New systematic review by Danish researchers

[DrMA]

Interesting findings... I'll need some time to digest this before posting my thoughts. However, I can say now that, even though this is not your typical ANTZ FUD, it still has an overarching negative tone leveraged by the infamous irrational hatred of BT so ubiquitous in anti-nic/tobacco circles.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091743514003739

I wonder if we can ask Dr. Phillips to take a look at this and post a commentary...

 

[DrMA]

#1 The paper talks about conflicts of interest, in particular with respect to funding by ecig companies, but they also mention pharma funding in a glancing swipe. So let's look at the authors themselves:

Lead author, Charlotta Pisinger: Consultant Glostrup Hospital
2nd author, Martin Døssing: has a an interesting relationship with pharma smoking cessation

 

[Kent C]

My first thought was that the Burstyn meta-study really hurts them and they needed something similar to combat it. On the 'conflict of interest' that's a one way street for them. If they get gov't grants from politicians that are put into office by certain moneyed interests, then that isn't a conflict of interest since it goes through a 'relay' point even though if their studies didn't show a bias for the political interest, they wouldn't get the grant (and they might even lose tenure). Same for Global Warming, immigration, obesity studies, and a whole host of other 'special interests'.

So just because it's easier to point to a more direct form of conflict rather than the one hidden in the shadows (ie the ones ignorant people can't see and wouldn't know where to look), then they can make such a case. It is why I do a google search on every one in each study.... usually with a few 'adjectives' that help me confirm my suspicions.

 

[Oliver]

Dr Pissinger was one of the experts on the panel last year in the EU Parliamentary "workshop" on e-cigarettes which I attended (and where I had the idea for the E-Cig Summit).

I remember her being extremely negative on e-cigs, and at one point even referenced the Prue Talbot "study" of negative health effects (she data crawled the health section of ECF and other forums). I've never heard anyone else reference that study, because it's so utterly laughable.

 

[sofarsogood]

A few years ago, on an unrelated topic, a neighbor lady made a wonderful generalization that covers a lot of things. She said, follow the money.

The best number I can find is smokers world wide fork over $1 trillion a year for their tobacco. Something like 75% of that is taxes. A LOT of people benefit from that money. Those beneficiaries are literally freaking out because their peice of that pie could be disappearing very soon.

When a scientist says there isn't enough data about ecigs may be he is just angling for a research grant. That's how he makes his living. If tobacco use starts declining exponentially governments will lose interest in funding tobacco related research. That's going to put a lot of Phd's out of work. Of course they will say there isn't enough information until they can't squeeze any more funding out of the government.

Follow the money...

 

[Nate760]

When a scientist says there isn't enough data about ecigs may be he is just angling for a research grant.

Or he's unwittingly participating in a self-reinforcing feedback loop. Just as some scientists think "due diligence" involves simply reading and regurgitating the contents of other scientists' position papers, the ones who say things like "There's hardly any data" (not true) and "The results are inconclusive" (also not true) are just repeating what they've heard other people say, under the mistaken assumption that those people made the statements having performed primary due diligence, which in fact they had not.

 

[Kent C]

wiki:

Follow the money is a catchphrase popularized by the 1976 drama-documentary motion picture All The President's Men, which suggests a money trail or corruption scheme within high (often political) office. For the film, screenwriter William Goldman attributed the phrase to Deep Throat, the informant who took part in revealing the Watergate Scandal. However, the phrase is neither mentioned in the non-fiction book that preceded the film, nor any documentation of the scandal. The book does contain the phrase "The key was the secret campaign cash, and it should all be traced," which Woodward says to Senator Sam Ervin. This may have been condensed to the phrase "follow the money" in the screenwriting process.

----
Most people who use it now, don't know the origin. It's a good 'tool', and a favorite of a certain faction because it tends to indict business, but it applies equally to gov't, if not more so. The thing about gov't, though, is that their money is almost a given - no one is going to take it away - from the representatives/senators/executive mainly - so it many times is a matter of 'control' for them. Follow the control.... while not as 'poetic', is sometimes more accurate.

 

[sofarsogood]

Thanks for the background. Follow the money can include local small time conflicts of interest too. If things go the way we hope the sale of tobacco products will decline very rapidly. Governments got greedy and overtaxed tobacco and got addicted to that money. It's time for an economist to run a few tobacco decline scenarios through his macro economic computer models and give us some insights into what a mostly tobacco free world might be like for the people who don't smoke but benefited from the tax money we smokers have been paying all these years.

I like to imagine the global tobacco control system collapsing sort of like the fall of the Soviet Union and the Berlin wall.

 

[Nate760]

I like to imagine the global tobacco control system collapsing sort of like the fall of the Soviet Union and the Berlin wall.

I would rate this as an inevitability, unless a series of unlikely events transpires in which vapor products become prohibited in most or all of the industrialized world. If things are left as they are, cigarette smoking will have been largely eradicated 10-15 years from now, and the tobacco control loonies will have had nothing to do with it. Moreover, they will be exposed as having fought tooth and nail against the technology that was primarily responsible for it.

I think they know they're fighting a life-or-death battle here, but it's not the lives of smokers they're concerned with saving. It's the life of their own hugely profitable, politically influential industry.

 

[sofarsogood]

It's time for an economist to run some tobacco sales-decline scenarios through a computerized macro economic model and see what it uncovers. I bet there are nations or States where a rapid decline in tobacco taxes would create financial crisises. Those would ripple through the world economy partly by lowering the credit worthiness of those governments which would lower the financial stability of the banks that loaned that money. I also bet that the units of government and banks who might face this know who they are and they know the magnitude of the problem because they've done the calculations already but haven't shared them with the public. This is the 800 billion pound gorilla in the room. Finding a vivid way to demonstrate that would heat up the debate a lot. When will some brave economist get this done for us?

May be the collapse of the tobacco market will cause a global financial melt down and governments know that already.

 

[Uma]

It's time for an economist to run some tobacco sales-decline scenarios through a computerized macro economic model and see what it uncovers. I bet there are nations or States where a rapid decline in tobacco taxes would create financial crisises. Those would ripple through the world economy partly by lowering the credit worthiness of those governments which would lower the financial stability of the banks that loaned that money. I also bet that the units of government and banks who might face this know who they are and they know the magnitude of the problem because they've done the calculations already but haven't shared them with the public. This is the 800 billion pound gorilla in the room. Finding a vivid way to demonstrate that would heat up the debate a lot. When will some brave economist get this done for us?

May be the collapse of the tobacco market will cause a global financial melt down and governments know that already.

This document backs up your thoughts.
Smoke Traders | TVO

 

[OCD]

A few years ago, on an unrelated topic, a neighbor lady made a wonderful generalization that covers a lot of things. She said, follow the money.

The best number I can find is smokers world wide fork over $1 trillion a year for their tobacco. Something like 75% of that is taxes. A LOT of people benefit from that money. Those beneficiaries are literally freaking out because their peice of that pie could be disappearing very soon.

When a scientist says there isn't enough data about ecigs may be he is just angling for a research grant. That's how he makes his living. If tobacco use starts declining exponentially governments will lose interest in funding tobacco related research. That's going to put a lot of Phd's out of work. Of course they will say there isn't enough information until they can't squeeze any more funding out of the government.

Follow the money...

The money is substantial for both tobacco and government from the smoking alone but then also consider the treatments where pharma benefits and government again through more taxes. Eliminating or even reducing the death march tobacco products promote has a trickle down for decades in treating many illnesses that my guess would be at least equal to if not greater in terms of dollar revenue.

One other US consideration is tobacco bonds that without enough smokers will fail to deliver the promised cash sooner than anticipated.

You are absolutely correct though "follow the money" is the sole reason for efforts to slow the adoption of vaping over smoking. Simply too much to be made off the deaths and suffering to allow any harm reduction option that doesnt replace the money currently coming in, the lives or the quality of them does not count for a dime in the big equation.

 

[DC2]

The money is substantial for both tobacco and government from the smoking alone but then also consider the treatments where pharma benefits and government again through more taxes. Eliminating or even reducing the death march tobacco products promote has a trickle down for decades in treating many illnesses that my guess would be at least equal to if not greater in terms of dollar revenue.

One other US consideration is tobacco bonds that without enough smokers will fail to deliver the promised cash sooner than anticipated.

You are absolutely correct though "follow the money" is the sole reason for efforts to slow the adoption of vaping over smoking. Simply too much to be made off the deaths and suffering to allow any harm reduction option that doesnt replace the money currently coming in, the lives or the quality of them does not count for a dime in the big equation.

The more people I see that show they understand this obvious and undeniable dynamic, the more hope I have for the future of vaping.
And by extension (on not just this but many other topics) the more hope I see for the chance to hopefully fix this mess.

And the more people I see that think tinfoil hats are in order, the more I understand how the sheeple can be so easily led by the nose to their destruction.