E-cig gateway claim "unfounded", first official figures reveal
Tuesday, November 25, 2014 at 12:48 BBC News is reporting that:
The concern electronic cigarettes are a gateway to smoking might be unfounded, the first official UK figures suggest.
See: E-cigarette 'lure' fears might be unfounded (BBC News)
Inevitably there's a rider:
Most of the figures from the ONS are for the year 2013, so it is possible that the picture is still changing.
Nevertheless the stats support those who say there's no evidence vaping leads to smoking.
In contrast those public health campaigners who have stoked up fears, warning of an apocalyptic future in which hundreds of thousands of non-smokers (including children) use e-cigarettes as a gateway to smoking – well, they're looking pretty stupid today.
The question though is this:
How many more "unfounded" claims will do the rounds before people finally recognise the truth about the anti-smoking industry?
Nothing tobacco control campaigners say should be taken seriously until it is throughly investigated with proper research and genuine statistics (not estimates and calculations).
As one or two people commented here last week, perhaps e-cigarettes will generate the cracks that will see the edifice of public health collapse in a heap, buried beneath its own hubris.
I'm not holding my breath though.
Reader Comments (5)
I was talking to someone today about ecigs. I asked if she had tried them. She told me she had but only for four hours each day because she promised her mum that she wouldn't use them too much because her mum believed they were even more harmful than smoking.
"They are untried and untested, unregulated and I hear there are 45 different chemicals in them so to be on the safe side, I gave them up."
Looks like at grass roots level, the rumour and scaremongering mill has already been working in the background. As for figures and stats, well, they can mean anything that those who commission them want them to say.
As a smoker, I don't believe a word of any of it. If I did, I'd be dead by now as a historic former child and now granny smoker. They said I'd be unable to climb a flight of stairs by the time I reached 30 if I didn't quit aged 27 - that's almost 30 years ago and I'm still climbing stairs - or running when I have to.
...and in other news, tomorrow, night will follow day.
The trouble is that if you're Joe Public hearing the odd snippet now and again about tobacco control it takes an awful long time for it to register that you wouldn't want, as it were, to buy a second hand car from them.
I went out for a very pleasant meal last night. The food was excellent, the beer superb (of course), we had a '30% off' voucher and one of our number sat, quite happily, with an e-cigarette. It certainly didn't bother any of us, and, from what I observed, no one else either!
Our 'vaper' is 3 weeks into vaping after many, many years of cigarette smoking and has actually found it to be the best way to cease the tobacco habit-actual living proof that e-cigs are playing an important role in everyday life! Funnily enough, the pub we ate in had plenty of room whereby smokers could quite easily have a section to themselves and the manager, when asked, was quite willing to do such but as we all know, this ridiculous law forbids that smokers should enjoy any comfort! And that is why Alan Auld needs your support ( http://www.justice4smokers.co.uk/?page_id=305 ) as he takes this law on head first as he fights for the rights of ALL smokers/vapers/businesses to enjoy CHOICE. Always remember that pubs best customers (68%of them) were the smokers! probably why 14,000 businesses have now closed!
Joyce makes a good point but it does not excuse the mainstream media. Editors ought by now to be aware of how disingenuous the output from the public health industry is, but they keep pushing it anyway.
This is how I feel about it Phil. If vapers really cared whether smokers could smoke in comfort or not then they wouldn't sit inside sneering at the stigmatised cousins out in the cold while they enjoy being made welcome at our expense.
With us or against us. It doesn't matter one jot to us whether people vape inside. It matters a lot that we are discriminated against and we can't enjoy public places like everyone else even though we've paid far more in tax for that right than smokerphobic bullies and thugs who stand with vapers in hope they finish us off.