Vapers Digest 31st August

Thursday’s News at a glance:

Get your story straight – The VLNC Junk Science Fest Gathers Pace – Organized Crime Heads Applaud FDA’s Decision – Very Low Intelligence – Pharmaceutical Society Head Stuck In Past – Most young people who try e-cigarettes don’t become regular users – Center for Tobacco Products is Lying – FDA Lies About Vaping  – Vaping Smokers More Likely To Quit – Police punish mentally ill patients – BAT restructures as e-cigarettes go mainstream – Tobacco 21 will create more young smokers – Nicotine Science and Policy Daily Digest

Get your story straight

Christopher Snowdon, Velvet Glove Iron Fist

Philip Morris (PMI) are in the process of rolling out their heat-not-burn product IQOS around the world. The company has famously said that it wants to stop selling cigarettes once it has converted existing smokers to the reduced-harm device. On Tuesday they announced that three million smokers have already switched, mostly in Asia…

The VLNC Junk Science Fest Gathers Pace

Dick Puddlecote

As I have written a couple of times recently, the FDA’s announcement that they are viewing very low nicotine cigarettes (VLNCs) as a possible policy tool is extremely sinister.

Tobacco controllers have been banging on about this over the pond for quite some time now and, I repeat, it’s daft and nothing but a rent-seeking scam…

Organized Crime Heads Applaud..

FDA’s Decision To Reduce Nicotine – Kevin Crowley

When Dr. Gottleib, head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made the announcement to reduce nicotine and keep tobacco burning, health criminal organizations immediately applauded the plan to continue tobacco use.

Speculation over future profits is keeping some barely contained in their excitement.

Very Low Intelligence

Paul Barnes, Facts Do Matter

A quick glance at the PubMed abstract piqued my (slightly addled) science brain.  I’ve written about the very low nicotine cigarette debacle before, and that (at the time) Ms Cramer of RSPH had given a talk at the E-Cigarette Summit (2015) on the idea of “de-nicotinised” e-cigs and how, by some miracle, that led to fewer cigarettes being smoked but more vaping (the ol’ self-titration theory being proven once again).

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Pharmaceutical Society Head Stuck In Past

Mawsley, Planet of the Vapes

Alex MacKinnon, director of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in Scotland (RPS), has demanded a review of electronic cigarettes, in the latest issue of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s in-house magazine.
MacKinnon feels the evidence needs to be looked at and for there to be an improvement in quality control, but this stands at odds with the shift of opinion in the RPS as a body, and with other professionals.

Most young people who try e-cigarettes..

Don’t become regular users – CRUK

The majority of e-cigarette experimentation among young people doesn’t turn into regular use, according to a new study.

It also found that levels of regular vaping in young people who have never smoked remain very low.

The study(link is external), part-funded by Cancer Research UK, collated 5 surveys that questioned more than 60,000 young people in total, aged 11-16.

New UK study proves e-cigs aren’t a teen gateway to smoking – Vaping360

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Center for Tobacco Products is Lying

To the Public About Youth Tobacco Use – Michael Siegel

It doesn’t take any fancy math or statistics to figure out that overall tobacco use among high school students must have declined substantially from 2011 to 2016. Since youth cigarette use dropped by a huge amount, cigar use dropped substantially, pipe used dropped substantially, smokeless tobacco use didn’t change much, and hookah use didn’t change much, it stands to reason that overall tobacco use went down substantially.

FDA Lies About Vaping 

While the CDC Inches Toward the Truth – Jacob Sullum

Between 2011 and 2016, according to survey data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cigarette smoking by teenagers fell by half, cigar smoking fell by a third, pipe smoking fell by two-thirds, and smokeless tobacco use fell by a quarter. Yet according to the Food and Drug Administration, there were “no significant declines in overall high school tobacco use” during that period. How is that possible?

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Vaping Smokers More Likely To Quit

Mawsley, Planet of the Vapes

Scientists at the Mailman School of Public Health, at Columbia University, have conducted research into the efficacy of vaping and concluded: “Daily E-Cigarette Users Had Highest Rates of Quitting Smoking”. It will act as a welcome counterbalance to the fake findings of study last year.

More Evidence Suggests E-Cigarettes Help Some Smokers Quit

The Relationship of E-Cigarette Use to Cigarette Quit Attempts and Cessation

Police punish mentally ill patients

Jim McDonald, Vaping 360

Australian tobacco control has always been authoritarian, and even downright aggressive in its war on nicotine. But the state of Queensland has showed the rest of the country who’s boss when it comes to pushing smokers around.

Queensland Health is sending armed police with its “environmental health officers” to write citations for smoking on the grounds of mental hospitals, according to a story in The Courier-Mail.

BAT restructures as e-cigs go mainstream

“Now that we have built a successful NGP (next generation products) business which is poised for substantial growth, we will be fully integrating NGP to leverage the scale and expertise of the whole group to drive growth in an area that is fast becoming a key part of our mainstream business,” BAT said in a statement.

Tobacco 21 will create more smokers

Alexander Stokes, Detroit Lakes

As the push for raising the smoking and vaping age continues, I feel as a Detroit Lakes high school graduate who recently turned 21, I am obligated to share some insight on how this issue will affect my age group.

When I was in high school, I smoked as a way to deal with stress, and I knew people who smoked. I also knew people who drank, and getting alcohol at that age was not an issue for anyone who wanted it. Nor were other restricted substances for that matter.

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On this Day…2016

A look back at how things have moved on or otherwise….

When you thought public health…

Could go no lower – it just did – Clive Bates

British newspapers, the main domestic vector of the anti-scientific public health dogma and baseless fear-mongering, were yesterday filled with prominently positioned garbage articles about vaping:

• The Sun: VAPING BAD E-cigs are just as bad for your heart as smoking fags as they damage key blood vessels, say experts [note different printed cover above]
• The Mirror: E-cigarettes are as bad for you as SMOKING, a new study has claimed
• The Mail: E-cigarettes are ‘as bad for the heart as tobacco’: Nicotine vapour damages blood vessels and raises risk of disease
• The Telegraph: Vaping as bad for your heart as smoking cigarettes, study finds
• The Times: Vaping risk is similar to smoking

Not one single element of these headlines has any grounding in reality, and all are grossly misleading.  The contributory negligence or cynicism of journalists in reporting vaping health stories is now commonplace.  However, in this discussion, I would like to focus on the extraordinary negligence of the scientist behind these claims.

eCigs and Heart Disease –

The Patient’s View – Simon Thurlow

Many of the MSM outlets have been spewing out headlines today saying that eCigarettes are as bad as smoking. The worse culprit was The Sun as this was their front page feature.

We all know that The Sun is not the most reliable (or factual) source of such information but their headline screamed out to be heard regardless. But even in their article there was almost no actual supporting evidence for their headline with most commentators agreeing that eCigarettes are far less harmful than tobacco cigarettes.

ANTZ are Grasping Straws

Paul Barnes – Facts Do Matter

Once again, there is a headline sweeping the UK media channels – both print and radio – that is not only misleading, but is also downright dangerous. Many of the UK papers have led with the headline “Vaping is as bad as SMOKING”, which regular readers of this blog will know is simply not true. Vaping may indeed not be entirely risk free, but there are very few things (if any) in this world that are risk free.

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