It seems that when there is a slow news day various entities resort to conjuring up the weirdest of headlines, almost to the point of actually making stuff up.
Although in this case the studies do actually exist and have come out of the American Thoracic Society conference, which is pretty unbalanced towards any and all negative attitudes towards personal vaporisers.
It is very rare for me to post something whilst I’m still incredibly angry after reading an article. But in this case, I’m going to make a bloody big exception.
For a while now the anti-vapor organisations have been setting a pretty dismal standard in their attempts to either discredit vapers or the vapor market. It seems that there is nothing they won’t do, no low they won’t stoop to.
I recently posted about the possibility of two distinct stories that could arise from one source, it seems there has been a bit more action with one of the stories. Spurred on of course by new ’evidence'.
Armed with this stunning new evidence our resident chipmunk decides to put pen to paper and attempts to ‘dissect’ the information presented. Think we can all guess how this is going to pan out can’t we?
Just for once, I’m going to be taking a break from my usual style of posts and am going to try and put my science type hat on.
Disclaimer: I am not a scientist of any type, so if there are any mistakes in my interpretations below, do feel free to correct me. Politely of course!
There have been a few studies published recently that are showing that the use of electronic cigarettes are far less harmful than traditional cigarettes. But we already know this I hear you say. Yes, we do know this. Rather than being dismissed as “anecdotes” by certain figures, the scientific fact is building and it is on our side, which of course leaves those against us looking all the more foolish. Unfortunately, it isn’t stopping them. Yet.
There has been a whole slew of reports in the media and on the various “Smoke Free” Twitter accounts recently all pertaining to the recent plain packs debacle. As you may know, Australia became the first to implement plain packs back in 2012. With that implementation, those rather pleasant insane folks over in Tobacco Control kept a very careful beady eye on the rate of smoking down under.
Despite there being very little evidence to show that it is having any effect on the actual rate of smoking, instead they try to view it from the perspective of falling sales indicates fewer smokers. The Guardian reported that plain packaging to thank for Australia’s decline in smoking. Well, to be honest it is pure hubris to assume that any decline is the result of a single policy, let alone one that is going to play right into the illicit markets hands.
I’m going to begin this one by posting up a few tweets from various users.
If you like, the article mentioned in the tweet is here feel free to have a read, I’ll wait 🙂
Just so you know, Antoine Flahault is a respected Professor in Biostatistics and neither smokes or vapes, but is heavily vested in the truth.
I’m going to gloss over the tweets regarding Philly, because that little story is about money which is a whole different rant for another day 😉