Rants

In a seemingly all too familiar refrain there’s another DoH Director, this time in Rhode Island, making grandiose and thoroughly misleading claims on vapour products. Last May, Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott became the new director of the Rhode Island Department of Health, where she stated quite categorically that “some” of her priorities included: “addressing disparities in the health-care system and providing high-quality health care to more people”. 

Frankly, that’s an admirable goal. As is building a “statewide, strategic plan” to address overdoses and a prescription monitoring system. So I guess in less than a year she’s figured all that out so she can turn her attentions to nannying the crap out of her state residents.

You will of course remember the slew of scary sounding headlines between Christmas and the New Year, each one blindly repeating the same headline and the contents of a press release of a terrible study without any regard whether or not the press release relates to the study in any way shape or form.

There is an unfortunate conflict in the realms of public health, tobacco control and the vaping community. All sides effectively want the same thing, to an extent or so they say. Public health would like the general public to be as healthy as possible, and where necessary follow the rules they think are best for all of us. Tobacco control are so ingrained in their “fight” against ‘Big Tobacco’ that anything that vaguely resembles tobacco or smoking must be stopped at any cost. While us vapers just really want to be left alone to enjoy our choice.

At least, in Canada it is. You will of course remember Bill 45, curiously entitled “Making Healthier Choices Act” which effectively makes it illegal to use/sell or display e-cigarettes; curiously when I first read Bill 45, I immediately thought “this is the TPD on fucking steroids”. I was, in fact completely fucking wrong.

There’s a problem that those in power want to solve. Or more to the point, they don’t want to “solve” it at all. They want to “control” it. That “problem” is smoking, which to my mind isn’t a problem at all. It’s a choice people make. Yes there’s an “addictive” side to it, yes there’s a big cost to it, and yes there are some risks associated with it. But you know what? I don’t care. If folk want to smoke than that is down to them. Their life, their choice end of story. Almost.

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of being able to attend the e-cigarette summit at the Royal Society. It was an eye-opening experience, not least of which the number of speakers there exalting the positives of vaping, but it wasn’t that that was the most eye-opening. There were some that were conspicuous by their absence, and no I’m not talking about the opponents of e-cigarettes.

At some point during the day, two blog posts were released (here and here) which prompted the Spock eyebrow from me.

Surely it comes as no surprise at all to discover yet another troughing organisation suckling on the over-abundant cash-cow that is tobacco control, yet this one takes it to a whole new level of incredulousness.

When I woke up this morning I wasn’t expecting a whole host of shenanigans to be floating around the media. I knew that something was coming at some point thanks to some very good friends in the know, all very secret squirrel like.  What I didn’t expect was the sheer insanity of it all.

A common refrain from many in the tobacco control camp. They want you to stop smoking because, well kids. They also don’t want you to stop smoking by vaping because, well kids.

State funded fake charities aimed at “promoting the stop smoking message” are no different. Just recently ASH wanted the UK Government to force tobacco companies to pay a levy to “fund further tobacco control efforts” and we all know how that’s turned out in the US don’t we?

It is rare that I feel the need to blog when angry, I usually like to let my thoughts cool off so I can put them in some semblance of order to articulate exactly why I am angry. Though in this case anger doesn’t factor in to it, more like total disappointment.