This Means War

[Jman8]

Was going to add an exclamation point to that subject title, but that would be overkill. Was also originally just looking to start this thread with the question of "who here really believes the stat of 400K die annually from smoking?"

IMO, given the stakes that vaping is currently up against, that figure needs to be thoroughly vetted and put within context of how that will be used to, suddenly and magically, include vapers in that figure. Which has already occurred given recent statements from health officials at federal or national level.

My first point here is this is clearly a propaganda tool, designed to alarm the general public that vaping leads to death. Or as some anti-smoking, ex-smoking, or unscrutinizing general public people will be made to believe, vaping causes death. I don't know how many people I've come into contact with that accept the 400K figure, and who further believe / spout off this notion that smoking causes death. In this thread, or anywhere, I'm always up for debating that. But this point I'm making in this paragraph is that it is a primary propaganda tool that drives the Tobacco Control Act and that is greatly influencing politics of eCigs (vaping nicotine).

My second point, which piggy-backs off that first one is that far more often than not, the people who I've ever debated with, regarding "smoking kills" are citing references from organizations (exactly) like CDC, ALA, ACS and FDA. As if these are completely legitimate organizations who's science is impeccable. But when I'm on a vaping forum and these SAME organizations release scientific data showing the gross harms that come from vaping, suddenly their scientific integrity is worthy of doubt and questioning. How is that? How is it they can be so undeniably right/accurate on smoking, but so farfetched and out of step with vaping data? I submit the reason they are off base on vaping data is because they were always off base on the smoking data.

My third and final point is that this means war. But that war has been raging for longer than eCigs have been around and for me means the war absolutely must mean fighting against the propaganda that is waged against traditional tobacco. It means attacking the data, credibility of studies, exposing funding sources, and waking general public up to actual facts. Yet, all this is already being done. Mostly by them on the other side, attacking our data, the credibility of our studies, exposing our funding sources and waking general public up to facts their interpretations of data. Our side (pro-tobacco or pro-alternative tobacco) has been doing this as well long before I wrote this post. So my cry for "this means war" isn't new to many who have been around the block a few dozen times. Though is a little new as it was really around 2014 that alternative tobacco products (i.e. eCigs) started becoming a part of the meme that 400K people die annually from usage of these products.

IMO, all the organizations I cited before are too big to fail, or lose in way our side of the war would like to see. All of them could superficially go away from 'tobacco control advocacy' and justify to general public that they serve a vital role in people's lives.

I wrote this piece, in all honesty, as a rant, as I cannot think of one single, simple way to win the war, especially given the players involved. The other side is too big too fail, and our side has enough traditional tobacco haters on it to ensure that what is (IMO) fundamentally driving the larger debate, will never really be squarely addressed. Smokers/ex-smokers either know from own experience or from an experience of a friend/relative that smoking can contribute to bad health and/or death. And with that as part of OUR reality, then the 400K number is both meaningless figure and serves as wonderful appeal to emotion in heated arguments. Could go down to 50K annually and still the experiences of horrible health will be salient points that can't be denied. Or may just as well go up to 1 billion people for how meaningless the number actually is when compared to own experience with smoking.

The fundamental point driving the debate isn't the number (400K), but what that number is said to represent: "smoking kills." The number just happens to help with propaganda tool that says smoking is the leading cause of (preventable) death here.

If smokers smoke, and smokers die, then smoking kills people. Which is partially to mostly how the 400K number is arrived at.
Likewise, if vapers vape, and vapers die, the vaping will be shown to kill people. Long term data will clearly show that vapers do die at some point. And to not see vaping nicotine as a contributing factor will be akin to not seeing that smoking was a contributing factor to the death of one who used smokes, at any point of their life.

Part of the endgame for the propaganda war is to get enough people who believe, without any need for debate, that vaping causes death.

What gives me solace, in this moment, is the degree to which that lie, like the traditional tobacco lie, is off base. Youth who take up smoking aren't getting killed as youth from smoking. In very rare instances, perhaps they die young. But the lie is sold at young age, and the ACTUAL gateway is realizing that lie is not applicable to the youth. Says the teenager: If they are lying about this, then perhaps they are lying about other things? And only way to be sure of this is to try out those other things or wait for peers that have tried them and hear what they have to say.

I do take solace in the lie and how it utterly works against their publicly stated mission (for the children). It works against their end game (always will) and works against their actual effectiveness on tobacco control, and always has. I take solace in the fact that it undermines credible science, and continue to hope science will, one day, bring proper perspective to the issue. And I take solace in the fact that the process is bigger than them, bigger than any human mind can conceive of and that the process is actually playing out perfectly...

...lies, propaganda, mistaken causes of death, and all.

 

[Uma]

The "experts" (ALA, TFK, CDC, etc) are paid to keep BT compititon at bay.


To learn the entire scheme, watch this insightful video,
Unlucky Strike: Private Health and the Science, Law and Politics of Smoking | Cato Institute

It's long, but so worth the lessons.

The BT does not pay the MSA, the smokers do.

 

[Katya]

(snip) the people who I've ever debated with, regarding "smoking kills" are citing references from organizations (exactly) like CDC, ALA, ACS and FDA. As if these are completely legitimate organizations who's science is impeccable.

Well, not me.

A lot of anti-smoking research has been tainted/encouraged/influenced by politics. The whole second-hand smoking BS has been completely discredited, for example. That is not to say that smoking is good for you.

I haven't seen any serious NIH-sponsored research wrt e-cigarettes, except for one study (NIH and a Polish University of Katowice). That study showed that e-cigarettes are pretty harmless.

The FDA and the CDC don't do any medical research at all.

Our medical research is fine--politics sucks. Special interest-sponsored research might be questionable, though.

So there....

 

[Talyon]

Voop I say, it's all Voop.....

 

[Nate760]

As I've mentioned in other threads, it makes me physically cringe when I hear vapers, as a matter of rhetorical convenience, regurgitating lies about second-hand smoke and 400,000 dead smokers per year and so on. The thinking seems to be that if we make smoking sound as deadly as possible, then this adds extra credibility to our decision to switch to e-cigs. In practice though, this is totally counterproductive to our interests. The people we're up against have become conditioned to thinking they can lie with impunity and invent numbers off the top of their head, and no one will question their veracity. When we allow those lies to go unchallenged, we only feed that mentality. When we repeat those lies as part of our own arguments, we become fully complicit in the dissemination of ANTZ propaganda, and we do nothing but damage our own credibility. The truth is on our side. We don't need lies.

 

[Mig01]

I agree, the effects of second hand smoke on non smokers have been grossly exagerated. However, a number of medical professionnals who know enough about the scientific method to realize that those second hand smoke death numbers are bogus never denounced those lies. I suspect that the reasoning is that, because smoking is indeed potentially harmful (the fact is that a heavy smoker has a risk to deveop lung cancer 25 times higher than a non smoker), anything that fuels restrictions on tobacco use is good. Essentially, the end justifies the means.
Now, the percentage of the adult population that smokes is at around 20% and it seems that this percentage is fairly stable, despite all the restrictions on where people can smoke, the prohibitive taxes, etc... What is happening is that the people who wanted to quit and succeeded using the tradional methods have already done so: cold turkey, gums, patches, nicotine inhalers (the medically approved ones with no vapor), hypnosis, acupuncture, you name it. The smokers that are left either do not want to quit or have failed to quit after trying.
In my case, after trying to quit several times and failing every time, I did not even want to quit anymore.
The evidence is starting to reveal that modern e-cigarettes (the ones that deliver sufficient quantities of nicotine through the inhaled vapor) are much more effective than other methods in helping people to reduce their tobacco smoking or to give it up altogether. In my case, I totally quit smoking when I started to vape, with no cravings for an analog cig whatsoever. My intention was just to perhaps vape from time to time instead of lighting a cigarette.
As the evidence is accumulating, more health professionnals are realizing that e-cigs are not only effective for reducing tobacco smoking, but that they are effective for the smokers who found it the hardest to quit. I believe that most health professionnals are pragmatists. As such, while they may prefer that their smoking patients not only quit smoking but also get rid of their nicotine dependency, they may see that vaping is a much safer alternative to smoking.
For instance, my family doctor was very pleased when I told her that I quit smoking after I started vaping. She even told me that, if I were to experience cravings if I eventually reduced the nicotine level in my e-liquid, to bring it back to a higher level. She told me that getting stuck with a nicotine dependancy may not be ideal, but that according to the available data, vaping is certainly much less risky than smoking.
In conclusion, it may be the medical community that ends up pushing against the lies on the e-cigs dangers

 

[jpargana]

(...)
For instance, my family doctor was very pleased when I told her that I quit smoking after I started vaping. She even told me that, if I were to experience cravings if I eventually reduced the nicotine level in my e-liquid, to bring it back to a higher level. She told me that getting stuck with a nicotine dependancy may not be ideal, but that according to the available data, vaping is certainly much less risky than smoking.
In conclusion, it may be the medical community that ends up pushing against the lies on the e-cigs dangers

^^^^^
This.


TRUE doctors, "real" doctors, who treat real people out there and get to see first-hand the obvious benefits ot the informed, ADULT choice we made! These are more likely to stand on our side.
Remember the 100 or so doctors who signed an oppen letter to the European Comission, when the EU tried to medicalize the e-cig in all Europe, on the last October.
Remember the 50 or so professors/investigators who wrote to the WHO ( ) defending the e-cig.

And then there are "hollywood" doctors, and "politician" doctors, who live in their ivory towers and could not care less about the health of REAL people out there!

 

[Berylanna]

Now, the percentage of the adult population that smokes is at around 20% and it seems that this percentage is fairly stable, despite all the restrictions on where people can smoke, the prohibitive taxes, etc... What is happening is that the people who wanted to quit and succeeded using the tradional methods have already done so: cold turkey, gums, patches, nicotine inhalers (the medically approved ones with no vapor), hypnosis, acupuncture, you name it. The smokers that are left either do not want to quit or have failed to quit after trying.

As the evidence is accumulating, more health professionnals are realizing that e-cigs are not only effective for reducing tobacco smoking, but that they are effective for the smokers who found it the hardest to quit. I believe that most health professionnals are pragmatists. As such, while they may prefer that their smoking patients not only quit smoking but also get rid of their nicotine dependency, they may see that vaping is a much safer alternative to smoking.
For instance, my family doctor was very pleased when I told her that I quit smoking after I started vaping. She even told me that, if I were to experience cravings if I eventually reduced the nicotine level in my e-liquid, to bring it back to a higher level. She told me that getting stuck with a nicotine dependancy may not be ideal, but that according to the available data, vaping is certainly much less risky than smoking.
In conclusion, it may be the medical community that ends up pushing against the lies on the e-cigs dangers

Up to now, they've all been afraid of losing reputation if they speak up publicly against their "public face" organizations.

And, sadly, legislative bodies seem unable to distinguish between medical professionals (MD's, nurses, etc) and "health professionals" which often means lawyers, social workers, etc funded by tobacco taxes, BP donations, or Master Settlement funds.