The ALA's disgraceful actions: Causes?

[Oliver]

Just why are the ALA so vehemently opposed to the e-cig? The evidence that has been gathered by laboratory testing at multiple sites shows that they are vastly safer than tobacco smoking.

Sure, no-one wants non-smokers to start vaping, and it would be vastly preferable for all smokers to quit - but many don't want to or, indeed, can't (remember that FDA sanctioned nicotine replacement therapies have only a 5% success rate long term).

Surely providing smokers with safer alternatives in tandem with encouraging them to quit is the best solution?

To me, there are three explanations for the ALA's position:

1. Group-think: the leadership of the ALA read the FDA's misleading report of May 2010, and it was a done deal. No-one in the organisation has since been prepared to revise this for fear of rocking the boat, and all appeals against their position fall on deaf ears.

2. The ALA, being heavily sponsored by pharmaceutical companies have realised that e-cigs present a vast potential dent in their sponsors' profits. As such, they are prepared to lobby against e-cigs, deferring to the FDA's "authority" on the matter in order to protect their own moral standing.

3. The ALA have fallen prey to the anti-smoker ideology: "Quit or die" is their core belief. Their leadership and membership cannot stand anything that resembles smoking, and so they will not countenance it. At what price? At the price that the e-cigarette, an invention that could revolutionise public health, is viewed as pariah - and the greatest reduction in untimely deaths for decades is missed.

We must all fight to expose this utter irrationality - whatever its cause. Keep telling the truth, keep spelling out the facts.

 

[BuzzKill]

American Library Association
??

ALA is ?

 

[zelda]

Ironically it's the American Lung Association. They want to ban ecigs state by state.

 

[DC2]

I liked the idea posed by Janetda... perhaps we can file a class action suit against them.

I mean, we clearly have little chance of filing one against the FDA due to laws protecting them from being sued, although it has been done in a few rare circumstances in the past.

 

[doots]

They should ban Cigs first, before worrying about anything else to ban. If that is their real agenda and they were so concerned about lungs and peoples health??

 

[DC2]

They should ban Cigs first, before worrying about anything else to ban. If that is their real agenda and they were so concerned about lungs and peoples health??

Congress has already prohibited, by special order, anyone from banning cigarettes.
This happened a long time ago, and there does not appear to be any changes in the works.

 

[BuzzKill]

Ironically it's the American Lung Association. They want to ban ecigs state by state.

Should'nt they be TESTING THEM ??

WTH is the deal here , bandwagon's gone WILD !!

I mean really , IF any of these groups were seriously interested in OUR HEALTH they would test these things .

Apparently it's quit or DIE , well SCREW YOU !

None of these groups really care about an alternative , Say E-Cigs were tested to death ( no pun intended ) and were found to be VERY SAFE ,would they still oppose them ??

Most likely YES , they get their funding from FEAR , Now would'nt it be a HOOT if the ALA and Big T were in BED ?

unbelievable , I dont know what to say.

 

[Janetda]

I think it's worth noting here that it's widely reported that it was the ASH, ALA and ACA, that pushed the FDA to take action, not the other way around. These are the organizations that created Quit or Die, they didn't just adopted them. It's time we took a stand against these organizations. I for one have furious that for many years there has been published studies proving that smokeless tobacco was much less harmful than combustible cigarettes and yet I was never told. I could have stopped smoking years ago had I known. This is outrageous and they need to be called on it.

 

[Israfil]

We would need a serious public outcry to get anything done...If I figure out a way I'll post it!

 

[quasimod]

Of the 3 options SmokeyJoe has given, I think #3, "Quit or Die" as a core belief, may be closest to the truth. However, I think there is also something else going on here.

I think large organizations with huge budgets can become bureaucratic machines with no purpose other than to perpetuate themselves. Read Radley Balko's articles about the disturbing turn that MADD has taken:

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa501.pdf

MADD started as a well-intended, grass-roots charitable organization, but over time has mutated into a serious threat to civil liberties. There are disturbing similarities between MADD and the ALA.

 

[Col. Gaunt]

They just want to ban them because they are not getting tax money out of the sales.

 

[quasimod]

They just want to ban them because they are not getting tax money out of the sales.

I don't think the ALA gets tax money from tobacco sales.

 

[Col. Gaunt]

I don't think the ALA gets tax money from tobacco sales.

They get their funding from somewhere.

 

[keyzygirl]

WTH are we gonna do?

 

[Col. Gaunt]

WTH are we gonna do?

Stock up like your life depends on it!

 

[keyzygirl]

Just did that,now what?

 

[Col. Gaunt]

Just did that,now what?

Pray? Write your congressman? Call ghostbusters?

 

[SheerLuckHolmes]

WTH are we gonna do?

Relax! Do not stop educating and spreading the word. Write everyone and every offical and every organization with your story of improved health. But for sure relax.

E-cigs have established a beachhead. The are literally hundreds of people world wide that are switching to e-cigs everyday. This has and is becoming too big to be ignored, which is why BT and BP are fighting back through the FDA, ALA et. al.

The bigger this movement gets the more the powerful and big money will fight back. But the hypocricy and greed are become impossible for the average citizen to not see it is a play for the money and screw the health and wellness of the American people.

The tide is turning in our favor, by virtue of the fact that these organizations are making a play.

The benefits of vaping are so huge that they will prove impossible to ignore. Just vape on, doing what you can do on an indivdual basis to promote vaping and relax.

 

[PlanetScribbles]

WTH are we gonna do?

Get your unflavoured stock and split it ten ways. Create equal mixes of 26mg, 22mg, 18mg, ...etc... to 2mg.

Start at the strongest and work down to the weakest. At the end you should be able to vape 0mg, easily DIYable - ban or no ban, with little fuss

 

[woolfe99]

The core of the issue is the confusion of science with morality. The best way to explain it is the analogy with sex education. Consider the following three things: sex, condoms, abstinence. If we characterize the risk of sex as unwanted pregnancy + STD's, condoms reduce the risk of those things by 98%, and abstinence reduces the risk of those things by 100%. If we are going to look at the issue from a purely scientific perspective, with public health and safety as the priority, then the best advice is to teach abstinence + condoms, i.e. to tell people that abstinence is safest, but if you are not going to abstain, then use a condom. The reason some people advocate abstinence only is obviously because of morality. Some people believe that non-marital sex is immoral, and accordingly, their form of "education" is to give you advice informed by their sense of morality, rather than what is necessarily in your best interests from the standpoint of health and safety.

The analogy is near perfect. Sex, condoms, abstinence = smoking, e-cigarettes, quitting nicotine entirely. Again, if the concern is public health and the framework is science, you will advise people to quit nicotine entirely, but tell them that if they are unable or unwilling to do so, then use e-cigarettes, smokeless, NRT's, etc. on a long term basis. Smoking is obviously a health and safety issue and really shouldn't be considered a "moral" issue. I'm sure that organizations like ALA would agree with that in principle. However, the truth is that the anti-smoking campaign, which was originally based on science and was entirely in the interests of promoting public health and safety, relied heavily on using very extreme rhetoric to scare people into quitting. That rhetoric in turn rubbed off on the general population, and now it has implictly become a moral issue in society. And as with any morality, there are no shades of gray. Cigarettes are not merely bad for your health, they are "evil." Accordingly, anything associated with cigarettes - including nicotine - is "evil." They might tolerate NRT's because they don't resemble cigarettes and everyone using them is supposed to taper them off in a month or two. But e-cigs resemble too closely the cigarette anti-christ, and worse yet, most people who substitute them for regular cigs have no intention of quitting.

"Quit or die" is black and white thinking. It isn't science. It's morality.

This isn't about science and public health any more and hasn't been for a long time. Even organizations like ALA, which was once a pioneer in informing the public about the dangers of tobacco smoking, have now eschewed their ethical responsibility to provide accurate information to the public in favor of participating in the ongoing moral crusade against tobacco which has swept society.

It just isn't rational, not any more. And unfortunately, there is little that can be done about it except to hope that e-cigs become so damn common and popular before the government gets around to banning them that it becomes impossible and impractical to ban them.

- wolf