Inform Tobacco Smokers

[DC2]

I have yet to meet a smoker that isn't interested in my electronic cigarette, wanting to know more, and trying to ask me all sorts of questions. And yeah, I walk up to every single smoker I see, if I have the time to spare. Of course, it doesn't take all that long to send them to this forum, which is all I do really.

Just start with one simple question: Have you ever heard of electronic cigarettes?

 

[Glassweaver]

4th hand smoke/vapor: What we pull into our lungs and is exhaled persists for a duration of 3-4 minutes after the last draw/puff . Thus, a portion of the vaporized nicotine that our lungs did not process can be exhaled and a source of harmful exposure to the children.e the e-cig nicotine is fully processed, this argument can be used against them.

And since we could probably get about 300 people to pass the same breath of air down a chain of people in that 3-4 minutes, we also need to make sure they include reference to the damaging effects of the one isotope of a 4% nicotine solution left in a fcuking gallon of air on the 276th hand exposure.

And on that note, lets talk about ignorance, and the 28th hand exposure that might happen if I drink bottled water that has only been 99.99% filtered, exposing me to a potential molecule of SOMETHING from the guy who kissed the girl who was in the room with the girl who.......that was bit by the mosquito that first bit the guy who had IGNORANCE.

Oh my god, I might have IGNORANCE. What if I die? Lets make all get into a big clusterfcuk about it and make tax deductible donations to pro lobbying firms
so we can BAN BOTTLED WATER since I could get IGNORANCE from it.

Ok, so I exaggerated. But...I think Ive made their point. Actually, in hindsight, I think the point was pretty dull. Wait, was there even a point at all?

 

[westcoast2]

Their cause is not our cause.

Interestingly some pro-choice groups say exactly the same thing. The causes maybe different though the people involved and the methods used are, in many cases, the same.

Their war was fought, and lost

I am not sure it was really a war. The people who smoke were out manoevered by extremely clever groups who knew how to propogandize and get their message out. People who smoke were too complacent. The FCTC was ratified in the UK without even a debate.

Spikey is doing one heck of a job. The reason she is having such a hard time is because of the success of the anti-groups. Learn from the mistakes of other groups in dealing with these people. It has and continues to be a long and hard learning curve. People need to get out and support her. On the surface she is fighting for just the e-cig community, underneath for more basic concepts of freedom and justice. Only a few seem willing to go along to the meetings with the legislature (sound familier?). The same has and still happens with other groups trying to keep (or regain) their freedoms.

Many TC groups have come out against the e-cig. Using their rhetoric may alienate the e-cig potential consumer base. Exposing the hypocrisy of the groups against the e-cig may be more effective.

The debate seems different in the US in as much as it has become either/or. tobacco/Drug. In the EU there seems little effort to classify though some have said it should be a medical device. In the UK it seems to be treated more as an electronic device separate from the cart/liquid. (The issue is still below the radar in the UK and many people have not even heard of e-cigs).

All this is beside the point. Putting others down to raise yourself up is dysfunctional. I agree with the points made by Sheri and Ladyraj on the general need for respect across both groups. I also agree with some of what Tbob has said though there does seem to be a need to avoid facillitating a divide and conquer strategy, much beloved of anti groups.

It maybe that both sides could do with recognising a common theme in that restrictions have been placed and could be placed based on faulty information and manipultation of public perception by groups who claim to be interested in the public's health.
----

 

[Duckies]

Hey Duckies, thanks for the reply, I get your point, I think. But...no one is asking for anyone to side with the tobacco route or a pro-smoking campaign. Not one single person from the smoking section has requested the e-cig users help in their lobby efforts. But loads of smokers are helping in the e-cig lobby efforts, myself included. If one wants to tout the health benefits of the e-cig it does not have to be done by distancing from smokers/smoking. The science underlying e-cigs will ultimately decide that fate. The science, anecdotal evidence from users of accidental quitting, and litter, etc issues are sufficient to plead the e-cig cases, calling smokers stinky is impolite(1 example).

If anyone believes that the forces against the e-cig aren't a few steps ahead of the e-cig please note:

3rd hand smoke/residue: Particles that land on surfaces after vaping...right here on this forum.

4th hand smoke/vapor: What we pull into our lungs and is exhaled persists for a duration of 3-4 minutes after the last draw/puff . Thus, a portion of the vaporized nicotine that our lungs did not process can be exhaled and a source of harmful exposure to the children.

Hard to believe? Check out:

4dangers

Please note that we do not process everything when we breathe in even oxygen. Normal respiration we draw in 21% oxygen and exhale 14-16%. Since there are no tests to prove the e-cig nicotine is fully processed, this argument can be used against them.

ASH propoganda always amazes me. Not only is it inane, but the presentation is such a throwback to 1996 geocities.com sites that it amuses as well.

I do not wish to distance smokers, only to distinguish that PVs are not smoking -- they are an alternative.

 

[gyahav]

Youtube is the way to go, I think. There are many vaping videos there, but they address a particular liquid flavor or vapor model. We need to have videos on youtube expalining vaping and providing information about it, like little documentaries. Key words (is it called tags?) should make these videos more accesible in searches to a greater audience (ie law, choice, big corporations, health, etc). Once someone has made such a video, we should all go in there, rate and comment, to make that video even more visible in searches. Youtube is a very powerful tool that cannot be underestimated.

 

[sherid]

Actually, we need to have videos on You Tube exposing ASH and the entire anti-smoking/vaping community. Attack the source to eliminate the lies. Other than that, learn the lessons of the smokers. Don't back down. This is the anniversary of Woodstock. Remember how silly it seemed that a group of longhaired hippies could possibly help to end the war in Vietnam....but they did.

 

[paise]

So, we need to talk to smokers, one on one.

Because I can't drive, I usually have my Medicaid application handled over the phone; however, this past month things were running so behind and my Medicaid run out before the caseworker could process it that she came out to me along with a co-worker. When she saw, or rather they saw, my E-cig, we got into a conversation about it, what was in it, and what it put out, and how they were not able to smell any tobacco smoke coming from it despite the vapor plumes. They thought of the women and men in their office who smoke and are always having to go outside in the hot, rainy, cold, and icy weather in order to get a cigarette and here I sat with a wonderful alternative. I sent them each with a business card from every company I ordered from who sent cards including Janty, which is where I got my Dura-C e-cig. They took them back with them to the office for the employees there who smoke.

They were also willing to go on records there was no smell of smoke or tobacco smoke or even an unpleasant smell of smoke coming from the unit at all. I don't know how many that building employs but it is a lot of people and out of that lots of people, I imagine that more than half if not 2/3rds smoke so I was able to hopefully change the fate and the health of at least part of the local DSS office.

As for the personal gain for me, I've written this out on the other threads, particularly the one about coughing up a lung regarding the analog (tobacco cigarettes) and how at my appt yesterday 7/14/09, my doctor listened to my chest and for the first time he heard nothing but breathing. I had no wheezes, no crackles, no franks, and no thrills. It was as if I had quit smoking only I had not technically. I was vaping water vapor and nicotine and yet my lungs are clear, I don't feel as bad as I did before, and I can take full breaths now, and even better, I can walk a little further than before. The only reason I can't go much farther is joint related from lupus and Sjogren's, not because of the tobacco cigarette changeover to e-cigs. My lungs feel healthy for the first time in years and I began smoking at 12-13 years old then quit and began using the e-cigs on July 7th. It took a week or so to get solely off the analogs but once I did, the smoker's cough is gone as is the morning cough.

How can e-cigs be bad with all these positive results? Even my doctor wants me to tell other smokers about e-cigarettes after having seen the difference in my lungs personally! It was nice to walk out of his office without hearing his speech about my needing to quit smoking. He just told me to keep up the good work because my lungs sounded great and then asked me to please spread the word because he'd love to have other patients with lungs as clear as mine after having smoked as long if not longer than I have.

One thing bugs the bejeezes out of me about this whole FDA ASH thing. Why is it that adults have to give up flavors that are tasty? I like cotton candy and bubble gum flavors. I can't chew bubble gum because of TMJ but I do love the taste of it. I love the taste of fruits and such too. It's nice to be able to buy a bottle of cherry, cotton candy, juicy peach, and others of the like. We as smokers sometimes get tired of tobacco too. We have tastebuds. It isn't as if those taste buds disappear once you reach adulthood. I could eat a giant bowl of vanilla ice cream now with fudge drizzled on top with caramel and whipped topping and a cherry on top but I'm not a kid. I'm just on the backside of 40!

When did children have the monopoly on fruity and sweet flavors? I keep candy with me all the time because of the Sjogren's disease. It causes terrible dry eyes and dry mouth. The dry mouth is almost like choking at times when the throat muscles are so dry they stick to each other. I have to keep something that will help my salivary glands moisten my mouth or I will feel horrible and dehydrated. So why can't I enjoy the flavors in an e-cig that I enjoy in a candy when suffering with dry mouth from Sjogren's disease?

This ASH group's members are a bunch illiterate dummies. I guess they don't have ice cream, cookies, funnel cakes at the fair, or candied apples at Halloween, or a piece of pie after a meal, or even a piece of cake with coffee or a mixed drink after a meal at a 5 star restaurant. Ugh.... I'd love to tell each one of their members off personally for acting like kindergartners running to the teacher to tattle on someone whose done nothing wrong.

 

[sherid]

Because I can't drive, I usually have my Medicaid application handled over the phone; however, this past month things were running so behind and my Medicaid run out before the caseworker could process it that she came out to me along with a co-worker. When she saw, or rather they saw, my E-cig, we got into a conversation about it, what was in it, and what it put out, and how they were not able to smell any tobacco smoke coming from it despite the vapor plumes. They thought of the women and men in their office who smoke and are always having to go outside in the hot, rainy, cold, and icy weather in order to get a cigarette and here I sat with a wonderful alternative. I sent them each with a business card from every company I ordered from who sent cards including Janty, which is where I got my Dura-C e-cig. They took them back with them to the office for the employees there who smoke.

They were also willing to go on records there was no smell of smoke or tobacco smoke or even an unpleasant smell of smoke coming from the unit at all. I don't know how many that building employs but it is a lot of people and out of that lots of people, I imagine that more than half if not 2/3rds smoke so I was able to hopefully change the fate and the health of at least part of the local DSS office.

As for the personal gain for me, I've written this out on the other threads, particularly the one about coughing up a lung regarding the analog (tobacco cigarettes) and how at my appt yesterday 7/14/09, my doctor listened to my chest and for the first time he heard nothing but breathing. I had no wheezes, no crackles, no franks, and no thrills. It was as if I had quit smoking only I had not technically. I was vaping water vapor and nicotine and yet my lungs are clear, I don't feel as bad as I did before, and I can take full breaths now, and even better, I can walk a little further than before. The only reason I can't go much farther is joint related from lupus and Sjogren's, not because of the tobacco cigarette changeover to e-cigs. My lungs feel healthy for the first time in years and I began smoking at 12-13 years old then quit and began using the e-cigs on July 7th. It took a week or so to get solely off the analogs but once I did, the smoker's cough is gone as is the morning cough.

How can e-cigs be bad with all these positive results? Even my doctor wants me to tell other smokers about e-cigarettes after having seen the difference in my lungs personally! It was nice to walk out of his office without hearing his speech about my needing to quit smoking. He just told me to keep up the good work because my lungs sounded great and then asked me to please spread the word because he'd love to have other patients with lungs as clear as mine after having smoked as long if not longer than I have.

One thing bugs the bejeezes out of me about this whole FDA ASH thing. Why is it that adults have to give up flavors that are tasty? I like cotton candy and bubble gum flavors. I can't chew bubble gum because of TMJ but I do love the taste of it. I love the taste of fruits and such too. It's nice to be able to buy a bottle of cherry, cotton candy, juicy peach, and others of the like. We as smokers sometimes get tired of tobacco too. We have tastebuds. It isn't as if those taste buds disappear once you reach adulthood. I could eat a giant bowl of vanilla ice cream now with fudge drizzled on top with caramel and whipped topping and a cherry on top but I'm not a kid. I'm just on the backside of 40!

When did children have the monopoly on fruity and sweet flavors? I keep candy with me all the time because of the Sjogren's disease. It causes terrible dry eyes and dry mouth. The dry mouth is almost like choking at times when the throat muscles are so dry they stick to each other. I have to keep something that will help my salivary glands moisten my mouth or I will feel horrible and dehydrated. So why can't I enjoy the flavors in an e-cig that I enjoy in a candy when suffering with dry mouth from Sjogren's disease?

This ASH group's members are a bunch illiterate dummies. I guess they don't have ice cream, cookies, funnel cakes at the fair, or candied apples at Halloween, or a piece of pie after a meal, or even a piece of cake with coffee or a mixed drink after a meal at a 5 star restaurant. Ugh.... I'd love to tell each one of their members off personally for acting like kindergartners running to the teacher to tattle on someone whose done nothing wrong.

ASH used "the children" when they have nothing else to use. It is not a real attempt to save "the children" It is simply propaganda.

 

[paise]

It's that kindergartner "tattle-tale" mentality. ASH is supposed to be made up of adults yet they act like 5 year olds. It's sad that they have nothing better to do with their time.

 

[ladyraj]

ASH has successfully lobbied via the threat of harm...where no harm actually exists. We who use the e-cig must prove they are safe before we can use them. There is no way to prove the e-cig safe.

This is the logic that ASH, and their ilk, uses. It matters not that e-cigs are "safer" ...to ASH there is NO SAFE LEVEL OF EXPOSURE.

Ash is using the 3rd hand smoke argument, sucessfully in some states, to prevent smokers from fostering or adopting children. On this very forum, which ASH monitors, are threads about vaping residue...the e-cig 3rd hand smoke.

When smokers who wanted to foster/adopt said their homes are smoke-free and they take it outside....ASH came out with the idea that chemicals still exist in the breath of smokers that takes time to exhale from the lungs.

Even covering one-self up with a hazmat suit to smoke outside of your own home was not "good" enough because the particles and "harm" remain on skin and in breath.

Illogical, yes...but how does one do a study to prove it is untrue once the PR campaign has been waged in the media.

I hijacked this comment from a fellow blogger at The Rest of the Story: Tobacco News Analysis and Commentary and is reflective of what many smokers are thinking and feeling:

"On e-cigs: Again, each to his own taste but I begin to detest them on the grounds of their marketing. NYC radio spot for one brand of e's now begins with a toddler's wailing, "Daddy, PLEASE don't smoke," and goes on to elaborate on the harms of ETS and the rottenness of its smell. I think I get their goal: To curry favor with the DoH, FDA, and the rest of the alphabet, but surely , with this attack, they alienate their market. What if a diet soda brand offered a bunch of ads that said. "Hey--face it, Fatso, you're ugly and smell bad and perhaps you'll roll over on the sofa and crush your cat, so how about you try our delicious No-Cal."?

...kind of sums up what I was trying to articulate but have been unsuccessful. 8-o

 

[paise]

Youtube is the way to go, I think. There are many vaping videos there, but they address a particular liquid flavor or vapor model. We need to have videos on youtube expalining vaping and providing information about it, like little documentaries. Key words (is it called tags?) should make these videos more accesible in searches to a greater audience (ie law, choice, big corporations, health, etc). Once someone has made such a video, we should all go in there, rate and comment, to make that video even more visible in searches. Youtube is a very powerful tool that cannot be underestimated.

That's one thing I really miss about my sight being so diminished (a slight bit above light perception depending upon day, lupus/Sjogren's interference, & manner in which meds affect my retinas - only drug on the market to slow progress of lupus in the last 50+ yrs is an anti-malarial drug, which oddly enough nobody knows why it slows the disease but it does and furthermore, the downside is that when taken at the dose required to slow the progress of lupus, it damages the retinas; in a person with retinas damaged by a hereditary disease, it becomes even worse because nobody knows how much damage is via the retinal disease, lupus itself, Sjogren's itself, or the drug to slow lupus; no test can differentiate between those dynamics.... but I digress...

All this new technology came out as my vision continued to deteriorate to the point where I primarily have to rely on a screen reader most days so that puts me out of the loop to participate in the vlogs, which sadly enough is where much of the freelance writer market is heading into - vlog it instead of write it... Not only will our children and children's children become a generation of illiterates on a global scale, they will also become illiterate to the written word as well. Ugh that just makes my head spin. I'm tough on my girls, even the one who doesn't live at home anymore after finally moving out after a few years in college. I pressure them about education and yet our education system keeps getting worse and worse as if there is this group out there who wants our children and their children to become idiots so they can't fight for their rights. The only thing they can do is listen to vlogs or media broadcasts hoping the news media will be telling them the truth, which hasn't been the case for the last 8 or so years so why should it be now especially so after I listened to a youtube.com video where Fox offered to bribe these reporters into burying the story about the cows receiving hormones so they can produce more milk yet this hormone was coming through and affecting children, young girls especially causing them to physically mature earlier than they should, not mentally mind you but physically mature....

Vlogs are something I would love to do but I don't even own a webcam as it would be a waste for something that can't see well enough to set it up; however, I do write my congressmen over the internet via emails and I call their offices worrying the crap out of them over various bills I am not happy with or those I want to have passed. It's my way of getting my point across since I can't drive to visit their offices.

But I could envision something like that taken a toll on ASH and especially the FDA as long as the person doing the Vlogging has the FDAs own words in print to back them up as well as ASH's own words and how they are pushing those who are no longer "smoking" back onto the very thing they were fighting against in the first place - analog cigarettes!! Geez that's an organization of idiots. ASH and FDA jobs - diploma not required.... Ugh.

 

[paise]

ASH has successfully lobbied via the threat of harm...where no harm actually exists. We who use the e-cig must prove they are safe before we can use them. There is no way to prove the e-cig safe.

This is the logic that ASH, and their ilk, uses. It matters not that e-cigs are "safer" ...to ASH there is NO SAFE LEVEL OF EXPOSURE.

Ash is using the 3rd hand smoke argument, sucessfully in some states, to prevent smokers from fostering or adopting children. On this very forum, which ASH monitors, are threads about vaping residue...the e-cig 3rd hand smoke.

When smokers who wanted to foster/adopt said their homes are smoke-free and they take it outside....ASH came out with the idea that chemicals still exist in the breath of smokers that takes time to exhale from the lungs.

Even covering one-self up with a hazmat suit to smoke outside of your own home was not "good" enough because the particles and "harm" remain on skin and in breath.

Illogical, yes...but how does one do a study to prove it is untrue once the PR campaign has been waged in the media.

I hijacked this comment from a fellow blogger at The Rest of the Story: Tobacco News Analysis and Commentary and is reflective of what many smokers are thinking and feeling:

"On e-cigs: Again, each to his own taste but I begin to detest them on the grounds of their marketing. NYC radio spot for one brand of e's now begins with a toddler's wailing, "Daddy, PLEASE don't smoke," and goes on to elaborate on the harms of ETS and the rottenness of its smell. I think I get their goal: To curry favor with the DoH, FDA, and the rest of the alphabet, but surely , with this attack, they alienate their market. What if a diet soda brand offered a bunch of ads that said. "Hey--face it, Fatso, you're ugly and smell bad and perhaps you'll roll over on the sofa and crush your cat, so how about you try our delicious No-Cal."?

...kind of sums up what I was trying to articulate but have been unsuccessful. 8-o

Oh our local school pulled that crock once and they didn't like me when I got done. I threatened the principal and the superintendent to talk to me on the phone and both declined so I showed up with a friend from a local news channel along with his camera and me a microphone (I worked for a while in broadcasting before losing my sight. I was behind the camera and writing copy, not in front of it....

The principal met me at the superintendent's office on the condition that the camera was not allowed in the room; however, I proposed that I would leave the camera outside as long as my cameraman was allowed to sit at the table with me.

I told them that if they EVER pulled a stunt like that with my daughter coming home telling me that I was going to from smoking I would take them to court for child abuse! This was after I was diagnosed with lupus and Sjogren's and my husband was fighting a battle with his blood pressure and juvenile diabetes. He would have had a stroke if he'd known about it but she came to me first and I told her not to ever say anything like that again because contrary to that school's belief, I was a grown adult and they damn sure were not my parents and even if they were, I didn't listen to my parents when I was a kid so I damn sure wasn't going to listen to them now. (My birth father is an abusive alcoholic and my birth mother is an enabler, 5x married but not to my birth father anymore thankfully still, we rarely if ever speak to each other and my birth father hasn't been in my life for more than a decade because of his boozing then wanting to physically fight.)

Once I got done with the principal and the superintendent and I bought my attorney (he was a personal friend) on the speakerphone telling them what he would do to the local school system and the principal/superintendent personally, it was never brought up again.

It didn't hurt either that I have friends and have always had friends on the school board too. We moved out of that school district not long afterward. The district we are in now would not even consider such a thing. Too many lawyers, pharmacists, physicists, scientists, and outright high-end executive working people live in this little area surrounding the three schools from this district. We are all middle-income and all working-class but we, well they since DH and I are broke at the moment because of his health (2 heart attacks, a stroke, and quadruple bypass 1/23/09 resulting in complications there and with his juvenile diabetes that makes it uncontrollable and the fact he can never work again; if he tries, the next heart attack will kill him) but the others in this area including my BIL and his wife - more so his wife than him because his wife's family have money but there's a lot of old money and very affluent families that live in this small neck of the woods so they wouldn't dare piss off the very benefactors that put food on their tables and roofs over their heads. WE collectively would be more than happy to pull our straight A students, AIG students out of public school and teach them at home first leaving the school houses empty and the teachers with nobody to teach thus the principals nobody to watch over, and the superintendent in a pot of water so hot he'd boil like the gates to a lava pit.

That ad would have thoroughly ...... me off. Don't use my children for some scam like that. Don't use children in general. Somebody should have sued them for child endangerment and negligence. That's clearly a violation of the child's rights of exploitation. I don't know why some pro bono attorney didn't have them for lunch.

 

[ladyraj]

Hey Paise, you go girl!!! For every interested party in stopping this type of nonsense there are about a thousand interested parties that do nothing. You were able to fight this nonsense because you were the natural parent. I am the legal gaurdian of a child and these groups allegations irritate the crap out of me. To think that someone that wanted to foster/adopt a child and has a smoke-free home is not enough to grant that request is troubling when so many children need homes. It's sad what these groups are doing via fracturing homes and preventing placement for others based on 3rd hand smoke theory.8-o Intrusion, by mandate, has become common-place.

 

[paise]

Hey Paise, you go girl!!! For every interested party in stopping this type of nonsense there are about a thousand interested parties that do nothing. You were able to fight this nonsense because you were the natural parent. I am the legal gaurdian of a child and these groups allegations irritate the crap out of me. To think that someone that wanted to foster/adopt a child and has a smoke-free home is not enough to grant that request is troubling when so many children need homes. It's sad what these groups are doing via fracturing homes and preventing placement for others based on 3rd hand smoke theory.8-o Intrusion, by mandate, has become common-place.

That should be downright discrimination. I mean what do they tell these children who want a loving home and there are parents who can give these children loving homes yet there is a worker who is part of ASH telling the child, "Little Johnny/Susie, we had a wonderful home lined up for you but unfortunately, the couple smoked so therefore you don't get a home today so you have to stay here living with the other 20 kids while the foster parents steal a check every month in your name to go in their pockets instead of you going to a set of parents who can and want to give you all the love and support you will ever need in a lifetime." What a crock of crap on the part of ASH & the freaking FDA.

 

[sherid]

That should be downright discrimination. I mean what do they tell these children who want a loving home and there are parents who can give these children loving homes yet there is a worker who is part of ASH telling the child, "Little Johnny/Susie, we had a wonderful home lined up for you but unfortunately, the couple smoked so therefore you don't get a home today so you have to stay here living with the other 20 kids while the foster parents steal a check every month in your name to go in their pockets instead of you going to a set of parents who can and want to give you all the love and support you will ever need in a lifetime." What a crock of crap on the part of ASH & the freaking FDA.

Like this,
YouTube - Oliver!- Boy For Sale [Scene Three]

 

[sherid]

The law of unintended consequences: Unintended consequence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Streisand Effect occurs when an attempt to censor or remove a certain piece of information (such as a photograph, document, etc.) instead causes the information to become widely known and distributed. The fact that a piece of information is being restricted assigns to it a previously nonexistent value in the eyes of the public.
The introduction of rabbits into Australia for sport led to an explosive growth in the rabbit population; rabbits have become a major feral pest in Australia. The same has occurred in New Zealand.
Along the same lines, kudzu has become a major problem in the South Eastern United States since its introduction as a way of preventing erosion in earthworks. Kudzu has displaced native plants, and has effectively taken over significant portions of land.
The stiffening of penalties for driving while intoxicated in the United States in the 1980s led, at first, to an increase in hit and run accidents, most of which were believed to have been drunken drivers trying to escape the law. Legislators later stiffened penalties for leaving the scene of an accident.
In 1990, the State of Victoria (Australia) made safety helmets mandatory for all bicycle riders. Together with a reduction in the absolute number of head injuries, there was also an unexpected reduction in the number of juvenile cyclists. Research by Vulcan et al. found that the reduction in juvenile cyclists was because the youths considered wearing a bicycle helmet unfashionable.[5]
Prohibition in the 1920s U.S., originally enacted to suppress the alcohol trade, drove many small-time alcohol suppliers out of business and consolidated the hold of large-scale organized crime over the illegal alcohol industry. Since alcohol was still popular, criminal organisations producing alcohol were well funded and hence also increased their other activities. The War on Drugs, intended to suppress the illegal drug trade, has likewise consolidated the hold of organized drug cartels over the illegal drug industry.[citation needed]
In CIA jargon, "blowback" describes the unintended, undesirable consequences of covert operations. Examples include:
Operation Ajax, which contributed to the 1979 Iranian Revolution & the Iran hostage crisis
Covert funding of the Mujahideen, which led to the rise of the Taliban
Father Mathew's temperance campaign in 19th-century Ireland – in which thousands of people vowed never to drink alcohol again – led to the consumption of ether, a much more dangerous intoxicant, by those unwilling to break their pledge

 

[ladyraj]

What does all this tobacco and smoking talk have to do with the e-cig?

Well...we know what's coming around the bend...we've seen it all before. Many of us have been countering ASH, the FDA, and a myriad of others for years. We are a resource to help in avoiding pitfalls that obfuscated PR endeavors. Why a resource goes untapped is strange to me but maybe the e-cig proponants are better informed about such things. Time, as always, will judge if this road was the correct road to take.

 

[Vocalek]

Hey VocaleK, I am a smoker, though I vape as well, and I can tell you that if you approach most smokers with the stats such as 90% want to quit you will lose your audience. Most smokers are pro-choice for smoking alternatives, unfortunately this forum appears not very smoker friendly, and most of the e-smokers say mean things about smokers...so I'm not sure how one could bridge that gap.

If you go to The Rest of the Story: Tobacco News Analysis and Commentary you can see what I mean. I love the idea in theory but in practice once the inveterate smokers got a look at this site...they may never return. It's a shame because we are all pro-choice for our personal vice but it gets strange when the sub-groups start slamming one another. Divide and conquer!8-o

Yikes: I've been out of town for a couple of days, and had not seen any of the responses.

I was not suggesting that we walk up to smokers and tell them "There's a 90% chance that you want to quit smoking." I was suggesting to this group that we have a vast, untapped pool of potential allies.

Most smokers have never heard of or seen an electronic cigarette.

Most smokers have some family members who would love to see something, ANYTHING that would help their loved one stop inhaling smoke.

I used to do my vaping in private. I have now started going outside to the smoking area, where I have found that smokers approach me and want to know about it.

 

[ladyraj]

Hey Paise, thanks for articulating a concern near and dear to my heart. As a legal gaurdian I receive no monies to raise my ward because I'm blessed to not need it. Thus all my resources are given happily and freely. When I testified in court that I would be responsible for this child until he reached adulthood that means anyone or any agency that would threaten this child and his stability...including ASH.

If e-cigarettes are equated to smoking in the home and more states enact the clause, even e-smokers will be effected. It's why I despise the present e-cig marketing campaign that uses children...they're digging a hole that smokers are already in. The simple answer offered by ASH is to not smoke anything so the children do not pick up bad habits.

 

[ladyraj]

Yikes: I've been out of town for a couple of days, and had not seen any of the responses.

I was not suggesting that we walk up to smokers and tell them "There's a 90% chance that you want to quit smoking." I was suggesting to this group that we have a vast, untapped pool of potential allies.

Most smokers have never heard of or seen an electronic cigarette.

Most smokers have some family members who would love to see something, ANYTHING that would help their loved one stop inhaling smoke.

I used to do my vaping in private. I have now started going outside to the smoking area, where I have found that smokers approach me and want to know about it.

Oh...I know your not suggesting to walk up to smokers and say this but at the risk of being indelicate...your underlying belief that 90% of smokers want to quit is problematic for those of us who get stats thrown in our face on a regular basis. It's as if smoker's simply can't enjoy smoking just for the pleasure of the activity. You can see what I mean in the e-cig situation...if e-smokers are nicotine addicts shouldn't 90% of them want to quit? After all the families prefer no harm over a "safer" harm.

How's this for a sales pitch....We don't want you to smoke but if you do, smoke an e-cig, it has less chemicals.8-o