The planned EU ban on higher strength e-cigarettes used by 2.5 million Europeans will increase tobacco smoking and lead to 105,000 extra deaths every year according to the respected economics consultancy, London Economics. The report shows that 210,000 fewer smokers a year will successfully quit smoking as a result of the ban with 9.6 million extra tobacco cigarettes being smoked every day
I cannot access, but it looks as if Matt Ridley is referring to this document:
Press release: 105,000 Smokers Will Be Killed Every Year By TPD Ban On E-Cigarettes
And you may wish to watch Matt Ridley's blog. Here is another great thing that he wrote about vaping:
Don't treat e-cigarettes as medicines; glamorise them
Is this the end of smoking? Not if the bureaucrats can help it.
In raising the unknown (but small) risks of e-cigarettes, the public health establishment is missing the point. What counts is harm reduction, not perfect utopian safety. Dont let the best be the enemy of the good, said Voltaire. The ban on strong e-cigarettes, the ones preferred by those trying to quit smoking, could prevent the saving of 105,000 European lives a year, according to modelling by London Economics.
Here is the full text - from Matt Ridley's blog:
Smoking (and European regulation) kills
Published on Tuesday, March 04, 2014, updated Tuesday, March 04, 2014
E-cigarettes deserve encouragement as a lesser evil
A great article indeed. Matt Ridley totally gets it!
Why can't all politicians be like that?
Yeah.... I know... I have a dream....
I don't think we can underestimate the threat felt by the pharmaceutical industry to the prospect of a low cost non-prescription answer to smoking harm reduction. I don't know if it's just me noticing it more since I started vaping, or if it's actually occurring and is measurable, but it seems as if Chantix has doubled their ad rate in the last three months or so. It seems as if I see a commercial for it every time I turn on the television! And more and more Big Tobacco is hedging their bets by investing in E-Cigs. Below is a quote from the abstract of an article published in 2009 in the Harm Reduction Journal. that addresses the fallacy of the all or nothing approach to quitting tobacco use, and it's cynical use by the anti tobacco voices:
"Few smokers realize that there is a third choice: non-combustion nicotine sources, such as smokeless tobacco, electronic cigarettes, or pharmaceutical nicotine, which eliminate almost all the risk while still allowing consumption of nicotine. Widespread dissemination of misleading health claims is used to prevent smokers from learning about this lifesaving option, and to discourage opinion leaders from telling smokers the truth. One common misleading claim is a risk-risk comparison that has not before been quantified: A smoker who would have eventually quit nicotine entirely, but learns the truth about low-risk alternatives, might switch to an alternative instead of quitting entirely, and thus might suffer a net increase in health risk. While this has mathematical face validity, a simple calculation of the trade off -- switching to lifelong low-risk nicotine use versus continuing to smoke until quitting -- shows that such net health costs are extremely unlikely and of trivial maximum magnitude. In particular, for the average smoker, smoking for just one more month before quitting causes greater health risk than switching to a low-risk nicotine source and never quitting it." (emphasis mine)
HRJ | Full text | Debunking the claim that abstinence is usually healthier for smokers than switching to a low-risk alternative, and other observations about anti-tobacco-harm-reduction arguments
And theres the Dunning-Kruger effect, whereby incompetent people are too incompetent to see incompetence. An EU official with a lower second-class degree from the University of Malta so badly mangled the results of 15 scientists on harm reduction by e-cigarettes that they all wrote to correct him.
Chantix is so much of a bigger treat than e-ciggs ever will be...
I mean just look at all the downsides of it, and the some of ppl i know went so i'll on them that they got depressed within 1 month of use, so they got back to smoking instead.
I love this quote, it's so damn true!
@FourWinds:
Well, Matt is not a vaper. So I doubt that he has read as much information on vaping and on the public health industry as we have.
Given that he has not read through all the information that we have read through, he is quite insightful.
Of course, WE know that the truth is as follows:
(let me quote you, with my own comments / additions in bold)
.....
1.
They are in the 'pay' of the pharmaceutical companies, and are working for them to suppress a direct opponent for their own gain.
2. They (say that they) hate tobacco smoking so much that any thing that looks like smoking must be suppressed, even if it cost lives (which they, of course, deny. Quit or die. To them, there is no alternative. So, if lives are lost, those people just did not quit. So they deserve to die)
.......
- The reason being, of course, that - see 1. - they are in the pay of the pharmaceutical industry. The entire public health industry is. So is the MHRA. That is why they are so intent on crushing any competition to their generous paymasters.
Edit:
As to the MHRA and Big Pharma, see here, for example:
http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...curious-mhra-comment-subsequent-deletion.html
I'm not sure that it's all about the money; I think some of them are so full of the 'pious crusade' that they no longer have the ability to function correctly when it comes to anything that 'looks' like smoking.