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.