I'm amazed at the outright lying of the other side. They lie with confidence and arrogance. I've seen that before. They believe they will get their way regardless of the merits. If they are right what's the point of being political .....
Well, there are different ways to go about it. The foundation is to join and help your national consumer group, since unless people do that, the basics are not being covered.
After that it's a matter of sophisticated allocation of resources. In other words, goals have to be set and worked toward. For example the two priorities right now are (1) fighting corrupt and unjust local legislation and (b) fighting back against the propaganda. No other issue is remotely as important (including yet more research to be completely ignored).
...and when do I start stockpiling nic and some simple devices?
That may be necessary when the FDA deeming proposals are published and they eventually lead to restrictive regulations and taxes; and if the proposals / regulations survive legal challenge. As of now we have some way to go before the 'apocalypse' situation arises. In any case, the black market will fill in the holes left by corrupt laws. The main result of a black market taking over a legal one is that prices go up and quality goes down, and availability is reduced. There will be a difficult time period between harsh regulations being imposed and then surviving legal obstacles, and the FDA enforcing the new laws on vendors by closing them down, and the black market replacing all the online and B&M vendors who close up. During that time slot, supplies will be very restricted. There is probably a long way to go yet until we see that point (at least a year and maybe up to three years). No action needed as yet, as far as stockpiling goes. If we are very, very lucky, then perhaps the rubbish the FDA intend to implement in order to protect drug sales (by protecting cigarette sales and the disease they cause) will be struck down by the courts.
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If nicotine is barely or not reinforcing in never smokers the same is going to be true with kids who never smoked so how addicted can they get? Is anybody investigating the gateway theory? Are there any statistics or data from the vaping industry about how many newbies are starting and how things turn out?
The vapers and the vape industry are not making their strong arguments. Why not?
If you mean about there being a lack of any gateway effect in (a) never-smokers becoming vapers, and/or (b) never-smokers transitioning to smoking via vaping, then obtaining the data is not easy. It has only been obtained and openly published in the UK, where Prof West runs the only honest, up-to-date smoking and vaping statistics-gathering operation in the world - the Smoking Toolkit study. See:
Smoking In England | Welcome
Latest Statistics - Smoking In England
STS Documents - Smoking In England
BMC Public Health | Full text | 'The Smoking Toolkit Study': A national study of smoking and smoking cessation in England
http://www.rjwest.co.uk/links.php
These stats are remarkably cheap to obtain and process, considering, but of course they primarily require an independent person or body to organise, run and oversee the project. West doesn't care what the results show as long as smoking is being reduced, and recognises that THR is an efficient way to go about that*. The results are very clear indeed:
- Insignificant numbers of never-smokers and youth are becoming vapers
- Smoking prevalence has just started to show a fall in the UK after 5 years stuck at ~20% despite millions of pounds wasted on ineffective ways to reduce it
- The reduction in the number of smokers almost exactly equals the number of vapers switching to ecigs
So as far as the UK is concerned, we have an uncontestable answer: smoking prevalence is falling entirely due to vaping and there is no gateway of any kind (except of course the gateway out of smoking).
* Many commentators believe that THR is the only way to significantly reduce smoking once certain conditions obtain (including me:
http://www.ecigarette-politics.com/the-20-prevalence-rule.html ).
The US problem
This was achievable in the UK due to the tiny scale compared to the US. Only the CDC collects this sort of data, but they consistently lie about the results. Eventually, when the full dataset is released, observers are able to point out that everything the CDC says about the data has been a lie.
So there are two separate issues here:
1. Honest researchers appear harder to find in the USA. The problem may be caused by the vast amounts of money available to anyone prepared to lie about the issues. The UK is broke, by comparison, so the financial incentives to lie are not so prevalent.
2. Until someone like Prof West can get some kind of similar operation to the Smoking Toolkit longitudinal surveys going in the USA (ongoing data retrieval that clearly identifies the trends), these stats will be unavailable for use. In other words, the government control the data and will lie about it blatantly for profit.
Considering how (comparatively) cheap it is to get this data in the UK - peanuts by any US measurement of research costs - then it is likely that such a project would not cost a fortune even in the US. However, like all initiatives, it requires someone who is extremely determined to get the ball rolling. Such things have a snowball effect as more people come on board with the motivation to help it succeed, and then funding sources become available as a result. But it always requires that prime mover or nothing happens.
Apparently there is no one at all in the USA who wants to see honest smoking and vaping statistics, and who is prepared to learn how to do it from Prof West.
