in a room, particle concentrations can build significantly. 

When researchers counted particles in the air of 4023 cubic meter room at a vaping convention on six occasions with between 59 and 86 people vaping, particle counts were 125-330 times higher than in the same room when it was empty, with concentrations higher than those recorded in bars where cigarette smoking was allowed.

As someone who has spent a career pretending to be a clever 'expert' on epidemiology, Chappers should know that it's not just the prevalence of particles in the air that is important, rather their make-up.

As I have mentioned before, Chapman trying to conflate smoke with vapour - as he is doing here - illustrates a profound ignorance on the subject matter or is a deliberate attempt to mislead the reader.

Still, those numbers are scary aren't they? Well kinda, except that they are talking about particulates as if vapour is the same threat as other airborne pollutants. The Scottish EPA describes 'particulate matter' as "the term used to describe particles of soot (carbon), metals or inorganic salts", while the US Environmental Protection Agency categorises them as "emitted directly from a source, such as construction sites, unpaved roads, fields, smokestacks or fires.  Most particles form in the atmosphere as a result of complex reactions of chemicals such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, which are pollutants emitted from power plants, industries and automobiles.". E-cig vapour is an aerosol made up of liquid droplets, which are entirely different chemically and physically. Again, do you think they knew this or are just thick?

You have to ask the same question Australia's most prominent crank, I reckon.

So here we are, halfway through his article, and we still have nothing but innuendo and deliberate misdirection to prove his theory that vaping should be legislatively banned in public places.

But he's only just getting the bullshit wagon into second gear.

E-cigarette advocates like to paint folksy scenes of one or two “considerate” vapers having a quiet and discreet vape in the corner of a pub. But occupational health and clean air regulations are not drafted to accommodate a little bit of asbestos or an occasional excess of carbon monoxide.

Yep, having just made the leap of comparing water droplets with bitumen, he doubles down by suggesting that vapour is on a par with asbestos and carbon monoxide which can kill in a short space of time, despite just having said we won't see any evidence of harm for 30 or 40 years. It's the argument of a 10 year old.

Public policy needs to deal with the diverse densities of patrons who might vape indoors. If vaping were allowed indoors, would any restrictions apply? Would bar staff be required to limit the number of people vaping, or request or order them to be discreet or “considerate” with their exhalations as with the ineffective approaches that were once made to smokers? Will arguments occur about whether a plume is excessive? How might “clouding” be forbidden?  Will airlines allow a maximum of five passengers to vape but not 50? Good luck with all of that.

Well, considering Chapman has not yet proven any evidence of actual harm, it's a bit premature to be talking about the problems that governments might have making policy, don't you think? But then, it is his default setting that there is no role for anything other than the state where his prejudices are concerned.

It is precisely why it is such a nuanced debate that it should be up to the individual property owner to decide these things, not the state. No-one has proven causative harm from passive vaping yet - nor, I suggest, will they ever - and Simon hasn't made any credible case for it either, yet he is leaping forward to talking about what the law might look like. I know the geriatric bore is getting on a bit and his remaining years are limited, but if you are regulating people's lives there really should be a bit more patience before reaching for the statute book.

Vaping advocates also claim that indoor vaping bans will cause former smokers who now vape to go outside, where exposure to sensory cues from exiled cigarette smokers will trigger their relapse back to smoking.  This would be all the fault of non-smokers selfishly putting their own health and comfort ahead of vapers and contributing to their exiled stigmatisation.

For someone who has spent a lifetime telling us all that health trumps absolutely everything else, and that smoking is the most dangerous threat to life in history, this is absolutely hilarious! Now, apparently, the comfort and wild conspiracy theories of a few non-smokers who actually give a fuck about vaping are more important than vapers relapsing to smoking. You seriously couldn't make this up.

He finishes the article with yet more classic Chapmanisms, such as this one straight from his anti-tobacco playbook.

If e-cigarette emissions were really benign, indoor vaping advocates should take courage and call for vaping to be also allowed in classrooms, crèches, operating theatres and neonatal wards. If they know it’s harmless after just a few years of accumulated often poor evidence, why hold back redressing these heinous attacks on freedoms?

This is a rehash of his "if smokers enjoy smoking so much why do they not encourage their children to smoke" fallacy.

Yes, e-cig emissions are definitely benign but Simon, we don't live in a fantasy world like you do. There is absolutely no reason why a teacher shouldn't be allowed to vape occasionally while his students study - they probably wouldn't even notice it and I'm sure many teachers already do. Likewise it's not a threat in any of those other places. New mothers who smoke or used to smoke should also be allowed to vape in neo-natal wards; you might have conflated smoking with vaping in your own mind but you're a dinosaur and many others don't.

But just thinking up as many {gasp} unimaginable places to vape as a scare tactic misses the point, as I expect he intended to do. As policy goes it's not worth vapers demanding those areas are vape-friendly because very few want to vape in them and we live in a real world where snake oil salesmen like Chapman have scared people into thinking vapour is dangerous. Again, why would anyone bother spending their time and resources demanding something which has very little benefit? Only an idiot would suggest they do.

With delightful irony, the 2016 Global Forum on Nicotine held in Warsaw, banned ENDS use by delegates in the conference rooms. The organisers’ plea that delegates in public areas “please be discreet and considerate. Use low powered devices as it helps to keep the amount of vapour created to a minimum” could not have been more revealing.

No Simon, I think you'll find the Polish government banned vaping. The fact that so many 'public health' advocates at the event cared not a jot that people were stealthing proves that such laws are pointless, that you are on the wrong side of history and also a bit of a global embarrassment.

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard tweeted over the weekend that NSW would not be allowing vaping where smoking was banned. This is prudent, responsible health policy that will be very welcomed by the 85% of adults who don’t smoke.

Most adults who don't smoke couldn't give a shit. This is like the dafties who claim that people who don't vote automatically would have voted against the party/cause that won. It is impossible that it could ever be true, so to claim 85% of non-smokers will welcome an ignorant policy from a retarded politician is just laughable. In actual fact, the vast majority of non-smokers don't care. If anything, a law like that would be welcomed by a small minority of anti-social snobs and prodnoses who like to interfere in everyone else's life. Fortunately, such people are probably less than 10% of any population.

I am pretty sure that the politician will be changing his tune before too long anyway, because Australia can't go on being a laughing stock amongst developed nations forever.

Of course, the crusty Aussie pensioner can carry on being a dedicated denier pumping out doubt-fostering propaganda as much as he likes alongside the Irish wobble-bottom bubble gum obsessive, the obese Californian alleged sex pest and the journeyman physiotherapist from Lincoln, but I don't see why the state should have to fall in with their tin foil millinery business.