Thursday 13 June 2013

E-cigarettes: The control lobby shows its true colours

You've probably heard today's disgraceful news. In short, the medical establishment was given an opportunity to grab some more power and it took it. I'll write more about it when I have time, but here's the statement I put out with the IEA:

"There is no more reason to treat e-cigarettes as medical products than there is to treat alcohol-free beer or chewing gum as pharmaceuticals. They are emphatically not medicines and they make no claim to treat any disease. They are alternatives to smoking which many smokers have found to be effective substitutes for cigarettes.

E-cigarettes have the potential to make conventional cigarettes obsolete, but only if they are allowed to flourish in a free market. The medical establishment has played no part in the rise of this remarkable product and, shamefully, many anti-smoking campaigners want them banned.

The MHRA's decision will stifle innovation, raise prices and lead to a black market in potentially lethal nicotine fluids amongst existing e-cigarette users. In the short term, e-cigarettes will have to be taken off the market, potentially for years and possibly forever. In the meantime, most of the UK's one million e-cigarette users will return to smoking cigarettes. The only winners will be the tobacco industry and the pharmaceutical industry.”

I'll write more about this as soon as I get the time, but I recommend you read Dick Puddlecote...

Today is the apex of tobacco control industry stupidity. Ultimate and resounding proof of what I have been saying for years. It has never, ever, been about health. And now they have illustrated it beyond reasonable doubt.

And Clive Bates...

Medicines regulation involves disproportionate costs, compliance burdens and restrictions – none of which apply to cigarettes. So this is a good day for the cigarette makers, and their competition will be weakened. We need regulation to encourage these products to compete with cigarettes, not smother them with red tape.

What the e-cigarette sector doesn’t need is ‘boring’. That has been tried and failed with NRT. It needs marketing verve, style and buzz, not the dull deadening hand of bureaucratic approvals. That applies to product design, packing, marketing, sponsorship – the works… the public health challenge is to get as many smokers to switch as possible, not to make perfectly safe products that no-one wants.


And, most cathartically, Longrider...

Scum, the lot of them. They should be taken out and strung up from the nearest lamp post. Then their heads put on spikes outside Traitor’s Gate, while the ravens peck out their eyeballs. These evil people are trying to effectively ban a product that is less harmful than tobacco and is helpful to people trying to give it up. It isn’t about health. It was never about health. It is and always has been, about control.

Let the battle lines be drawn. These people are not only the enemies of liberty, they are also the enemies of the one thing they claim to be advocating for—health.

Tobacco control. It's not about tobacco, it's all about control.



2 comments:

IW said...

There wasn't a huge protest movement against the smoking ban in the UK perhaps because of decades of 'education' that smoking is dirty and not respectable. The message was internalised. As a very recent ecig user I don't feel that. I suspect most users don't either. There'll be a bigger fight against this effective ban.

JohnB said...

Let me introduce to another nut case that’s been unleashed by TC and Public Health. This concerns a smoking ban at addiction recovery centers. It concerns people presenting for serious, impairing addictions, e.g., narcotics, alcohol, that have consequences in the immediate term. It’s also known that people that don’t want to quit smoking, which is not an immediate-term issue, put off seeking treatment for serious addiction when smoking bans are instituted. So why would anyone….. let me qualify that…. why would anyone in their right mind institute smoking bans? Unfortunately, there are some that don’t want to quit smoking that, for whatever reasons, find themselves in one of these facilities.

Treatment for nicotine sobriety
Loebs explained that Seabrook treats two kinds of people around the issue of nicotine:
Those who want to quit and stay quit
Those who don’t want to quit
How do they treat these two groups differently? “Not at all,” she says. “Both groups receive nicotine replacement therapy if they choose that, lozenges, hard candies, and they are all required to attend Nicotine Anonymous 12-step meetings.”

She explained that those in violation of the tobacco-free policy by verbalizing cravings constantly or acting out must attend a nicotine recovery program. This group then takes the place of their daily gym time.
“We see that as an incentive,” Loebs commented. “We try not to shame them and try to help them, but we want to be clear that we have a zero tolerance policy.”

“Programs that have been successful at this, have all said the same thing, ‘it is as dangerous and as important as alcohol or opiates or any other substance.’

http://www.behavioral.net/article/replacing-cigarette-butts-candy-wrappers

I’ve got to tell you, this has to be right up there for pure stupidity, ignorance, and haughtiness. NICOTINE SOBRIETY!! Have you got that – NICOTINE SOBRIETY!!! Sobriety as opposed to what? And they’re all required to attend “Nicotine Anonymous 12-step meetings”. A Nicotine Anonymous 12-step program!!!!! And a “nicotine recovery program”!!!! AAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Just when you think we’ve hit the bottom of the perversity barrel…. BAMM KAPOOK…. the fanatics/zealots find a new bottom, a new sludge level. The insanity just gets deeper and deeper. It’s scary that this sort of sanctimonious, obnoxious nitwit, making up all sorts of obsessed-with-control blather that all must strictly abide by, is in charge of anything, let alone an addiction treatment facility. I wouldn’t put this fool in charge of a broom closet. The woman herself is in urgent need of psychotherapy or maybe a stint in a correctional facility for abuse of patients. It’s bad enough to ban smoking as a coercive measure. Filling people’s minds by force with condescending, bigoted drivel is more than a few steps too far. And this nut case has been set loose to explore the bounds of derangement, to be inflicted on others, by TC and PH. I repeat. TC/PH folk are dangerously disordered minds.