It isn’t particularly uncommon for government agencies to bend the truth. What is thoroughly disingenuous is how they decide to bend the truth. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll have noticed a bit of a trend. Wherever the use of e-cigarettes is prevalent, the overall combustible use declines. It is kind of hard to see how one equals the other, but that is exactly what the CDC have done.

Overall tobacco use by middle and high school students has not changed since 2011, according to new data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Tobacco Products in today’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).

I know. I’ve been terribly shoddy at posting recently. Fact of the matter is, work has been a royal pain and has subsequently kept me from doing what I do. There just aren’t enough hours in the day. Anyway, on to the point of this post. Following on from a previous post and various discussions on VapourTrails.tv and of course twitter, the ol’ grey matter started churning away.

See, the thing is one of the key arguments against vaping is all about the dreaded, super-evil Nick O’Teen. There are also some parties that would like to see vapour products used only for cessation - which, by the way, they can stuff where the sun shineth not - so when I combined those two “arguments” in my head, I asked myself what is wrong here?

Trouble is, they’ve not checked it twice. It must be a really slow day for the opponents of vaping, though you would hardly suspect that considering how often this article appears from a variety of seeming unrelated twitter accounts.

It is a common practice unfortunately. A body, be it Government, Education whatever buys a whole bunch of accounts, or engages with someone who can “spread the word”; either way it costs money, to share on social media an article, or a link or some other piece of information, and share it repeatedly throughout a given day or days. We saw it with the whole formaldehyde “study” (which turned out to just be a letter to the editor, not the actual study), it’s happened with the shenanigans on the daft arsed “sugar tax” (and no I don’t agree with that either) and it probably happens on a myriad of other subjects too.

Ah, the wonders of turning from a young adult into a full fledge adult. All those things that you’ve been chomping at the bit to try according to the word of law, rather than the law of common bloody sense are oh so tempting aren’t they? Drinking, smoking, gambling and all that. I wouldn’t class work as a wonder, and besides under 18’s can do that in a limited way so it doesn’t really count.

As the date draws closer for actual implementation of the voted-in Tobacco Products Directive, EU Member States are producing their interpretation of the Directive. Unlike the UK which has been decidedly light-touch, though how light-touch remains to be seen, Member States have taken to adding a bit extra - i.e. “Gold Plating” the Directive which only serves to make it worse. Belgium are going to be charging 4,000 Euro per notification which is a disastrous amount for smaller businesses to bear. Finland is being downright stupid and now we have Hungary.

I know, cliché but it kind of makes sense. You see, today is the day that all the idiots that supported the Public Health (Wales) Bill in its entirety are now bleating about missed opportunities with regards to the health of the public in Wales. Thing is, as Dick Puddlecote has amply explained here and here, the Public Health (Wales) Bill wasn’t ever truly about health, more akin to the brainwashing of the Orwellian Party in their single-minded, ideological quest to have e-cigarettes banned everywhere. Or to put not too fine a point on it, treat vapers (as in former smokers) exactly the same as smokers.

So there’s a new quack in town that has decided to jump on the anti-vaping bandwagon. Is this quack a respiratory physician? A specialist in the deep, dark and mysterious ways of the lung and airway? A specialist in the effects of cancer or other diseases that have been linked with smoking?

No. Margaret Cuomo (MD) is a radiologist. She specialises in diagnostic radiology. She has published a book - “A World without Cancer” - which (according to Amazon) is fairly popular. I haven’t read it, based on her latest stunt for Huff Post Wise it’s likely to be filled with inane, non-evidence based drivel. But what do you expect? The eldest daughter of former New York Governor Mario Cuomo and former NY First Lady Matilda. The sister of Governor Andrew Cuomo and CNN’s Chris Cuomo seems to give her the idea that she can say anything she damn well likes.

We all know the arguments. Applying restrictions to avoid “potential harms”. Well we’ve seen how ludicrous that is in Wales recently where vaping is to be banned (yes Duckford, it is a ban. You might not think it is you daft old duffer, but it is) everywhere where smoking is currently banned. Ban in workplaces to protect the health of non-smokers & colleagues, ban in public places to, erm protect the health of workers and non-smokers. Ban in playgrounds, erm for the Cheeldren™.

What is this? Another brain dump? Well, yes it is in fact another brain dump. You see, for once I actually went out and got a bit social with some folks for a friend’s birthday (21 again). Interesting side-note, the birthday girl is married to my boss, and most of this brain dump stems from his & hers opinions on smoking, the smoking ban and vaping. There’s also follow-up commentary from my last brain dump.

Most of my regular readers are aware that from time to time I’ll just put some random thoughts into some kind of (relatively) coherent form. These thoughts are not generally specific to a particular piece of research or media article, they also contain expletives as it is written precisely how I’m thinking it.

Today the Office of National Statistics released a report from the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey on adult smoking habits in Great Britain for 2014.