16 Sep 14: Memo to public health grandees: vaping, vapers and you (by Clive Bates)

[Sirius]

I'm looking now at the CDC's numbers on national cigarette consumption (here's the link if anyone wants to refer to it: Consumption of Cigarettes and Combustible Tobacco — United States, 2000–2011 ), and here's what I see: their most recent data are from 2011, which is a few years after e-cigs first became widely available. In the five-year period between 2007-2011, total cigarette consumption went down by 25.5 percent. In the previous five-year period, it went down by 11.3 percent. In other words, in the first half-decade after large numbers of people started vaping, the rate of decrease in cigarette consumption more than doubled.

It must be noted, obviously, that correlation is not causation, and there surely are other factors that have contributed to this phenomenon. But it is difficult to argue in the face of those numbers that vaping hasn't been a major driver in the decrease in cigarette sales, and it's absolutely impossible to argue that it's causing the rate of cigarette consumption to stagnate or increase.

It will be interesting to see what happens when the 2012-13 numbers become available, for as we well know, the number of vapers and the size of the vaping market have increased by orders of magnitude since 2011. So, when the CDC's own numbers show (as they almost certainly will) that cigarette consumption continues to decrease at a rate inversely proportional to the uptake in e-cig use, I really don't see how the ANTZ are going to have a leg left on which to stand. Their core arguments ("discourages quitting," "re-normalizes smoking behavior," and all the rest) will have been utterly decimated, even more so than they already are, by the government's own statistics.

Nate..Those certainly are good numbers and yes it will be interesting to see the 2012-13 ones. Progressively the evidence is leaning in our favor and that has me optimistic. It sure would be nice to see ANTZ fall on their faces though. Is that evil of me?

 

[Nate760]

Nate..Those certainly are good numbers and yes it will be interesting to see the 2012-13 ones. Progressively the evidence is leaning in our favor and that has me optimistic. It sure would be nice to see ANTZ fall on their faces though. Is that evil of me?

I would submit that it's significantly less evil than orchestrating a junk science-based, profit-motivated smear campaign that results in tens of thousands of needless deaths.

 

[Sirius]

@Nate

Agreed!

 

[Anjaffm]

I would submit that it's significantly less evil than orchestrating a junk science-based, profit-motivated smear campaign that results in tens of thousands of needless deaths.

Bingo!

 

[AndriaD]

Was that really your fault? Or was it the fault of those who demonized and marginalized smokers? In a big huge campaign of "social engineering" that is more than reminiscient of the past of several European countries? see here: Rampant Antismoking Signifies Grave Danger
They deliberately victimized you. And then they brainwashed you into blaming the victim. Stockholm Syndrome on a great scale.

Do remember please that those self-same people are now attempting to do the same with vapers. With those who have done what they demanded: most of us have quit smoking. But it is not enough for them. They hunger for victims. Because they feed on the blood (money) of their victims. But this time, the (now ex-) smokers have learned. And we see them for what they are. Parasites. Greedy. And evil. (see picture below)
(Anybody who finds my stance a little tough, please read Clive Bates' document again)

And big huge CONGRATULATIONS! Well done!

Thanks. I suppose it's true that they did victimize me, marginalize me, etc... and I was pretty ...... off about it. But at the same time, I'd been a smoker for just 10 yrs when I was diagnosed as having developed adult-onset asthma. I suppose smoking may have played some role in that, but more than that is my own heredity -- my father had asthma, which meant I had a 1 in 4 chance of having it myself. And moving to the Detroit environs played a huge role, I'm sure -- the air up there, in the industrial areas, is far more toxic than anything that comes from a cigarette. The doc told me I'd have to quit smoking, to which I just laughed -- as if that was really possible! I'd already tried and failed once to quit. And he said that he might have to eliminate me as a patient, to which I replied, well then I'd just get another doctor. Idiot. Like "quit smoking" is something they can say, like snapping their fingers, and it just HAPPENS! But I did in fact struggle with my asthma and my smoking for so long, I knew that at some point I would either die of it, or I'd have to quit. When e-cigs came along, it was an unexpected gift, and as I told my husband, I'd have to be a pure fool to pass up a chance like this!

So if they think they're getting MY APVs, rebuildables, and mech, they seriously have another think coming. From my cold dead fingers... And I don't think you're being too rough on them at all -- they bloody well deserve it and more, moralistic simpleton a-holes!

Andria

 

[NorthOfAtlanta]

I'm looking now at the CDC's numbers on national cigarette consumption (here's the link if anyone wants to refer to it: Consumption of Cigarettes and Combustible Tobacco — United States, 2000–2011 ), and here's what I see: their most recent data are from 2011, which is a few years after e-cigs first became widely available. In the five-year period between 2007-2011, total cigarette consumption went down by 25.5 percent. In the previous five-year period, it went down by 11.3 percent. In other words, in the first half-decade after large numbers of people started vaping, the rate of decrease in cigarette consumption more than doubled.

It must be noted, obviously, that correlation is not causation, and there surely are other factors that have contributed to this phenomenon. But it is difficult to argue in the face of those numbers that vaping hasn't been a major driver in the decrease in cigarette sales, and it's absolutely impossible to argue that it's causing the rate of cigarette consumption to stagnate or increase.

It will be interesting to see what happens when the 2012-13 numbers become available, for as we well know, the number of vapers and the size of the vaping market have increased by orders of magnitude since 2011. So, when the CDC's own numbers show (as they almost certainly will) that cigarette consumption continues to decrease at a rate inversely proportional to the uptake in e-cig use, I really don't see how the ANTZ are going to have a leg left on which to stand. Their core arguments ("discourages quitting," "re-normalizes smoking behavior," and all the rest) will have been utterly decimated, even more so than they already are, by the government's own statistics.

Anyone else wonder why those figures aren't already out, the major cigarette companies have already released their 2nd quarter sales, ~ 4% under last year. Maybe CDCs are going to show that much or more and they can't admit that or the FDA will have a hard time pushing the deeming regulations through.

It would be hard to convince congress and the non-smokers that they are a good idea if the statistics are showing a massive decline in smoking.

 

[DC2]

Anyone else wonder why those figures aren't already out, the major cigarette companies have already released their 2nd quarter sales, ~ 4% under last year. Maybe CDCs are going to show that much or more and they can't admit that or the FDA will have a hard time pushing the deeming regulations through.

It would be hard to convince congress and the non-smokers that they are a good idea if the statistics are showing a massive decline in smoking.

They're just going to take credit for it, and use it show how well THEIR approach is working.
And then they'll just repeat their mantra that electronic cigarettes are threatening all the strides they have made.

Hopefully there will come a time when the public will start to see through their lies.
But, sadly, I don't think we are even close to that time yet.

 

[Anjaffm]

Hopefully there will come a time when the public will start to see through their lies.
But, sadly, I don't think we are even close to that time yet.

Oh, just let them bleat "nicotine makes you go blind!" a few more times
Or come up with the next "study" that will then probably claim that using nicotine gives you hairy palms.

They are getting more ridiculous by the minute. And yes, non-smokers and non-vapers are also realizing that this stuff is just plain silly.

Professor John Ashton vs Clive Bates



And please remember that Clive Bates is not a "man on the street" vaper. He is not a vaper at all. And he has never smoked. Clive Bates is the former director of ASH UK (Action on Smoking and Health).

 

[Nate760]

They're just going to take credit for it, and use it show how well THEIR approach is working.

Which would be an implicit admission that e-cigs are not creating more smokers, or inhibiting smokers from quitting.

And then they'll just repeat their mantra that electronic cigarettes are threatening all the strides they have made.

They can repeat it all they want. Eventually they're going to be called to account for the fact that nearly a decade of hard statistical data show their arguments to be the opposite of the truth. They live in a house of cards, and the wind is picking up.

Edit: It's probably not an accident that the ANTZ tend to focus solely on the (supposed) number of smokers, rather than on the amount of cigarettes actually being consumed. They like to prattle on about how there are 40 million smokers in the US, while rarely (if ever) mentioning facts like 1) the average smoker smokes 40% fewer cigarettes than they did a decade ago, and 2) 142.8 billion fewer cigarettes were smoked in 2011 than in 2000. That's how twisted this situation is: these people are ignoring or glossing over facts for which they should be trying to take credit, because if they make it sound like too much progress is being made, that might imperil their funding levels.

 

[NorthOfAtlanta]

They're just going to take credit for it, and use it show how well THEIR approach is working.
And then they'll just repeat their mantra that electronic cigarettes are threatening all the strides they have made.

Hopefully there will come a time when the public will start to see through their lies.
But, sadly, I don't think we are even close to that time yet.

4% is equivalent to 1.6 million smokers, it's going to be hard to convince people that the same things that were cruising on at >1% all the sudden worked 4 times better. They can claim anything they want but with a lot of help from us we can call attention to the one thing that has really changed since 2007.

 

[Sirius]

Oh, just let them bleat "nicotine makes you go blind!" a few more times
Or come up with the next "study" that will then probably claim that using nicotine gives you hairy palms.

They are getting more ridiculous by the minute. And yes, non-smokers and non-vapers are also realizing that this stuff is just plain silly.

Professor John Ashton vs Clive Bates



And please remember that Clive Bates is not a "man on the street" vaper. He is not a vaper at all. And he has never smoked. Clive Bates is the former director of ASH UK (Action on Smoking and Health).

Yes I read that he had never vaped or smoked. That's a plus for us btw.

 

[Nate760]

Yes I read that he had never vaped or smoked. That's a plus for us btw.

It does make it much more difficult to play the "You're just a pathetic drug addict who's afraid of not being able to get your fix" card.

 

[Sirius]

It does make it much more difficult to play the "You're just a pathetic drug addict who's afraid of not being able to get your fix" card.

I love it when the condescending get made fools of. He (Clive) would be the perfect pitch man in one of those senate hearings!

 

[AgentAnia]

I love it when the condescending get made fools of. He (Clive) would be the perfect pitch man in one of those senate hearings!

Unfortunately, Clive Bates will never, *never,* NEVER be invited to testify at a Senate hearing. He's articulate and science-based, but above all, he's not a member of the ANTZ cabal willing to read from the ANTZ propaganda playbook script.

 

[Nate760]

Unfortunately, Clive Bates will never, *never,* NEVER be invited to testify at a Senate hearing. He's articulate and science-based, but above all, he's not a member of the ANTZ cabal willing to read from the ANTZ propaganda playbook script.

No matter whom they allow to testify from our side, or how little time they deign to allot, our speakers need to spend that time hammering away at the central incongruity of FDA nicotine policy; namely, the comically absurd fact that they officially consider Big Pharma nicotine (benign substance with next to no potential for abuse/dependence, approved for use by any healthy individual over age 12) and non-Big Pharma nicotine (addictive-as-[Redacted] public health menace that must be kept out of the hands of children at all costs) to be completely different substances, with completely different properties, requiring a completely different set of regulatory strictures.

They can't be allowed to get away with this anymore. They don't get to have it both ways. They need to decide what their policy toward non-tobacco nicotine products actually is, rather than making that determination on a pick-and-choose basis according to the identity of the product's manufacturer. That is not good science, it's not good government, and it sure as hell isn't good public health policy.

 

[DC2]

No matter whom they allow to testify from our side, or how little time they deign to allot, our speakers need to spend that time hammering away at the central incongruity of FDA nicotine policy; namely, the comically absurd fact that they officially consider Big Pharma nicotine (benign substance with next to no potential for abuse/dependence, approved for use by any healthy individual over age 12) and non-Big Pharma nicotine (addictive-as-[Redacted] public health menace that must be kept out of the hands of children at all costs) to be completely different substances, with completely different properties, requiring a completely different set of regulatory strictures.

They can't be allowed to get away with this anymore. They don't get to have it both ways. They need to decide what their policy toward non-tobacco nicotine products actually is, rather than making that determination on a pick-and-choose basis according to the identity of the product's manufacturer. That is not good science, it's not good government, and it sure as hell isn't good public health policy.

That's where the "we don't know what's in them card" comes into play.
Unless they are regulated and "FDA approved" our children will be forever at risk.

 

[AndriaD]

That's where the "we don't know what's in them card" comes into play.
Unless they are regulated and "FDA approved" our children will be forever at risk.

My own child is grown and out in the world, assuming his own risks, and doesn't require the FDstupidA to babysit him.

I just can't imagine how the FDA thinks we all raised our kids, with bleach and disinfectant in the house! Somehow they managed to not drink it -- could it be, they were SUPERVISED????

Andria

 

[Nate760]

That's where the "we don't know what's in them card" comes into play.
Unless they are regulated and "FDA approved" our children will be forever at risk.

To this assertion, I would respond with a long list of products that gained the fabled FDA stamp of approval only to be withdrawn from the market at a later date after they'd killed a whole bunch of people.

 

[NorthOfAtlanta]

To this assertion, I would respond with a long list of products that gained the fabled FDA stamp of approval only to be withdrawn from the market at a later date after they'd killed a whole bunch of people.

Or ones that are still on the market but have an "acceptable risk". Yeah Pfizer I'm looking at you, Chantix, 500 + suicides and still counting.

 

[Nate760]

Or ones that are still on the market but have an "acceptable risk". Yeah Pfizer I'm looking at you, Chantix, 500 + suicides and still counting.

[Hat tip to NOA for inspiration]