What we are up against

[Vocalek]

Bill sent me this link. It explains a lot.

Smoking ban draws interest, cash from outside Springfield | Springfield News-Leader | News-Leader.com

Citizens for Clean Air Springfield has raised $65,040 to support the April 5 ballot measure, according to a report filed Saturday.


All but $545 of that total has come from just three entities: the American Cancer Society, the ACS Cancer Action Network and the local office of the American Heart Association.

If you have been making monetary contributions to any of these "charities" you have been in effect supporting their campaign to take away everything safer that you can substitute for smoking. (Well, except of course for the pharmaceutical products--but for most smokers they don't make very good substitutes.)

 

[Placebo Effect]

In the future, it'll be interesting to see if the alphabet groups will risk negative PR by contributing to efforts to solely ban the use of electronic cigarettes indoors.

 

[yvilla]

They already did that. Savannah, Georgia, for one.

 

[addisdaddy07]

The efforts weren't solely to ban e-cigs. It was an across the board no smoking ban that happened to include e-cigs or anything to try to "get around" the no smoking rules. Nobody really cares that we aren't actually smoking. It looks like we are, and that is enough for the uneducated masses.

 

[TNT]

Part of my United Way contribution goes to the American Cancer Society (the other part goes to the local women's shelter, for whatever that's worth).

Here's my thought: what if e-cigs are proven to be effective and relatively safe? What existential responsibility will the ACS and their fellow travellers feel if they tried to ban something that ultimately would have saved many lives? You know, "We put our resources towards encouraging things that didn't work for most people and actively campaigned against stuff that thousands of anecdotal reports said were effective?"

To put it in an "all politics are local" kind of way, what will they say to someone who writes, "My uncle Fred was having success with e-cigs, but gave them up because of what he was told by you and your friends... unable to quit, he returned to smokes, and now he's dead because of lung cancer?"

 

[Eddie.Willers]

It seems to me that the plethora of alphabet agencies and charities are determined to take away choice from all of us by de-normalizing smoking and anything that "looks" like smoking. Big Pharma, meanwhile, gets a pass for nicotine replacement therapies that it develops.

Betcha last dollar that if e-cigs had been invented, produced and marketed by Big Pharma, we wouldn´t be seeing these objections.

 

[Who_Wants_To_Know]

Part of my United Way contribution goes to the American Cancer Society (the other part goes to the local women's shelter, for whatever that's worth).

Here's my thought: what if e-cigs are proven to be effective and relatively safe? What existential responsibility will the ACS and their fellow travellers feel if they tried to ban something that ultimately would have saved many lives? You know, "We put our resources towards encouraging things that didn't work for most people and actively campaigned against stuff that thousands of anecdotal reports said were effective?"

To put it in an "all politics are local" kind of way, what will they say to someone who writes, "My uncle Fred was having success with e-cigs, but gave them up because of what he was told by you and your friends... unable to quit, he returned to smokes, and now he's dead because of lung cancer?"

They don't care, what's a few deaths compared to a nice pocket lining. They aren't the ones who are getting killed after all. Your uncle Fred clearly just did not understand the danger. He's better off dead from smoking than he would be with the "dangers" of e-cigs that only our medical teams could find, right under that check we wrote them.

 

[Zal42]

Part of my United Way contribution goes to the American Cancer Society (the other part goes to the local women's shelter, for whatever that's worth).

Next time, don't give to United Way at all. Give directly to the women's shelter. They'll get more money (since united way won't be taking a cut) and you don't have to support ACS. Unless you want to, of course.

Betcha last dollar that if e-cigs had been invented, produced and marketed by Big Pharma, we wouldn´t be seeing these objections.

Right on the money.

 

[Vap0rJay]

Betcha last dollar that if e-cigs had been invented, produced and marketed by Big Pharma, we wouldn´t be seeing these objections.

Bingo. And... side effects would include: Soreness, fever, changes in mood, rash, bleeding of the gums, hallucinations, thoughts of suicide, depression, lack of libido, etc etc etc etc

Ya know, all the big pharma side effects just like on all their "safe, FDA approved" products

 

[rolygate]

I think the dangerous side effects of e-cigarettes need to be flagged up:

Possible sore throat (if you drink less fluids than you should anyway), less minor illnesses which previously allowed you to take a day off work and therefore recover from stress, changes in mood that can include increased happiness for both the e-cig user and family members, hallucinations that may include thoughts of being able to go back to long walks or even jogging, increased libido plus the physical ability to do something about it, complaints by partner regarding the previous, less poverty caused by expensive tobacco purchases, more invitations from non-smoking friends, greater ability to go out anywhere you like, huge increase in pension payouts by the state due to longer-lived populace, the lack of research into inhaled materials in e-cigarette refills such as PG which has only had 70 years of investigation and cannot be considered safe yet, thousands of jobs lost in the Phillipines and other poor countries due to less pharma manufacturing of NRTs, lower share values of pharma corporations due to reduced drug sales, unfortunate propensity of complete strangers to walk up to you and start a conversation even in New York, greater self-esteem as you are no longer a slave to tobacco, and the possibility of even more dangerous side-effects like the aforementioned as yet undiscovered by the FDA who are working hard on your behalf to uncover them.

The FDA advise that due to the previous list of dangerous side-effects due to e-cigarette use, smokers should continue to use tobacco.

 

[GiddyLydia]

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the image of the American Cancer Society sleeping , maybe not with, but in the same bed as the cigarette industry.

It's just not that tough to understand the difference between inhaling burning leaves that have been treated with dangerous chemicals and inhaling nicotine-infused vapor. Campaigns against reality (at least in the US) are virtually always about money, but I don't understand how the ACS benefits from this position. What am I missing?

 

[DaDoc]

love your side effect flag

I think the dangerous side effects of e-cigarettes need to be flagged up:

Possible sore throat (if you drink less fluids than you should anyway), less minor illnesses which previously allowed you to take a day off work and therefore recover from stress, changes in mood that can include increased happiness for both the e-cig user and family members, hallucinations that may include thoughts of being able to go back to long walks or even jogging, increased libido plus the physical ability to do something about it, complaints by partner regarding the previous, less poverty caused by expensive tobacco purchases, more invitations from non-smoking friends, greater ability to go out anywhere you like, huge increase in pension payouts by the state due to longer-lived populace, the lack of research into inhaled materials in e-cigarette refills such as PG which has only had 70 years of investigation and cannot be considered safe yet, thousands of jobs lost in the Phillipines and other poor countries due to less pharma manufacturing of NRTs, lower share values of pharma corporations due to reduced drug sales, unfortunate propensity of complete strangers to walk up to you and start a conversation even in New York, greater self-esteem as you are no longer a slave to tobacco, and the possibility of even more dangerous side-effects like the aforementioned as yet undiscovered by the FDA who are working hard on your behalf to uncover them.

The FDA advise that due to the previous list of dangerous side-effects due to e-cigarette use, smokers should continue to use tobacco.

 

[rolygate]

@GLydia

The American society for cancer is a long, long way from a body that is dedicated to eliminating cancer. Because of its 'ownership', in many peoples' opinion it has in effect become, like other similar groups, a body that promotes cancer. All you need to know in order to rationalise that is to see where its funding comes from - pharma. The implications are then:

1. Pharma needs to eliminate effective, safe tobacco alternatives such as e-cigarettes and Snus, in order to protect its NRT sales. If smokers switch to these alternatives, NRTs become irrelevant as there is no need to quit. NRTs are a billion-dollar global market and pharma will do anything to protect it. Pharma's agenda is to make money, it is certainly not to save life. That might happen as a by-product, some or most of the time depending on your opinion - but the main driver is to make money.

The more who switch, the less who die. Preventing the availability of these alternatives kills, and there are 25 years of data from Sweden that prove it - Sweden has the lowest male cancer death rate in Europe. We might say that it has the lowest rate in the developed world, which would almost certainly be true, but some 'developed' countries have imperfect reporting that makes their cancer death stats look better than they are, since they don't really know who died from what.

2. The most profitable drugs may also be dangerous but that is simply unfortunate, it will not result in them being removed from the market. You could probably make up a table of drugs with their: cost in money / deaths due to it / real value in human terms; and Chantix would be right at the top as the most expensive, dangerous, useless drug out there. There is no need for it whatsoever since if you don't want people to die from smoking or kill others with their smoke, then put them on an e-cigarette and/or Snus - you have at least a 75% chance of them succeeding in switching if they are well-mentored (as against a less than 10% chance of success with NRTs), and their risk of death is then going to be about 0.3 on the scale to 100, according to the research. In other words, if they take up an e-cig/Snus they live, if they take Chantix there is a significant risk of death due to heart attack, suicide, or return to smoking. Plus the risk they may kill their family. But remember: Chantix is very profitable for pharma.

3. There is also a reasonable suspicion that it is not really in the interests of the US health industry to remove cancer or reduce it substantially. Cancer treatment drugs are extremely profitable, and cancer treatment accounts for a substantial proportion of health industry earnings. Therefore we might perhaps keep in mind that there is a subtle pressure everywhere, and not just in the US, to maintain the status quo. If cancer disappeared tomorrow, for example, the repercussions would be immense, not just for the industry, but possibly for the economy as a whole.

It's a gravy train, or the status quo, depending on how you look at it. There is very strong financial pressure for pharma to maintain the status quo and they are doing everything in their power to keep it so. Their agents, such as the cancer society, are deeply involved in that work. The fact that the end result is the maintenance of the current cancer death rate, not its reduction, seems to have escaped a lot of people. Smoking is by far the largest cause of cancer; cancer deaths from smoking will be totally eliminated by switching to e-cigarettes; the cancer society is helping pharma to try and stop e-cigarettes. The cancer society is promoting cancer.

The tobacco industry has become much closer to the pharma industry of late, since their objectives are substantially similar. There is no question of those objectives being mutually exclusive, in fact they are virtually the same. Perhaps this is why some tobacco and pharma corporations have the same ownership. It's very good business for both: people smoke, they try to quit, they take the NRTs, they fail and return to smoking, ad infinitum. It works well for both sides. And when they get ill, pharma supplies the heavyweight treatment drugs. Everybody wins. It's kind of like a food company owning farms, it just makes sense.

So people who work for pharma are also working for tobacco, and there is plenty of crossover. The cancer society wouldn't gain if cancer disappeared tomorrow, after all. Their incredible salaries would vaporise and there's no other gravy train around that could substitute on that sort of scale.

 

[ThreePutt]

Bingo. And... side effects would include: Soreness, fever, changes in mood, rash, bleeding of the gums, hallucinations, thoughts of suicide, depression, lack of libido, etc etc etc etc

Ya know, all the big pharma side effects just like on all their "safe, FDA approved" products

Tell me about it! My wife and I hear a drug ad, and start to make up side effects before they're announced, and then see how close we are. Usually, one of us will shout out "DEATH", and then laugh when they say "....and in some cases, may be serious or fatal".

If we don't kill ya, we'll cure ya!

 

[ThreePutt]

@GLydia

The American society for cancer is a long, long way from a body that is dedicated to eliminating cancer. Because of its 'ownership', in many peoples' opinion it has in effect become, like other similar groups, a body that promotes cancer. All you need to know in order to rationalise that is to see where its funding comes from - pharma. The implications are then:

1. Pharma needs to eliminate effective, safe tobacco alternatives such as e-cigarettes and Snus, in order to protect its NRT sales. If smokers switch to these alternatives, NRTs become irrelevant as there is no need to quit. NRTs are a billion-dollar global market ...

You know, I used to think the hippies were nuts by doing their holistic and natural remedies. At this stage in my life, its tough to see the medicine that my wife takes do more harm than good. My wife has a doctor that's Vietnamese, and prescribes natural remedies along with traditional Rx. I'm starting to listen and research.

I don't think health and recovery are the mission statements of Big Pharma... Same goes with many doctors...

 

[rolygate]

I wouldn't blame the doctors, here, because they are strongly motivated to keep the status quo. Their training, the very conservative nature of their profession, and the pressures placed on them, mean they must do so. Change takes a long, long time to filter down to the front line - the GPs or general physicians.

Example: I don't know what the situation is in any other country but in the UK, GPs who have thought carefully about the issue will tell you that 80% of the patients they see are in their surgery due to lifestyle choices. Presumably, many of them want a pill to enable them to keep living as they are, they don't want to change they way they live. The GP has to go with the flow.

That being the case, a sensible way to manage a doctor's practice would be have everyone see a triage nurse as the first stop, and fill in a detailed form with all their relevant life details. Then, assuming they were not part of the minority who have an illness unrelated to lifestyle, they would get an appointment with a nutritionist, a physical trainer, and a lifestyle coach. They wouldn't even get to see a doctor until they had changed to a healthier way of living. Unfortunately, the practice would go bankrupt, as people just want a pill to let them keep on as they are.

Example: much illness must be caused by incorrect diet. However, until very recently, nutrition played no part whatsoever in any doctor's advice or treatment. There has always been a strong resistance among the medical profession to contemplate any other form of therapy apart from pharmaceutical remedy or surgery. The logic of this approach has never been seriously questioned.

Example: you will find instances of patients who have suffered from a serious bowel disease for 25 years and despite having seen dozens of doctors and consultants, have never once on any occasion been asked about their diet or received dietary advice. Instead, a large range of pharmaceuticals are prescribed, in ever-increasing doses, and surgery is advised when this is no longer effective in masking some of the symptoms. If this seems illogical, it probably is. A patient who carries out an extensive and detailed nutritional investigation, locating answers that are not available in the literature - a Lorenzo's Oil event in fact - may achieve a surprising and persistent remission. (Happened to someone in my family.)

Example: it takes over twenty years for obvious medical advances to filter down to the front line. Everyone has known for at least twenty years that quit-or-die doesn't work for drug addicts - most will risk death - and that harm reduction saves many more lives. Perhaps in another ten or twenty years, doctors will actually be putting harm reduction into practice.

Current medical practice is to prescribe pharmaceuticals or surgery as the primary remedies. Until that changes - nothing much will change.

 

[Uncle Willie]

Let's face it.. we live in a World filled with busy bodies with little else to do but infringe on and trample the rights of others, based on the little if any real knowledge the busy body may actually have .. they do this to

1) Justify their own existence
2) Convince themselves they are somehow doing the right thing for Mankind and the Human Race

Texting and cell phone use when driving is certainly well ahead of the e-cig as a health hazard ..

 

[ThreePutt]

Good points, Roly, and I overlooked those that live outside of the US. There are definitely some similarities in patient awareness and education on healthier living. As I write that, I realize that isn't true - there is more than enough material to teach us - we just don't listen or apply it. Agreed, that we look to a pill and expect the doctor to give us a license to keep living as we have been.

Our American medical system adds the twist of big pharmaceuticals, who spend billions on advertising these drugs. They have armies of "drug reps", that visit doctor's offices and pitch the latest "cure". The doctors then may get a stipend or kickback from these companies. The part on the kickback, I'm not absolutely sure of, but it seems strange that the doctor suddenly pushes this new variety of pill/treatment. We're one of the few countries in the world that allows the advertisement of medicines on TV/radio/print. It's not about healthy living. It's about a pill that can extend our lives, while allowing us to treat our bodies like crap. The comments on the side effects are true. Sleeping aids, hair growth, stop smoking, anti-depressants, weight loss, high blood pressure, skin rash - doesn't matter. Legally, they list the side effects, and if you posted them all out, you'd never take any of those products. And you guys call this a cure or treatment?

 

[Uncle Willie]

Good points, Roly, and I overlooked those that live outside of the US. There are definitely some similarities in patient awareness and education on healthier living. As I write that, I realize that isn't true - there is more than enough material to teach us - we just don't listen or apply it. Agreed, that we look to a pill and expect the doctor to give us a license to keep living as we have been.

Our American medical system adds the twist of big pharmaceuticals, who spend billions on advertising these drugs. They have armies of "drug reps", that visit doctor's offices and pitch the latest "cure". The doctors then may get a stipend or kickback from these companies. The part on the kickback, I'm not absolutely sure of, but it seems strange that the doctor suddenly pushes this new variety of pill/treatment. We're one of the few countries in the world that allows the advertisement of medicines on TV/radio/print. It's not about healthy living. It's about a pill that can extend our lives, while allowing us to treat our bodies like crap. The comments on the side effects are true. Sleeping aids, hair growth, stop smoking, anti-depressants, weight loss, high blood pressure, skin rash - doesn't matter. Legally, they list the side effects, and if you posted them all out, you'd never take any of those products. And you guys call this a cure or treatment?

Without pharmaceuticals and the investments made by pharmaceutical companies, where would some that truly benefit be .. ?? The old joke about the cure being worse than the disease .. ask those that have had their lives extended and quality of life improved .. they will invariably take the pill over the alternative ..

 

[ThreePutt]

Agreed, Willie. I think overall lifespans and quality of life can be attributed to medical advances. And those pharmas spend billions in R&D to get the drug to market. I can fully understand that this, in combination with the FDA standards, is the reason our drugs are so costly.

Although I think the end-game is changing. Quality of life and longevity is one thing if you have a disease or illness. Quality of life by replacing nutrition and exercise by taking a pill is more driven by money.

I'm just ranting on a Friday. There are valid points to both sides of the argument, and I find myself positioned neatly between the viewpoints. I'm not anti-corporation, and not anti-natural remedies. But looking at the pills my wife takes on a daily basis... surely there could be a better way to keep yourself healthy.