Never trust an anti-smoking campaigner
Tuesday, November 17, 2015 at 10:00 Michael Siegel is a professor of community health sciences at the Boston University School of Public Health.
He's considered one of the more thoughtful tobacco control campaigners to the extent that, a few years ago, people who should know better were hanging on his every word, reading and analysing his blog as if it was gospel.
It made me feel a bit nauseous, to be honest.
Anyway, via Juliette Tworsey, I've now discovered that Siegel appears to believe a ban on smoking in public housing is "a natural step to continue to spread the smoke-free protections that started with workplaces and then spread to restaurants and bars".
You can find the full quote here. According to the report, Siegel "praised" the proposal.
Then again, I'm sure if you speak to most tobacco control campaigners they would agree with him. Even if they thought it was a step too far they certainly wouldn't lift a finger to stop it happening.
That's why I have so little time for anti-smoking activists. Their default position is not to educate but to regulate, legislate and prohibit. Choice and personal responsibility are anathemas to them.
Amusingly, the hero worship that Dr Siegel experienced a few years ago is now targeted at every public health campaigner who advocates e-cigarettes.
While it may be great sport to watch the tobacco control industry divide on the subject of vaping, don't be fooled into thinking that public health advocates of e-cigs are now in the liberal pro-choice camp. They're not.
The choice they are offering is not to smoke or vape. It's to quit or vape. E-cigarettes are a means to an end.
Public health advocacy of vaping is just another tool in the long-running war on smokers. Indeed the enthusiasm with which some public health campaigners have embraced e-cigarettes borders on zealotry.
Whether they are with you or against you there's a fanatical glint in many a tobacco controller's eye that should make any normal person wince.
My guess is that many of the people currently advocating e-cigs as a healthier alternative to combustible cigarettes will turn eventually against all non-pharma nicotine devices.
They say you should never work with children or animals. I feel the same way about public health campaigners. Sooner or later it's going to end in tears.
Reader Comments (14)
*Big sigh* *Ducks* because anyone who doesn't share the enthusiasm for vaping - nor believes it is less harmful than tobacco - generally gets attacked so I'm expecting yet another kicking at a place like Twitter where I can't fight back because I'm no longer there.
But today I checked out at a local store a bottle of e liquid because I wanted to see what might be in it. It clearly isn't just hot water like a boiling kettle as vapers promote. The first thing I noticed was a huge TOXIC warning.
Then another warning about if splashed on the skin seek medical treatment. Then another that if ingested seek immediate medical treatment for POISON (in big letters).
Each to their own but there is no way I'm putting that shit into my lungs and I completely resent being forced onto something that I believe is far more harmful for me than organic tobacco with chemicals that are only there because the DoH approves them. http://www.ash.org.uk/files/documents/ASH_847.pdf
And yes, I totally agree. Smokerphobic anti smokers cannot be trusted and they will turn on vapers.
The ammo is already there.
Excellent post with solid observations! Clearly the tobacco control movement position on vaping is one of divide and conquer. After all they push bans on a false foundation. Now they are expanding the same bans. Smoking bans must be stopped and tobacco control contained.
Pat - those warning labels are annoying and misleading (and borderline, perhaps, illegal). The ecig Trade body ECITA has long called for their removal: http://ecita.org.uk/ecita-blog/how-toxic-e-liquid.
Pat, I'm not going to pillory you, but, seriously, those warnings mean absolutely nothing. If you think that makes eliquid more dangerous than - well, anything - then I have to think you're possibly being disingenuous. There's a long history of why they're their, but they ain't there because they're true.
Other than that, Simon's quite probably 99% right. No more needs to be said.
This highlights how frustrating the whole situation is and why vaping and smoking communities need to work together and exchange information.
Dr Siegel has held this view for many years. At least since the early whole town outside bans in Calabassas. Dublin and especially Belmont, all in California, were first suggested in 2006. He confirmed this view when Belmont went further and, in 2009, banned smoking in multistory dwellings.
There was a lot of discussion on 'The Rest of the Story' blog about the bans He seemed to think outside bans were undermining TC credibility rather than wrong and that he supported indoor bans in all but detached family homes. I am going from memory as the comments for some of these discussions seem to have gone.
Belmont is interesting because at the start of 2015 it raised the age for buying tobacco and vaping products from 18 to 21 and in May 2015 banned vaping in multistory dwellings.
E-cigarettes are the 21st century version of 'Smash'.
In the 1970s, Martians said goodbye to the old potato and laughed at us for our organic ways of peeling, boiling and mashing a natural product.
Now we have e-cigs, the 'better' version of smoking - I wonder if history will repeat itself ;)
I think Siegel and several others have, for many years, been positioning themselves as the official opposition to the global anti-smoking cartel while at the same time never actually leaving it. That way, global TC controls both sides of the debate. Although I'll grant that Forest does get a look in at times. At least in the UK and Ireland.
(I tend to agree with the smash analogy too)
Good analogy, Russell. Pretty much all the vapers I know admit quite openly to me that if they thought for one second that vaping might turn out to even remotely as damaging to health as tobacco has been “proven” to be, they’d return to real cigarettes in the blink of an eye. One vaper I spoke to recently said that his first vape of the day “made him physically wince because it was so vile,” but that he found he “got used to it” throughout the day so that by the evening he was able to vape quite happily and that “it was close enough to smoking to make not smoking bearable.” And he isn’t alone. Virtually all the vapers that I’ve ever met privately echo the same sentiments. Maybe there’s a sort of unspoken collusion going on amongst vapers which prevents them from admitting how much they miss smoking. An element of “putting a brave face on” and only being able to admit to non-vapers how much they miss real smoking, so that other vapers won’t see them as “letting the side down,” as it were.
So I sometimes wonder whether all those happy-clappy, “we love vaping but we hate smoking” types are, like Shakespeare’s lady, “protesting too loud.” A bit like ex-smokers are always batting on about how pleased they are that they don’t smoke any more, and about how nice it is not to smell of smoke any more, and how horrible they now realise the smell of smoke actually is, and how wonderful they feel now that they’ve given up etc etc etc. After a while one has to wonder: Exactly who are they really trying to convince – smokers or, errr, themselves?
Oh, and just for the information of any vapers out there reading this, a colleague of mine who gave up smoking by using e-cigarettes told me that e-cigarettes were, without a shadow of a doubt, 100 times harder to give up than the real thing. So that’s something to put away in the back of your mind for the inevitable day when the antis turn their attentions to you, and force you into giving up your vaping, just like they coerced you into giving up your cigarettes. Just a thought ...
It made me nauseous too Simon, so much so that I forgot to give a h/t to Audrey Silk for posting the original quote (and linked article) on her NYC Clash page on Facebook.
..and the fact that it's all based on a lie makes it all the more troubling.
I read Dr. Siegel's blog on a regular basis and find it interesting. He is obviously pro-vape, but I did not realize the extent of his anti-cigarette views. It definitely gives me a new filter when reading his views. Next point, the warnings on e-liquids are there specifically for the nicotine, which is classed as a poison, and of course is present in natural tobacco. Last point, I am one of those happy-clappy vapers; and I can assure you that I am not trying to convince myself about anything. I completely prefer my vape over cigarettes. Just passed two years since I switched after 30 years of enjoying cigarettes. I do not hate smokers though I prefer to vape away from them. I do fell quite strongly that the ever increasing attack against smokers has gotten totally out of hand. Thanks for letting me vent.
I don't necessarily believe it David form but as I am often told by anti smokers about tobacco : quote :"you must be stupid to keep on smoking when it clearly says on the packet that smoking kills." What's good for the goose is good for the gander. The CIG pack warnings have a long and dishonest history too but when the antismoker industry turns on vapers it will use exactly the same tactics including, I suspect, the accusation that vapers "must be stupid because it clearly says on ecig liquid that it's poisonous" . That's where I'm coming from, why I posted the remark and as a warning about what vapers can expect in future and why we the vaper meme should be : I stand with smokers" and not "ecigs save lives."
Russell. I disagree about smash I still prefer the real thing. Vaping and smoking is subjective. I could never agree vaping is better, of course, but I expect vapers, naturally, to disagree
Lots of mistakes in writing the above comments. I was not drunk, honest, but found it hard to write on my tablet thingy at lunchtime outside in the wind. Such is a smoker's life these days. It looked fine when I posted it but now inside with eyes not watering from the cold, I can see some bloopers. We all here are an intelligent lot so I guess you get my drift.
Why is it so hard for people primarily ex smokers to understand that the anti-smoker advocacy exists as a church and that no matter what you do, and where you go they will always think of your choices as sinful. Divisions are their mainstay, so those who believe themselves better than smokers, are only harming themselves and reducing the potentials their voice might be heard by a much larger majority, who are also singing along with their own comforts.
Discussions of the new anti-smoker/vapper laws currently being formulated at the American FDA. [By anti-smoker advocates no less.] probably a lot off topic, but there is something to learn, that is dual purpose here.
What is really wrong with this law?
We learned the lessons to be learned in 1930s Germany. At the end of the war people were pretending to smoke, as a single finger salute to that type of "protective" authority.
Lest we forget....
It's a law that forces people to adhere to their deepest fears or be punished for their refusal to kneel. Of no use and providing no reductions of any effect worthy of being avoided, other than promoting fear, this law has not real purpose. It is a demand for adherence to rule by law, in place of rule of law. By every legal definition, it is an unconstitutional law in it's passing by lawmakers, it becomes an anti-constitutional law. It is just another of many attempts by the government to instill it's own authority, paired with fear of that authority. Giving the criminal element another leg up, by the effects of normalizing those fears among innocent people.
There is one constant and one fear being repeated by the Public Health community and it's diocese. The fear that smoking might become normalized again. That we might see the error of our ways and take a step away from the tortures and inconsistencies of what is politically correct, while morally incorrect. Can any of you imagine what would follow, when seeing people peacefully intermingling in society smoking without fear of retributions or the anger that is expected by our charity groups, in defense from those around us?
You see it when you travel and probably feel uncomfortable, by the sight of people getting along. Happily enjoying their lives, with a sense of confidence and what could almost be seen today as fearlessness. A complete stranger greets you when walking down the street and many actually strike up a conversation while waiting for a bus, with no sense of fear, of what that other person might be after, or in what ways they might want to do you harm. For those of us who are old enough, it is what should be normal and yet? A police officer walks down the street and is patted on the back constantly, or even punched on the shoulder, as a greeting, of a member of a community, and not an assault of someone who is not. A street merchant throws him an apple yelling "think fast". The gesture isn't seen by that officer, as cause for retaliation, with a look of anger or suspicion, he is rewarded with a smile and "thank you" is the appropriate response for the apple tossed his way.
Those who fear the re-normalization of smoking, only fear that hap-instance for one reason. Because what they are doing and saying on a daily basis today, would become not normal again. Their hatred would be distinguished and their divisions would become despised. Casting a shadow of adversity where it really belongs. If, and only if, we could find a way back to where we belong. Together as one strong community confident in our trust and defense of one another. Back to a time where the media groups who bring us our news and the politicians who spend our money to buy it, should be convicted for what they have done.