Roly, is this in consensus with our favorite Redhead's post about the endgame?
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Endgame discussions are popular with the antz but it looks to me as if the endgame* is farther away than ever.
* the end of tobacco use, either by reducing smoking prevalence or by banning it
Because:
Smoking prevalence is down to 20% or thereabouts in many places, and we now know that (a) it cannot be reduced any more by tobacco control measures, and (b) too many people make too much money from smoking to allow it to be banned or significantly reduced any further.
Only substitution works after the 20% Prevalence Rule operates (google that and read the lengthy explanation on Ecig Politics).
It's now obvious that the smoking economy can protect itself vigorously. It's a trillion-dollar plus machine and it's everywhere. Government, regional government, tobacco firms, pharmaceutical firms, 'public health' front groups, main street retailers, growers, distribution, hospitals, lung specialists, politicians, State Attorneys General, and many more - they all depend on smoking. Smoking used to have an 80% prevalence, now it's down to 20% or less, and it looks like that is their line in the sand: no more reduction.
They are fighting aggressively to protect the smoking that's left. They can't afford to see it shrink any further.
The US States are about the best example: some now depend on tobacco money to stave off bankruptcy. The shrinking MSA payments this year, due to the ecig effect, are causing them to scream in agony. The tobacco bonds they issued against future MSA payments are going to become junk if the slide continues, and they are desperate to keep taking the MSA money and stay afloat.
See how the Attorneys General are fighting as hard as they can to ban ecigs. The lies are being turned up to frenetic level to smear ecigs and protect smoking. If you wanted a definition of pure corruption and pure evil, you don't need to look any further than the State AG's who are fighting to ban ecigs and protect cigarette sales.
In the information age, you can't ban anything - or ban it by taxing it aggressively - because people can always get their supplies outside the legal channels.
In the UK, guns and drugs are banned, and they spend a king's ransom on enforcing that, but you can get them without too much trouble (it just puts the price up).
Banning or mega-taxing something just shifts the supply channel to the black market. Prohibition doesn't work and can't work.
When people believe they have a right to access a product, then resistance to corrupt laws becomes a national sport. The government becomes a laughing stock, or universally hated.
There are more THR products than ever before, and more people have access to those products via the web every day. You can't stop it, it isn't physically possible.
THR in Sweden is killing off smoking, not tobacco control. Snus is killing off smoking there. Male smoking prevalence falls at 1% per year, has done since 2003 at least, and will be just 5% by 2016. The endgame for smoking may well come but it won't be the endgame for tobacco or nicotine.
The antz have had to move the goalposts from smoking to tobacco to nicotine in order to keep up, keep their jobs, and keep that money rolling in. Their principal purpose now is to protect smoking, although being useful id_iots they mostly haven't figured that out yet.
Unfortunately when THR beats out smoking, the number of nicotine users doesn't fall, they just move across to another product. So the endgame for nicotine is as far away as ever. THR might eventually decimate smoking though. That isn't much use to the tobacco control industry though, as that means they'd be out of a job. In order to stay in the game they have to make nicotine the villain. That's becoming increasingly difficult because in the information age, people are becoming aware that (a) nicotine is a fairly harmless normal dietary ingredient that around 25% of the population need to supplement, and (b) the torrent of lies they need to make this work is gradually being exposed.
Just some of the points that have some relevance. That was written out straight in a couple of minutes so there are bound to be more
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