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.

I picked apart the press release and study the day after it appeared on the Eureka Alert site, as did Fergus Mason. Adam Jacobs (The Stats Guy) also pulled it apart and called it Dangerous Nonsense and rightly so. Linda Bauld with some help from Suzi Gage published a rebuttal in The Guardian, which didn’t get anywhere near the coverage that the original article received of course.

It doesn’t take much to spark some errant thinking and lengthy discussions. In this instance it was the release of the final quarter statistics of 2015 from the Smoking Toolkit Study which is of course performed by Professor Robert West. This survey is used, along with other evidence, to inform those that need to know how many folks are smoking, whether or not they quit smoking and how they quit.

If you are a regular Twitter or Facebook user you would have come across the latest shenanigans from the Chicago Department of Health that was launched amid much fanfare by none other than the Mayor himself. The VapingTruth campaign designed to increase youth awareness.

So what do we have here then? A “public education campaign” to increase youth awareness (The Children™) on the public health risks of e-cigarettes. Oh there’s a surprise. An education campaign to increase awareness on the “risks” of e-cigs.

Although cell studies for e-cigarettes have some value, presenting them with press statements making ridiculous claims about supposed findings and interpretations makes the whole issue look more like a joke. A wise comment from Dr Farsalinos from May 2015, however these “studies” keep getting churned out some with, and some without scary press releases. But as it is that time of year when folk are more likely to make a quit attempt either due to someone buying them a starter kit for Christmas, or they’ve made a resolution to “kick the habit” at the start of the year; you wouldn’t be surprised to see the useful idiots trumpeting all kinds of daft claims about “the dangers of e-cigarettes”.

December 23rd 2015, a date that has been ingrained in my brain since the Totally Wicked Legal Challenge was heard in the Court of Justice of the European Union on October 1st. As the old saying goes - “hope for the best, prepare for the worst” - as many people suggested that the challenge appeared to be very strong, but it seems that many folks were content to hinge everything on Totally Wicked being 110% successful.

It seems that the run up to Christmas entitles folk to, frankly lose their damn minds. We are all painfully aware of the mantra “think of The Children™”, but never more so has it been apparent that the crusade against smoking and vaping has never really been about health.

First up:

A lawmaker from Louisville is hoping a tax would discourage Kentucky residents from using electronic cigarettes.

Hoping a tax would discourage residents, in other words a sin tax. You nasty, horrible peasants are doing something I don’t like, so you’re gonna have to pay extra for the privilege. Holier than thou, stick-up-the-ass politicians.

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.

You see, the Minister for Public Health, one Lucie Charlebois, has taken an extreme Drakeford-like approach to the “epidemic” of e-cigarettes with the introduction of her Bill 44. This Bill is supposed to “strengthen” the Tobacco Act of 2005 and is designed to “greatly help to reduce smoking rates in the province”.

If there’s one constant in this multiverse it is the incessant need for folk to have to blame someone else for their stupidity. In some (rare) cases, it is actually the fault of the product either through some kind of wacky early-life failure or through some product design flaw. Sadly, the majority of these kinds of cases is simply down to Darwinism. I mean, a classic case of this is, of course, the McDonald’s Coffee Case…

As many of you will no doubt be aware, the UK implementation of the Tobacco Products Directive is coming whether we like it or not. September 3rd saw the closure of the official public consultation on the majority of the implementation regulations. Today saw the publication of additional ‘guidance’ under Article 20 section 5. Specifically all about the advertising portion of Article 20.

Article 20(5) of the Tobacco Products Directive 2014/40/EC requires EU member states to introduce restrictions on the advertising of electronic cigarettes. In the UK, the proposed implementation will consist of changes to the Communications Act 2003, free-standing new regulations and changes by Ofcom (the communications regulator in the UK) to the BCAP Code and Broadcast Code.