Barber uncut
Tuesday, July 28, 2020 at 15:38 Postscript to yesterday's piece about the New Nicotine Alliance webinar that featured two confirmed smokers and smoking cessation campaigner (and NNA vice-chair) Louise Ross.
One of the smokers, Liz Barber, says that the NNA cut her comments about Deborah Arnott, CEO of ASH, from the video posted on YouTube "possibly because I named her joint equal as my most loathed people ever, the other being a certain female Tory PM."
According to Liz:
I also made the point that ASH, having created and ENCOURAGED the antipathy towards smokers, have only themselves to blame that pub, cafe owners and non/anti-smokers make no distinction between smokers and vapers or cigarette smoke and e-cig vapour, which is why so few premises will allow them inside, which is why so many like myself simply see no point in even considering them.
I’ve made this point myself, and not just about ASH.
Every vaping advocate and public health professional who has ever fuelled the public’s fear of passive smoking must take responsibility for the many vaping bans that have been introduced in recent years.
Having created an almost pathological intolerance of tobacco smoke among some people, it was inevitable that vaping bans would follow because anything resembling tobacco smoke was bound to be an issue.
Vaping advocates will argue there is no justification on health grounds to ban vaping indoors but that’s not the point. As soon as smoking was banned indoors the die was cast.
When ‘smoke free’ pubs and cafes became the norm, non-smokers - even the more tolerant ones - suddenly became extremely sensitive to even a wisp of tobacco smoke, including the smell.
Then along came vapers. Having just got used to a ‘smoke free’ environment is it any wonder that many non-smokers don’t want it 'polluted' by vapour or the smells widely associated with vaping?
The idea that we should all work and socialise in a sterile, risk-free environment is nonsense of course, but who is responsible for this unhappy state of affairs? I’ll tell you - many of the activists now advocating the use of e-cigarettes as a quit smoking aid.
Unfortunately vaping advocates prefer not to be reminded of this inconvenient truth, let alone discuss it.
Update: NNA chairman Martin Cullip writes:
Sorry to burst your bubble, Simon, but absolutely nothing was cut from the webinar footage. Those comments by Liz came afterwards in a completely separate Zoom meeting post-webinar chat with me and our tech director and as such were not recorded because ... they were not part of the webinar.
Thanks, Martin. Happy to put the record straight.
Reader Comments (4)
True Simon and they know they are being persecuted because of the persecution of smokers without realising that the call of vaping saves lives falls on deaf ears while alienating smokers they hope to get on board.
The lies and propaganda promoting harm from ecigs is based on the same junk science and manipulation by activists from groups like ASH and their off shoot stooges, which the NNA appears to have become, so why do vaping advocates accept all the junk against smoking while recognising it as junk when aimed at vaping?
They want to be separate from us and think they can persuade smokerphobics that vaping is not smoking by buying the dangers of smoking while minimising and dismissing any alleged harm from vaping. The clue is in the description of those nasties - they don't see vape or smoke as different. They just see the devil mist coming from a person's mouth and then make a judgement on our lungs and character whether smoker or vaper.
If vaping advocates want to promote vaping to smokers and win their cause to be left alone, they need to stop the snobbery against smokers and our organisations and maybe try joining with groups like Forest who share the same common aim of stopping harassment against legitimate consumers and stop distinguishing between junk science when it suits them.
When they stop being puppets of ASH, smokers might begin to listen to what they say because at present smokers simply see them and vaping as a tool being used by ASH to beat us with.
If only they had joined us from the start. We might both now have gained some ground back and secured some rights to stop the bullying and lies and maybe even stop some of the worst aspects of anti smoker junk science - such as breath being visible due to vaping or smoking is not going to give anyone covid any more than invisible breath from a non infected person non vaping or non smoking person.
Most vapers get that bashing smoking is also bashing vaping but those who are involved with the tobacco control industry at organisational level are letting them down as well as us.
Sorry to burst your bubble, Simon, but absolutely nothing was cut from the webinar footage. Those comments by Liz came afterwards in a completely separate Zoom meeting post-webinar chat with me and our tech director and as such were not recorded because ... they were not part of the webinar.
There must be different kinds of smokers: addicts who would like to quit but are unable to do so without the help of stop smoking (SS-) services and those who choose and prefer to smoke and could quit anytime without the help of anyone. The first group is getting more or less extinct by now, SS-services have outlived their expiration date. But tobacco control is still in total denial of the existence of the last one. They call the last ones delusional.
Seems logical if you followed a policy for decades where you never ever reached out for smokers and listened only to those who came to you for help. I started vaping and did quit smoking after a couple of years dual use before it became a SS-gimmick. With the nowadays vaping advocates rambling about quitting smoking, I would have never ever given it a try. Vaping just became Tobacco Control 2.0.
Pressuring people into quitting does not work, once people quit the pressure is gone and they will relapse in doing what they prefer to do. This explains the huge fail rate of all SS-gimmicks and with that knowledge in mind the most important thing for me was that I took my decisions on my own terms without pressure from tobacco control; and in those days pro-vaping tobacco control still needed to be invented, so I was able to do so. But those days that you could choose without pressure from the “saving lives” choir are gone forever.
Clive Bates once claimed the best thing tobacco control could do about vaping is nothing. Unfortunately he didn't listen to his own words, and he initiated pro-vaping tobacco control, he initiated the NNA, later on INNCO... with only one goal in mind : turning vaping into a SS-aid and trying to include the vape-advocacy into the anti-smoke FCTC by convincing them to apply for a membership card. Thus unavoidably creating a huge divide between confirmed smokers and vapers, between regular vapers and anti-smoking vapers and thus closing the door to that second group of smokers who according to tobacco control does not even exist since they are all delusional about themselves.
Smokers like Liz Barber, vapers like myself, the views of Forest,… are all an inconvenient truth to them. We are a constant reminder that all their acquired wisdom about smoking (and vaping) at best only applies to a (constantly declining) part of smokers.
Concerning indoor vaping bans in the UK. This is indeed the direct result of convincing policy makers vaping is merely a SS-aid. The post-Brexit revision of the TPD will be the same medical route they used 10 years ago trying to implement a ban with. Medicalised vaping requires a ban of some sort. It will not be a blanket ban, but a softer ban.
In the EU the TPD revision will be taxation like any other legal consumer drug. That is the mean reason why in e.g. in France one can vape in any restaurant, bar, pub or even the waiting room of hospitals and in the UK vapers are put outside next to the garbage bins, and in order to make room for the vapers, smokers have to light up now in the sewer system.
Proportional limitations on a consumer product (EU) instead of methadone for smokers (UK), which keeps vapers entrapped in the stigmatised group without any escape. Very different views on both side of the channel. Therefore, EU-vaping advocates should be very careful in choosing for what they wish for. In the UK it will be too little too late already. First aim for a prohibition on smoking, and with the acquired experience assess what needs to be done to do the same thing with vaping.
Frankly I can't see the point in vaping, you've got one common plant chemical that everyone eats every day in smaller amounts and that's about it.
Mind you, I couldn't see the point in smoking at first, until ASH annoyed me so much about road tar which I knew was false, I began to wonder why they were trying to mislead me. Seeing just one antismoking poster too many can have that effect.