My frustration with "journalists" writing articles on E-Cigs... (Rant)

[RoniClouds]

My apologies if I am not in the correct forum, but I hope I found the right place to share my thoughts.

So I work for a company that distributes e-liquid, and a good part of my day is spent researching businesses and liquid suppliers. With this being said, I reach a decent amount of articles that catch my attention, that do nothing but leave a horrid taste in my mouth after reading.

For example, I pulled this line from a "non-biased" article on the ban on electronic cigarettes in New Hampshire:
"Like gunpowder, the e-cigarette is a Chinese invention"
(Source: E-Cigarettes Under Fire)

...How can you start a non-biased article comparing electronic cigarettes to gunpowder?
China also invented paper, the printing press, the compass but instead, let's compare it to gunpowder...?
(Source: List of Chinese inventions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

In this same article, Rita Chapelle, an FDA spokeswoman states:

"We are concerned about the potential for addiction and abuse of these products. We don't want the public to perceive them as a safer alternative to cigarettes."


So, regardless of the fact that cigarettes are already deemed cancer-causing, toxic, and habit forming, We have a problem approving your alternative to smoking because it could be cancer-causing, toxic, and habit forming? Am I missing something?

I just don't see how you justify these responses!? To a certain extent I understand the hesitation by the FDA to wait for conclusive evidence to present itself, but how can you continue to kill millions of people everyday for something that HAS been tested for a long enough period to know it will have adverse affects to your health. I don't see how electronic cessation devices can be outlawed before ever even having a chance, yet we can continue to sell a product that WE KNOW KILLS PEOPLE?!

I don't get it. Feel free to provide some articles you came across that you also disagreed with, or that you did agree with. Either way I'm open to hearing more from you guys about different media sources and their take on E-cigs.

 

[DoubleEwe]

I too get rather vexed about the scaremongering that seems to go hand in hand with e-cigs.

I was in the waiting room at the dentist (unusual for a Brit I know), I was reading a 'magazine for women', a true stories kind of zine, anyway, I saw there was an article on e-cigarettes...

The article was nothing like what I expected, I was hoping for a bit of educational journalism explaining the pros and cons of taking up vaping, however, what I found was an article about a house fire caused by an e-cig. Well, I say caused by an e-cig, it was actually caused by a ...... The girl the article was about had her friend come over to her house, she asked to borrow her iPhone charger, she then plugged her USB eGo charger into the iPhone plug... There was some kind of explosion which turned into a fire.

Now, I am not sure whether the article intentionally set about to scare the public about e-cigarettes and their batteries, but that was the message I took from the story.

I am pretty fed up of hearing about ...... and the stupid things they do and somehow relating that to e-cigs being bad.

 

[bigdancehawk]

The article you linked is 5-1/2 years old. FDA was in full assault mode on e-cigarettes, trying to seize and ban them as an unapproved medical device. The products were still new and the Tobacco Control Industry was running around screaming, "The sky is falling." It's going to take quite awhile before people get wise to the fact that these things aren't a threat. Even the FDA's tobacco czar has now grudgingly acknowledged that e-cigs are almost certainly less harmful than conventional cigarettes.

 

[Nate760]

I don't think, for the most part, the people who write these hit pieces even comprehend their own lack of objectivity. They don't realize the extent to which their arguments rely on spurious appeals to emotion, false equivalencies, and even (in statements that seek to subtly demonize China and the Chinese) on thinly-veiled appeals to racism and xenophobia. They've uncritically accepted the narrative that's been promulgated by the tobacco control movement, and they've done it so dutifully for so long that they can't even see themselves openly engaging in modes of rhetoric that, in any other context, they would find morally and intellectually abhorrent.

Tobacco control started out with a perfectly simple and well-intentioned idea: to reduce the number of people killed and sickened by cigarette smoking. Over the course of the subsequent decades, as it branched out into first demonizing every other form of tobacco use, then every other form of nicotine use, and now any activity that bears a passing resemblance to the act of smoking, their movement has stopped having anything to do with fostering improvements in public health. Now it's all about one group, for reasons that are emotional and irrational, attempting to impose its vision of social decorum on society as a whole, and seeking to punish (often with death) anyone who fails in conforming to that vision.

It is neither hyperbolic nor inaccurate to say the tobacco control movement currently pursues policies that result in more people smoking, fewer people quitting, and more people's lives being sacrificed on the altar of their social prejudices. Taken as a whole, over the course of the last half century (and especially in the last 20 years), this movement and its adherents have probably contributed to more smoking-related deaths than they've succeeded in preventing.

 

[Nate760]

Even the FDA's tobacco czar has now grudgingly acknowledged that e-cigs are almost certainly less harmful than conventional cigarettes.

That such a simple and self-evidently obvious fact can only be acknowledged grudgingly tells us all we need to know about how backward these people's thinking has actually become.

 

[shgilman]

I'm trying to assemble a "rapid response team" in order to be prepared to rebut these type of articles and counter plublish. In conversation with CASAA currently and I'm trying to create a library of counter articles and studies.

 

[Kent C]

I don't think, for the most part, the people who write these hit pieces even comprehend their own lack of objectivity. They don't realize the extent to which their arguments rely on spurious appeals to emotion, false equivalencies, and even (in statements that seek to subtly demonize China and the Chinese) on thinly-veiled appeals to racism and xenophobia. They've uncritically accepted the narrative that's been promulgated by the tobacco control movement, and they've done it so dutifully for so long that they can't even see themselves openly engaging in modes of rhetoric that, in any other context, they would find morally and intellectually abhorrent.

Tobacco control started out with a perfectly simple and well-intentioned idea: to reduce the number of people killed and sickened by cigarette smoking. Over the course of the subsequent decades, as it branched out into first demonizing every other form of tobacco use, then every other form of nicotine use, and now any activity that bears a passing resemblance to the act of smoking, their movement has stopped having anything to do with fostering improvements in public health. Now it's all about one group, for reasons that are emotional and irrational, attempting to impose its vision of social decorum on society as a whole, and seeking to punish (often with death) anyone who fails in conforming to that vision.

It is neither hyperbolic nor inaccurate to say the tobacco control movement currently pursues policies that result in more people smoking, fewer people quitting, and more people's lives being sacrificed on the altar of their social prejudices. Taken as a whole, over the course of the last half century (and especially in the last 20 years), this movement and its adherents have probably contributed to more smoking-related deaths than they've succeeded in preventing.

One could make a good case that it's part of their "zero pop"(ulation) cause.

 

[Kent C]

I'm trying to assemble a "rapid response team" in order to be prepared to rebut these type of articles and counter plublish. In conversation with CASAA currently and I'm trying to create a library of counter articles and studies.

The Burstyn study is a compendium of those type of articles.

BMC Public Health | Full text | Peering through the mist: systematic review of what the chemistry of contaminants in electronic cigarettes tells us about health risks

 

[Nate760]

The Burstyn study is a compendium of those type of articles. [/url]

Unfortunately, the ANTZ have adopted the policy of rejecting Burstyn out of hand on the grounds that the study was "paid for by the vaping industry." Even though 1) that's not literally true, and 2) the data Burstyn reviewed weren't even his own. But the ANTZ don't like to trouble themselves with inconvenient details like that.

 

[Kent C]

Unfortunately, the ANTZ have adopted the policy of rejecting Burstyn out of hand on the grounds that the study was "paid for by the vaping industry." Even though 1) that's not literally true, and 2) the data Burstyn reviewed weren't even his own. But the ANTZ don't like to trouble themselves with inconvenient details like that.

It's the studies listed in that particular study that I thought shgilman might be interested in.

 

[shgilman]

Lots of studies can be "slanted" for a specific or anticipated outcome. They all do it, including the vaping industry. What I think needs to be done is fight fire with fire. If the scaremongers want to play the game, then we, as an industry, need to be prepared to do battle the same way. Their articles need to be rebutted and our opinions needs to be published also. Hence the need for the rapid response team.
We'll get'er done

 

[bigdancehawk]

I'm trying to assemble a "rapid response team" in order to be prepared to rebut these type of articles and counter plublish. In conversation with CASAA currently and I'm trying to create a library of counter articles and studies.

That was why a sub-forum was started here, but it needs to be more active: Comments Needed

 

[Nate760]

As I see it, vapers are doing an increasingly good job of mobilizing themselves, independently of any action plan or organizational structure. Whenever there's an article with an open comments section, the overall sentiment seems to run at least 80/20 in favor of vapers and vaping.

 

[skoony]

it is not the case that reporters are just cutting and pasting the same old debunked drivel over and over again.
most are college educated and know better.

starting in the sixties with Walter Cronkite's famous anti-Viet-Nam war comments on the news,following into the future
with the Pentagon Papers and Watergate the news started not just reporting the news but shaping it.

they know they are distorting and cherry picking to get the slant on the story they want it to have.
it depends on who is paying the bills.think BP and all the ad revenue they spend.

with the disappearance of more and more news papers there is a glut of reporters looking for work.
add to that all the new journalist coming out of school its an employers market.
they know that to get a job and in some cases keep your job you better tow the company line.
i am not saying its right. i am also not willing to through them all under the bus either.
they don't like the way things are but,the bills have to be paid.

regards
mike

 

[roosterado]

Me Too. Action plan I joined SFATA at the Individual Membership Level. I donate to CASSA and By Vender Counter Displays to give to Brick and Mortars at the CASAA Store. I became a Member of The Vaping Militia at the Trooper Level. Lots of Options out there. I almost forgot supporting VAPEAVET.org Sends Innokin Started Kits to Vets and Deployed Military who want to switch. Some of those Military Personnel who switch to Vaping and then return to Civilian Life may make Great Vapers Rights Advocates. VapeaVet is only able to send out 4-5 kits a month thats all the monetary donation they get. $25 Buys a Starter Kit for a Veteran or Deployed Military Member maybe not to many Vape Shop in Afghanistan.

 

[RoniClouds]

it is not the case that reporters are just cutting and pasting the same old debunked drivel over and over again.
most are college educated and know better.

starting in the sixties with Walter Cronkite's famous anti-Viet-Nam war comments on the news,following into the future
with the Pentagon Papers and Watergate the news started not just reporting the news but shaping it.

they know they are distorting and cherry picking to get the slant on the story they want it to have.
it depends on who is paying the bills.think BP and all the ad revenue they spend.

with the disappearance of more and more news papers there is a glut of reporters looking for work.
add to that all the new journalist coming out of school its an employers market.
they know that to get a job and in some cases keep your job you better tow the company line.
i am not saying its right. i am also not willing to through them all under the bus either.
they don't like the way things are but,the bills have to be paid.

regards
mike

I definitely understand that a job is a job, and the story that pays the bills (if you are a journalist) is a story worth publishing.
However, since there are two sides to most every story, I have a hard time believing that so many people HAVE to pit themselves against the vaping industry. Especially with what was mentioned before; I've also seen a much higher response in comments on these articles DEFENDING vaping, so my question is, how are they really getting paid better for their controversial article, if the majority of feedback they receive from their readers is negative?

I figure they could be heroes in the vaping community if they were to write a true non biased article on both the pros and cons of vaping based on science and studies. Criticism on electronic cigarettes should be both good and bad. I fail to believe they are the perfect smoking cessation device, but if you are including negative points in defense against e-cigs, atleast have something solid. That's all I ask. Opinions don't educate me, they irritate me. Give me facts or the closest thing to them.

EDIT: Whereas this article ( What a Doctor learned from a visit to an Electronic-Cigarette Store) is opinion, I still feel like some key elements were mentioned that I wish more articles would reference. Like the following statement:

"Current medical evidence cannot recommend one addiction over the other."

She, "Natasha", touches on both what she sees as positive, and negative with electronic cigarettes from her stand point as a pediatrician. She accepts the science though, and is sure to not make a complete fool of herself when scrutinizing certain aspects she dislikes about vaping.

Yes this article is old as well, hence she references how age limitations have not yet been placed on electronic cigarettes, but that was a valid concern for the article's time and hopefully has now been adopted in almost every state, if not all of them already.

 

[Kent C]

I still feel like some key elements were mentioned that I wish more articles would reference. Like the following statement:

"Current medical evidence cannot recommend one addiction over the other."

I wonder if she's ever heard of methadone?

 

[Nate760]

"Current medical evidence cannot recommend one addiction over the other."

Statements like this are illustrative of the extent to which people (including medical professionals who ought to know better) have been indoctrinated with a puritanical, quit-or-die mentality that winds up causing more illness and death than it prevents. The concept of harm reduction is utterly lost on these people; in their worldview, all "addictions" (a term they often use incorrectly, when it's dependence they're really talking about) are equally evil and bad, and there's never something to be gained by shifting someone from one to another, even if it's accompanied by an orders-of-magnitude reduction in harm.

 

[dragonpuff]

Statements like this are illustrative of the extent to which people (including medical professionals who ought to know better) have been indoctrinated with a puritanical, quit-or-die mentality that winds up causing more illness and death than it prevents. The concept of harm reduction is utterly lost on these people; in their worldview, all "addictions" (a term they often use incorrectly, when it's dependence they're really talking about) are equally evil and bad, and there's never something to be gained by shifting someone from one to another, even if it's accompanied by an orders-of-magnitude reduction in harm.

Exactly. Like my friends in the past who felt the need to quit their 2 cup a day coffee habit simply because they fear being addicted to it. I've even been told, many times in my life, that I should quit my lifelong prescription medication because if I don't really need it (and I do, but some people assume I don't because there's nothing apparently wrong with me, i.e. it's working), then I must be "dependent" on it, which is bad, because dependence is always bad.

It's silly to believe that any and all addiction or dependence is inherently harmful simply because it exists. It's a meaningless tautology - addiction is bad, therefore, addiction is bad. It's illogical, but that is how we've been indoctrinated in our society.

 

[Nate760]

It's silly to believe that any and all addiction or dependence is inherently harmful simply because it exists. It's a meaningless tautology - addiction is bad, therefore, addiction is bad.

Very well stated.