Another battle for smokers and vapers to fight
Monday, January 26, 2015 at 9:32 Some interesting comments on my previous post.
Joe Jackson takes me to task (as he often does!) for suggesting the common battleground for smokers and vapers is freedom of choice. In Joe's opinion it should be junk science and the scaremongering that accompanies it.
Point taken, Joe, as always. The primary purpose of my post was to stress the need for unity between smokers and vapers. I highlighted freedom of choice as the issue we should fight on but, I agree, exaggerated or baseless health scares is another.
As it happens I addressed this in an earlier post about New Orleans (The elephant in the room) when I criticised (some) vapers for swallowing all the propaganda about smoking and secondhand smoke while accusing the same public health campaigners of "lying" about e-cigarettes.
I wrote:
The claim that 11,000 non-smokers died each year from secondhand smoke in pre-ban Britain was based on 'estimates' and 'calculations'. It had no basis in fact. Reports that smoking bans reduce heart attacks are invariably shown to be false.
The slogan "quit or die" is clearly a lie. Smokers may be playing Russian roulette with their health but a great many live long and healthy lives. Even the genuine risks of smoking (self-evident to most people for decades) have been exaggerated to the point where smokers largely ignore warnings about impotence, blindness, grotesquely rotten teeth and amputations because the number of smokers who experience those outcomes is, mercifully, very small.
What I find curious is this. While many vapers seem happy to believe what tobacco control tells them about the impact of smoking, when it comes to electronic cigarettes the public health industry is suddenly "lying".
Today former Sunday Telegraph editor Dominic Lawson has written an excellent article in the Daily Mail (Why persecuting smokers will cost us all more in the long run).
Ironically the director of ASH at that time would have been Clive Bates, now a leading e-cig campaigner and one of the loudest voices when it comes to criticising public health campaigners for scaremongering about electronic cigarettes!!
Sadly it suits some e-cig advocates to peddle some of the hyperbole and myths about smoking and secondhand smoke. Tactically it's understandable but knowing what they know about some public health 'experts' it's also reprehensible.
PS. Amused to see that Prof John Britton and Prof Robert West, two of the leading e-cig advocates within the public health industry, are also strong advocates of plain packaging.
I quite like Robert West. Nevertheless, after enduring 24 hours of relentless propaganda from the tobacco control industry on Thursday, I found it remarkable he should complain when the Today programme interviewed Axel Gietz of Imperial Tobacco on Friday.
How dare the tobacco companies defend their brands on national radio!
On the Jeremy Vine Show on Radio 2 Britton had his usual pop at me and Forest, suggesting that because Forest accepts donations from tobacco companies I was representing the tobacco industry.
Next time I will point out that as a recipient of public money he must be representing Big Government.
That's the trouble with anti-smoking campaigners. They'll only be happy when all opposition is silenced. Dick Puddlecote has more here.
Reader Comments (8)
"Next time I will point out that as a recipient of public money he must be representing Big Government."
Not forgetting the 'largesse' enjoyed by all Tobacco Control enthusiasts at their Pharmaceutical funded conferences and in their university departments. What pleasures would they forego if they failed to provide support for NRT?
and this is how tobacco control buys the support of journalists and the media http://www.wctoh.org/media/j2j
Simon, I'm pretty depressed by the news from New Orleans, so maybe I'm less inclined than usual to bite my tongue. Here goes: yes, it was clear that the main point of your post was that smokers and vapers should unite rather than fight. But I thought it was equally clear that my response addressed the bigger picture, of the utility of 'freedom of choice' arguments. I still say that trying to fight the never-ending persecution of smokers - and/or vapers - with 'freedom of choice' arguments is futile. It hasn't worked, and it won't work. And yet, in a post a while back, you said that Forest's 'USP' (Unique Selling Point) is that you are promoting freedom of choice. Did anyone else out there get the sinking feeling that I got? Silly me, I thought your USP was that you were fighting for smokers.
I'm really saddened by this generalisation about vapers, we are no more an homogeneous group of people than smokers are. Both smokers and vapers are portrayed by the media, as filthy addicts, and people who are inconsiderate of others, or just as "bad" and even evil people. We are not.
For the most part we are just ordinary people who have been caught up in a war all about money and ideology, simply because we chose to use a legal product.
The majority of the people in the world have been brainwashed into believing the lies put out by those in "tobacco control" , and remain that way, particularly if they are non-smokers and non-vapers, because they have no reason to question anything.
Many smokers and vapers also have been brainwashed into believing the lies, which can lead to a self hatred that is far more toxic than anything in tobacco.
Personally I think that with the advent of vaping, many of the tobacco control lies are being exposed, which is good for smokers as well as vapers, and this is what will eventually bring about change. We need to expose the corruption at the heart of tobacco control, and show how it has never been about health, and is and always was, about the money. This current war on vapers is one avenue where this can happen.
Like it or not, most non-smokers, (and they are the majority by far in my country), do not care about freedom of choice for those that they perceive as addicts or bad people. They don't believe that smoking bans are an erosion of "their" rights, as they simply don't impact them in any way that is negative. While I think we should all support the rights and freedoms of all people, this is not the reality of the world we live in.
I'm a former smoker, and now vaper, I do not support smoking bans, and I believe that people should have the choice of whether they want to smoke, vape, or do anything that does not harm others, (I don't believe the lies about SHS or the ridiculous junk science of THS), I am not alone, there are many vapers just like me.
Vapers are not your enemy, we are simply smokers, (the vast majority of vapers are former smokers), that have chosen a safer alternative. We didn't choose to be the target of the ANTZ , they chose us.
@ Pat Nurse
That's a very interesting find, Pat. It illustrates yet another way in which TC seek to shape the argument. An all expenses paid (probably 5 star) jolly to an exotic location is quite a nice little bribe to attract journalists leaning towards anti-smokerism, followed by three days of intensive indoctrination. No wonder the press is so anti-smoking. You can achieve much when you have limitless funds to throw around.
Liberty is the cause but since the non-smokers' liberty isn't being directly threatened and they believe that second hand smoke poses a great harm to others they ignore the threat to liberties.
Exposing the antismoking lies about the health risks of second hand smoke (as well as the other fabrications, manipulations, and exaggerations of data) is imperative. Only when the public (smokers and non-smokers) can see the manipulation and deception will they be able to recognize that their liberty is at peril too.
"Exposing the antismoking lies about the health risks of second hand smoke (as well as the other fabrications, manipulations, and exaggerations of data) is imperative. Only when the public (smokers and non-smokers) can see the manipulation and deception will they be able to recognize that their liberty is at peril too." Right 100%
I agree 100%. The junk science needs to be exposed, as does the funding, scheming, lying, chicanery etc of the Tobacco Control industry. Arguing about freedom of choice simply results in "There is no right to smoke" and what can you do about that?
Pre-smoking ban, I even saw one Labourite on the BBC say, "Smokers don't have rights." Not, "smokers don't have a right to smoke" but "smokers don't have rights." That rather appalling statement (even mass murderers, genocidal maniacs and serial paedophiles have rights!) was of course completely ignored by the Beeboid questioning her. If that is the level of ignorance we are dealing with, then arguing about freedoms will just lead to a hiding to nothing.
The junk science is key and always has been.