Vapers Digest 17th August
Thursday’s News at a glance:
A Typology of Vapers – A Nicotine-Focused Framework for Public Health – Does vaping cause Popcorn Lung? – There is no safe level of research – The great plain packaging swindle – Views on e-cigarettes may need rethinking – Fund The Future – New York schools to install ‘bullying’, vaping detectors – Hollywood’s New Relationship with E-cigarettes – Nicotine Science and Policy Daily Digest
A Typology of Vapers
Paul Barnes, Facts Do Matter
Typology. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (sorry Mirriam-Webster, I’m English, not American; although here, both have the same definition) is “A classification according to general type, especially in archaeology, psychology, or the social sciences.”
Amusingly, it can also be defined as “The study and interpretation of types and symbols, originally especially in the Bible.” As I’m in no way going to be analysing the Bible, the former definition applies. Here, it refers to this paper, and after reading the abstract my initial reaction was to award it with the “Pointless Research Award”.
A Nicotine-Focused Framework
Kevin Crowley, Vaping Links
The FDA’s Mitch Zeller & Dr. Scott Gottlieb have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine: “A Nicotine-Focused Framework for Public Health”
While claiming nicotine is the center of “addiction” and the reductionof nicotine as the answer to reduce tobacco use… their seemingly contrived objective is in part below:
A Nicotine-Focused Framework for Public Health – NEJM
Does vaping cause Popcorn Lung?
Colin Mendelsohn
Answer: NO
A 67-year old patient of mine quit smoking earlier this year by switching to an e-cigarette, an impressive achievement after 50 years of smoking 20 cigarettes a day. He found using an Innokin T22 with nicotine-free e-liquid ‘90% as satisfying as smoking’.
Recently a friend told him he could get ‘popcorn lung’ from vaping, so he stopped immediately and has been smoking several cigarettes a day since.
There is no safe level of research
Head Rambles
A phrase that is quite common these days is “there is no safe level of” followed by the target of the day.
Of course anyone with a modicum of sense will realise that this is bilge and that the dose makes the poison.
Tobacco Control have however managed to plumb new depths and are now claiming that a “social smoker” who may smoke three or four cigarettes a week runs the same risks as someone who gets through twenty or more a day.
According to a Belgian study, #vaping is essential to reduce tobacco use. https://t.co/PPNBgj2n8f
— IBVTA (@TheIBVTA) August 17, 2017
The great plain packaging swindle
Satyajeet Marar
Newly released government data has confirmed that more people smoke in Australia than they did in 2013. This is despite Australia being home to the world’s most expensive cigarettes and world-first plain packaging laws. The National Institute of Health and Welfare survey found that more than 20,000 Aussies smoke today than they did in 2013, and comes a year after the release a report from major accounting firm KPMG
Views on e-cigarettes may need rethinking
Gareth Parker
In public health, the orthodoxy of harm minimisation is entrenched — especially when it comes to the use and abuse of drugs and alcohol.
The principle is that approaches of outright prohibition or abstinence towards drug and alcohol use ignore the human reality of some level of use.
It is better to recognise this fact and to develop approaches that ensure negative consequences are minimised and contained as much as possible.
Rethink required on approach to e-cigs as smoking decline stalls
Fund The Future
Fig Ramsey
In the short time it’s been around, the vape industry has probably had more highs and lows than any other I’ve witnessed in my life. With thinly-veiled attempts at squelching the industry “to protect the children” by categorizing vape as a tobacco product and raising the age to vape to 21+ in many states; what is to many a life-saving alternative has been demonized in government and the media.
New York schools
To install ‘bullying’, vaping detectors
Smoking and vaping are banned in all New York schools. Now schools are testing technology that can smoke out offenders. The new technology inside a little box may play a big role in holding students who break the law accountable.
“If we get a spike above the line then we know if there’s an incident occurring,” Digital Fly CEO Derek Peterson said. “And we notify the officials.”
Hollywood’s New Relationship with E-cigs
David Agnew
The movie moguls of Hollywood have long been fascinated by smoking, and for a long time, even Walt Disney made use of smoking in its animated films. From Pinocchio smoking a cigar to Alice’s passive smoking in Alice of Wonderland, there are plenty of instances of smoking throughout Disney’s back catalogue. It’s fair to say, though, that smoking was far more frequently linked to villains in Disney’s early films than to the good guys, with baddies such as Captain Hook, Cruella De Vil and Hades all depicted smoking a cigar or cigarette.
On this Day…2016
A look back at how things have moved on or otherwise….
ASH Scotland Update:
E-Cigs Still Banned Outdoors – Dick Puddlecote
In June last year I wrote about a daft and unnecessary outdoor ban on smoking and vaping at Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospitals in London which was endorsed by ASH on Twitter.
As I commented at the time … Yes, that’s the ‘vaper’s friend’, ASH, gleefully telling the world about how vapers are to be told to get orff the land they have paid taxes to build, maintain and run, by people whose salaries they fund…
Vapers Wary of FDA Deeming Rules
Sally Satel – Forbes
After an initial healthy curiosity about electronic nicotine delivery devices around 2014, a nervous pall seems to have settled over the use of e-cigarettes and vaping. Strikingly, it is members of the public health establishment that have fanned the pessimism surrounding the battery-powered devices that deliver nicotine without the carcinogenic tar.
See also: Intended Responses of 9,040 Current E-Cigarette Users
Global Forum on Nicotine 2016
Liberty Flights
The agenda for the conference brought together key industry professionals to present their research and hold rigorous and honest debates on a wide range of topics regarding nicotine and e-cigarettes. Liberty Flights Ltd. was represented by IBVTA (Independent British Vape Trade Association), and below we have summarised the presentations of interest from a few key speakers at the event.
Low-Tar Cigarettes Had Merit
Said American Cancer Society; So Do E-Cigarettes
Brad Rodu, Tobacco Truth
E-cigarette opponents routinely claim that e-cigarettes benefit from industry-promoted consumer health misconceptions in the same manner that so-called light cigarettes soared in popularity years ago, when, it is alleged, marketers created a mythology about the relative safety of “reduced tar.” In reality, there is more truth in those light claims than people suspect.
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