That GFN vaping policy – the mystery deepens
Wednesday, May 11, 2016 at 12:40 Quick update to an earlier post about the vaping policy at next month's Global Forum on Nicotine.
To recap, the organisers have banned vaping in all plenary and parallel sessions (ie most of the conference) because last year "non-vaping delegates" at this self-styled "vaper-friendly" event complained that they felt "trapped" by the "fog bank" of vapour.
You couldn't make it up.
Vapingpoint Liz mentioned it on her blog and received the following comments from people who were actually there.
Liam Bryan (Vapers In Power) wrote:
I was there last year, Liz, I obviously wasn't in all the sessions (some run concurrently) but in all the rooms I was in there was no "fog bank". The vapers, myself included, were only occasionally vaping and most of us had chosen older devices which don't produce much vapour anyway. I had my mini nautilus for the conference events for instance. I think whoever complained would have felt "trapped" by any amount of visible exhale!
Peter Stigaard wrote:
I was in Warsaw last year too and I also didn't witness banks of fog or clouds of vapours. People were taking quiet puffs during the sessions/plenaries and during breaks people had a vape in the conference lobby. Making a blanket ban on vaping will only result in the consumers not turning up for the GFN this year, I'm sad to say.
Intriguingly David Dorn (Vaper Trails TV) added:
It wasn't "friends" who complained ...
So if it wasn't 'pro-vaping' advocates who complained, who was it and why have the organisers rolled over to meet their demands when eye witness reports claim there was no "fog bank" of vapour.
Who exactly is running this conference and why have they imposed a policy on vaping that can only undermine the argument that vaping should be allowed in pubs and other enclosed public places.
Meanwhile Liz (a vaper) has posted a further piece about GFN, The Global Nicotine Forum – an inconvenient truth.
Liz notes that the "whole conference" is really about stopping people smoking:
The only talk that would interest ME is on the last day. 'Are vaping advocates throwing smokers under the bus by making alliances with public health?'.
In my cynical way, I would assume that after a whole conference of all sorts of academics and public health employees offering their nuggets to a crowd of like-minded people, the answer will be "no".
Oh Liz, that is cynical.
You're absolutely right, though. The answer will undoubtedly be a loud and indignant 'NO!' and afterwards everyone will skip off to the bar, swathed in a warm glow, happy to have convinced themselves (if no-one else) that they are not throwing smokers under a bus.
Update: On the subject of a "fog bank" at GFN15 my colleague Rob Lyons, who was there representing Action on Consumer Choice, tells me:
"I wasn't aware of one, no. I was sat in the middle most of the time so there might have been a few sub-ohmers sat at the back puffing away more voluminously. But it certainly didn't affect the plenary room as a whole nor the workshop room I was in."
That new vaping policy is beginning to look, at best, ridiculous. At worst ... I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.
Reader Comments (7)
I don't remember fog from smoke in pubs. As I recall, there was excellent ventilation. Friends didn't complain about smoke either. This is still the case in Prague where the only way to tell if smoking is allowed in bars is to see ashtrays on tables. No stink and no fog.
They are using the exact same template to get at vapers as they did to smokers. Public health and the smokerphobic anti smoker industry are not their friends and never will be.
I've been there the last two years and don't remember a fog bank (though I have seen vapers make a nuisance of themselves in other venues occasionally).
However, I do remember standing at the back at one session when I saw Deborah Arnott get out of her chair and move elsewhere after the person next to her exhaled a very small amount of vaper. It was such an extreme reaction that I remember pointing it out to Dick Puddlecote who was stood next to me.
Nonsmokers are simply people that do not smoke. There are nonsmokers that like the aroma of tobacco smoke and there are plenty more that are not fussed one way or the other. Antismokers, on the other hand, are a different mentality altogether. Antismokers hate [tobacco] smoke/smoking/smokers. There’s even a name that’s been given to this hatred of smoke - “misocapnist”. Even with the antismoking barrage of the last 30 years, antismokers are still a minority. So, to get their way with legislators they typically hijack the entire nonsmokers group, pretending to speak for all nonsmokers. Most non-smokers do not have hyper-reactive, inordinate reactions to wisps of smoke. There is every reason to believe that this disproportionate “sensitivity” to smoke is neurotic: It is a projection of a troubled mental state. It also helps to explain why the history of anti-smoking is littered with wild exaggerations, inflammatory lies, and bigotry. The finger-wagging anti-smokers that promote themselves as “moral superiors” are moral fakes.
It’s antismokers that find tobacco smoke as “obnoxious”…. that it “stinks”. It’s antismokers’ subjective experience that they then depict as “objective”. And then follows the “filthy”, “disgusting”, “dirty” barrage. Antismokers’ hyper-reactivity to tobacco smoke is inordinate, disproportionate; many react to even a whiff of smoke as if they’re being led to the gallows. Even their vocabulary in describing smoke is terribly exaggerated – they have to negotiate “walls” or “tunnels” or “clouds” of smoke; where smoking occurs is always “smoke filled”; the neighbor down the hallway who smokes is always a “heavy” smoker. Just spend a little time with a rabid antismoker and it becomes quickly apparent that they can’t be reacting to the physical properties of smoke. They seem to be troubled minds projecting their significant inner turmoil (fear/hate) onto smoke.
State-sponsored inflammatory propaganda concerning tobacco smoke promotes irrational belief, fear and hatred on a mass scale. The fear-mongering has produced a nocebo effect (e.g., anxiety disorder, hypochondria, somatization) in the gullible. Here’s a short but useful video on the nocebo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2hO4_UEe-4&feature=youtu.be&a
Exaggeration is the norm for antismokers. I’ve seen antismokers liken being exposed to wisps of tobacco smoke – even outdoors – as “like” being next to a tyre set alight or a bushfire. Wisps of tobacco smoke are nothing like a tyre burning or a bushfire. Antismokers’ perception is warped. It’s out by orders of magnitude.
How did this antismoking madness get so far along? A critical part has been pandering to it…. accommodating it. “Oh, I hate tobacco smoke. Something must be done”. Instead of replying with a “so what”, there has been a bending over backwards to accommodate these folk with what Chapman refers to as “exquisite sensitivities”.
Antismoking hyper-sensitivity/reactivity is coming from a primitive part of mind where reason and sensibility are alien. It’s a part of mind where fear, hate, and dictatorial tendencies reign. Consider Karl Popper, an influential figure in the philosophy of science. There’s a story of his antismoking antics in the comments section here:
https://cfrankdavis.wordpress.com/2015/12/15/tobacco-controls-manichaean-universe/#comment-123748
It came as somewhat of a shock that Popper, author of “The Open Society and Its Enemies”, defender of rationality, the hypothetico-deductive system, and falsifiability, was prone, like quite a few, to a petty dictator mentality….. to sink into a primitive part of mind where reason and sensibility are alien and where [negative] emotion reigns.
Karl Popper was a rabid antismoking nut case…. a misocapnist. Richard Dawkins recounts an occasion where Popper demanded that no-one smoke at a particular function, not even outside because he would still be able to smell the smoke on them. And this was in the 1970s(?), before the current antismoking hysteria hit:
“Strewn around the table were notepads and pencils, bottles of mineral water, sweets (ugh) and cigarettes galore. These last were more than usually unfortunate because Karl Popper had a famous distaste for cigarette smoke. On one occasion at a different conference he had risen from the floor to make a special request that nobody should be allowed to smoke……. it was a symptom of the regard in which the great philosopher was held that the chairman acceded to his request. Or almost. What he said was: ‘In deference to Sir Karl and out of respect for him, please would any delegate that wishes to smoke leave the hall and smoke outside’. Sir Karl rose again: ‘No, zat would not be good enough. When zey come back in, I can smell it on zeir bress’.
So you can imagine the consternation raised by the tobacco largesse scattered over the conference table in out opulent Schloss. Every time the hand of a smoker strayed tablewards, a flunkey would come bustling over to clutch a sleeve and whisper, ‘No please, not to smoke, Sir Karl cannot stand it…. bitte schoen.” (p.86)
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=gR0rCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA86&lpg=PA86&dq=%22In+deference+to+Sir+Karl+and+out+of+respect+for+him%22&source=bl&ots=icHSFvgtvp&sig=zsYpzMrJlilvSFMiVqZAzfd04xI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiKtrbk5MPKAhXDIKYKHcnIApsQ6AEIGzAA#v=onepage&q=%22In%20deference%20to%20Sir%20Karl%20and%20out%20of%20respect%20for%20him%22&f=false
How would Popper defend his dictatorial stance? Had he ever considered an abnormality in the psychology of his misocapny? What possesses a person to demand in a public setting that because he/she doesn’t like “X” that “X” should therefore be forbidden? Popper had a distaste for tobacco smoke so no-one should be permitted to smoke – indoors or out. And rather than being met with a “Karl, get a grip. Put some of your philosophy into practice”, his neuroses and megalomania were appeased/accommodated, worse, in deference to his considerable work on protecting against human biases in the quest for knowledge. What!!!
More on the antismoking mentality.
Consider blogs/comments boards. No matter what the issue raised in a tobacco-related thread – e.g., junk science, tortured statistics, extortionate taxes, a bigotry bandwagon, the bully State – there’s typically a handful of sanctimonious antismoking plops that make an appearance with the standard “I hate smoke”, “smokers are so selfish”, “why should I, a superior being, have to put up with someone smoking within a 100 yards of me?”, “Hold your breath everyone; a whiff of tobacco smoke and we’ll all die”, etc, etc. Antismoking nitwits don’t comprehend issues: They don’t do “thinking”. All you can expect from misocapnists/capnophobes is an enthusiastic parroting of some of the lyrics from the antismoking anthem, Je Suis Un Branleur Anti-Tabac Pompeuse. That’s it; there ain’t no more. That’s the entire [brainwashed] antismoking repertoire.
I was there and it was a European public health leader who complained. Obviously he was under the impression that you could get cancer from the vapor and was uncomfortable with it.
Since the GFN people are trying to bring people from all sides together, it makes sense to be respectful of unformed people and ask people to vape outside of confined areas.
Not worth multiple blog posts about it.
You can't get cancer just from standing near a smoker either. Lest we forget, SHS is a scam and the basis for creating smokerphopbia towards vapers too.
Not one person has died from SHS - not one, however much that upsets vapers who need to scaremonger to push their product.
Yes, we moved too, to be polite and considerate. They just kept asking us to move more and more and more until we were shafted out and excluded completely.
If you can't see which way public health is pushing vapers then we can. It is the same template. Public health smokerphobics are never satisfied how ever much you move away. They'll just follow you so they can complain about having to be near you - at least that's what they did with us.
Keep on digging.