In the News 26th October

Mondays News at a glance:

The Straw Man – Truth Can Be So Inconvenient, Can’t It? – Playing politics with smoking and vaping – E Cigarette Advocacy Webinar featuring Greg Conley, Dr. Michael Siegel and Dr. Tim McAuley – Worth Reading this Weekend – Norwegian government parties wants to allow e-cigarettes with nicotine – The lifesaving innovation helping smokers quit is being hampered by overzealous EU regulation – How does Electronic Cigarette Access affect Adolescent Smoking? – Democratic Senators Urge OMB to Decimate Electronic Cigarette Industry – 2014 NYTS reveals lots of excellent news that CDC has failed to report – Nicotine Science and Policy – Daily Digest – Mon, 26 October 2015

The Straw Man

Mawsley – Planet of the Vapes

Drakeford’s proposals for vaping in Wales were put before the Assembly’s committee for Health and Social Care. It gave him a platform to continue his crusade without being taken to task over his lack of evidence to support the plans. No bales of substance, just feelings being waved around like ears of corn.
At the committee meeting, rather than presenting some facts, he opened up with the full horror of what he would have liked to have seen take place….

Truth Can Be So Inconvenient, Can’t It?

Dick Puddlecote

Following on from Thursday’s article here about how ‘public health’ isn’t at all interested in proving actual harm from e-cigs, instead merely spreading innuendo and scare stories in order to encourage clueless politicians to install bans …

So, it would appear that ‘public health’ has set its sights on convincing governments to ban e-cig use in public not by proving harm actually exists, but by “continued monitoring of public perception” to “guide clean air policy decisions” in favour of prohibition.

… it’s worth highlighting this from the mad mechanic’s blog too (emphases mine)….

Playing politics with smoking and vaping

Simon Clark – Taking Liberties

Does banning the sale of e-cigarettes to teenagers increase teen smoking rates?

A new report suggests it does, although the “statistically significant” increase among 12-17 year-olds was only 0.9 per cent.

It was enough however to generate a flurry of excitement on Twitter…

E Cigarette Advocacy Webinar

Featuring Greg Conley, Dr. Michael Siegel and Dr. Tim McAuley

Worth Reading this Weekend

The Vaping Giraffe

Last week I mentioned I’ve been discussing regulations with Sanner and Grimsrud. One of the main points we’ve been discussing is nicotine. Sanner and Grimsrud claims that nicotine, by itself with no tobacco present, is highly addictive and can cause cancer. No documentation have been provided. I’ve written a bit about this before and I also found a couple of quite interesting articles on the subject this week here and here. ….

Norwegian government parties wants to allow e-cigarettes with nicotine

The Vaping Giraffe

Today TV2, a large Norwegian TV channel,reports that governing parties Høyre and FRP wants to repeal the existing “e-cigarette ban”here in Norway. Currently e-cigarettes are subject to kind of a semi-ban. It is not legal to sell e-cigarettes or e-liquid containing nicotine, but as long as they don’t contain nicotine e-cigarettes are legal to sell, but subject to an advertising ban and an age limit (18 years). It’s great to see that politicians are welcoming vaping, but it’s a bit early to bring out the champagne just yet….

The lifesaving innovation helping smokers quit

Being hampered by overzealous EU regulation – Leave.EU

The innovation to help smokers quit that could save millions of lives is being held back by EU rules.

If you are one of the country’s three million vapers, or you know somebody who you would like to quit smoking, then you should vote ‘Leave’ in the EU referendum.

Article 20 of the EU’s Tobacco Products Directive, once implemented into UK law will introduce overzealous regulation on manufacturers of a product that is quite frankly saving lives – vaping devices. The concept that vaping devices should be subject to a tobacco products directive is in itself absurd. As Matt Ridley of The Times aptly puts it, “it’s like regulating coffee in a hard-drugs law”….

How does Electronic Cigarette Access affect Adolescent Smoking?

Download the full PDF

Understanding electronic cigarettes’ effect on tobacco smoking is a central economic and policy issue. This paper examines the causal impact of e-cigarette access on conventional cigarette use by adolescents. Regression analyses consider how state bans on e-cigarette sales to minors influence smoking rates among 12 to 17 year olds. Such bans yield a statistically significant 0.9 percentage point increase in recent smoking in this age group, relative to states without such bans…

VAEP- Vaping Advocacy and Education Project

Democratic Senators Urge OMB to Decimate Electronic Cigarette Industry

Michael Siegel – The Rest of the Story

 In a letter sent last Wednesday to the Office on Management and Budget (OMB), 11 Democratic senators, led by Jeff Merkley (OR) and Richard Blumenthal (CT), urged the agency to expedite its review of the FDA’s electronic cigarette deeming regulations and not to change the proposed grandfather date of February 15, 2007…

2014 NYTS reveals lots of excellent news that CDC has failed to report

Bill Godshall – ECF

While the CDC has cherry picked e-cig usage data from its NYTS (and other surveys) to create a public panic and lobby for the FDA’s deeming regulation (that would ban >99.9% of nicotine vapor products), the 2014 NYTS at http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/surveys/nyts/also found (but CDC has failed to report) that among 6th-12th grade students…

De Block announces a new rule on sales for the end of 2015

The Minister agrees with the SHC on different points, including the fact that electronic cigarettes with nicotine could play a role in anti-tobacco policies. E-cigarettes will be offered as a stopgap between cutting down and completely stopping smoking. E-cigarettes could be used like nicotine patches, as an aid to permanently giving up smoking.

Hungary Needs YOUR Support

Nicotine Science and Policy – Daily Digest