With the recent announcement from FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb talking about the possibility of curtailing the marketing and selling of flavoured vapour products, it is timely that the Centre for Substance Use Research should have recently published a paper on the topic.
The CSUR came under fire when it published the Pleasure of Smoking report because, among other things, CSUR receives some funding from (you guessed it) the tobacco industry. Notably British American Tobacco and PMI.
Thanks to Sarah Jakes, a short two-page document from ASH Scotland found its way into my twitter timeline. As you can probably tell from the title of this post, it’s all about youth and e-cigs. I had a read. I had another read. I had a third read. They also have a short blog post on the subject. I read that too. Then I read it again.
There isn’t really much to the document in itself, page one is primarily background stuff, while page two gets to the heart of the matter.
It is kind of unusual for me to post anything this early in the day as I normally like to sit and think on what I’ve seen before actually writing anything. Today however, some antics on Twitter really upset me. I mean, close to tears upset.
The Tobacco Products Directive (TPD), specifically Article 20 is a God-awful piece of democratic bullshit. Don’t believe me? Read more about it, here and here.
This is a post that I’ve been putting off for a while as it contains a number of personal things. They aren’t necessarily secret things, I’m just not the sort to talk about them publicly.
I was a heavy smoker. Like super heavy, easily going through two packs per day and sometimes three or four depending on the day. I had a routine, wake up then immediately spark up. Coffee and a smoke.
To All in Tobacco Control & Public Health,
Yes I’m speaking to you, and for once please listen instead of going glassy eyed and reaching for the infamous block button.
I vape and I’m not going to go away, nor am I going to stop vaping.
That’s right, I use an e-cig (or ENDS if you prefer the term coined by the WHO). I prefer to use it because I no longer want to smoke tobacco.
That is most definitely the question of the moment.
With the recent secret squirrel meeting of WHO in Russia (of all places) there has been a lot of talk in the media recently about bans. Specifically, banning the use of cigarettes (including e-cigs) in parks, coffee shops and, of course, TfL have decided to sneak in their own vaping ban.
Now, I’ve been stewing on these for a while waiting for any further fallout or other commentaries.
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 😉
