A disturbing webpage

[Jammi98]

This is about cigarettes but I think it is disturbing enough to be posted, and it does have potential to affect e-cigs.

The main site was supposed to be a conference on Smoking Prohibition, but the conference was banned by the EU (since it was to take place in the Parlamentary building), so the title of the conference was changed. TICAP - The International Coalition Against Prohibition

If you follow the link through to the re-named conference, some very interesting papers were presented regarding economic effects of smoking bans, second hand smoke, etc. I found one of the more interesting papers to be this one, about the funding of anti-smoking "charities"
http://www.velvetgloveironfist.com/pdfs/ticapspeechsnowdon.pdf

Even though e-cigs are not mentioned, I think the above link about funding more than validates all concerns about the future of e-smoking in general.

 

[Sun Vaporer]

I am not surprised as smoking analogs does suck and is a killer--so I doubt I will ever read or hear anything good about them--As for e-cigs--I hope I hear some good things supported by unbiased trials reported someday---Sun

 

[TropicalBob]

Jammi98, that Adobe PDF you link to is extremely important information, with application to e-smoking. As I've said many times before on this forum, Follow The Money.

It leads to Big Pharmaceutical, which finances much of what passes for "anti-smoking" citizen movements. Why? Money to be made selling patches and gums and lozenges as it forces smokers off the demonized Big tobacco products. This is the section of that speech I find most disturbing:

Here is the summary sentence from an article in tobacco Control:

"The immediate need is to capture all nicotine into a regulatory system."

This would allow the government to reduce nicotine levels in cigarettes, ultimately to zero, and this is exactly what the Center for Tobacco-Free Kids are currently demanding of the US government. The authors then go on to say that pharmaceutical nicotine should be available at "reduced prices" and in "more outlets, including vending machines". At the same time "tobacco availability should become progressively less easy" until pharmaceutical nicotine replaces tobacco as "the dominant source of the drug". They go on:

"The ready availability of clean nicotine would also allow addicted smokers who do not obtain adequate nicotine from their reduced nicotine cigarettes to supplement their nicotine intake."

Such a policy would leave pharmaceutical giants as the sole legal purveyors of nicotine. Smokers could still purchase cigarettes and could still damage their health. Smokers could continue to fund the tobacco control industry through cigarette taxes while lining the pockets of the pharmaceutical industry."

Enlightening. That is indeed where all this is leading. E-smoking? Not even a gnat to be brushed aside. NRT products are too important financially to even allow e-smoking to exist in conjunction with the other offerings. No. E-smoking will be targeted by one of those "citizen" charitable groups. A campaign to regulators and legislators will begin. End game? A ban on our drug delivery devices.

Who can fight the billions of dollars at stake in this battle? This ends only when Big Pharma has full control of all drug distribution .. including nicotine to addicts at a time when smoking tobacco has been relegated exclusively to open sewers on isolated islands.

 

[dc2k08]

Nice find Jammi. I was called a conspiracy theorist for echoing similar concerns. I want to high-light this excerpt:

both Glaxo and Pfizer were fully paid-up members of the World Health Organisation's Tobacco Free Initiative. The two companies helped finance the Smokefree Europe conference and they part-funded the Institute for Global Tobacco Control. In the UK, they fund the Roy Castle Foundation. When the 11th World Conference on Tobacco came to Chicago in 2000, the Johnson foundation paid $4 million to be one of the hosts and Glaxo was a patron of the event. The Pfizer foundation has recently donated $33 million to an assortment of anti-smoking groups including the newly formed ASH International.

Disgusting that they legally hawk chantix.

 

[TropicalBob]

I'm with you. I've written about the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which gets its huge money from Big Pharma and passes it on to anti-smoking groups to further demonize tobacco products in order to drive money back to ... Big Pharma so it can give huge sums to the Robert Wood ... etc. ad infinitum until Big Pharma controls the whole addiction ball game.

 

[dc2k08]

nice to know I at least have good company in my delusions.

WHO's recommendations pretty much boil down to - Dear member nations, please do not allow electronic cigarettes to be sold unless they are sold by Big Pharm. Thanks (for supporting WHO).