The anti-vaping narrative is most certainly a rabid ideology

April 03, 2019

as evidenced by the nonsense positions of the tobacco control movement.  If you will recall last week we had a guest blog post from Dr. Michael Siegel, who was a prominent proponent of the initial anti-tobacco movement.  In another one of his blog posts last week, the harm reduction advocate Dr. Siegel pointed out that careers in public health and tobacco control are meant to be based on the principle that it is wrong to lie to the public; and that many contemporary public health entities are wholesale spreading lies about vaping.

The good doctor states: “I believe that our movement has largely abandoned truth as a central value in our campaigns against vaping. Driven by an almost puritanical inability to accept the fact that a person could obtain pleasure from nicotine without it killing them, we have made the demonization of vaping the solitary goal of the movement, at the direct expense of what I always believed was our primary goal: to make smoking history”  Too true. 

In a recently streamed episode of RegWatch, Paddy Costall from the Global Forum on Nicotine discussed the current e-cigarette and eLiquid regulatory situation in several countries, and how countries such as Hong Kong are still implementing nonsensical vaping bans.

Costall makes note of how despite the harsh regulatory situation in Australia, which has in fact been ranked as the second worst country in the world to be a vaper in (in first place is Thailand) he is impressed by the ongoing efforts driven by local vaping advocates.  Costall went on to discuss how sadly bunk science is still actively driving policies basically everywhere, and how mainstream media keeps intentionally spreading misinformation. One example he highlighted in the talk of an alarmist and inaccurate piece of fake news reported on by mainstream media claims that nicotine is carcinogenic!

The discussion continues on to focus into the role of public health, and how unfortunately tobacco controllers seem to have become more driven by blatant ideology rather than by a desire to improve public health. The most obvious example of this is how the possibility of harm reduction via the use of vaping seems to be entirely neglected due to the recent exaggerated claims about an alleged teen vaping epidemic.

 That's like advocating against snow blowers and for manual shoveling of snow simply because kids like to drive tractors, and they might drive the snow blower into the ditch and hurt themselves potentially.  It's patently absurd, focuses entirely on a barely tangentially related item, and it follows the plays of textbook basic ideologies. 

What do you think is the most absurd thing about the anti-vaping narrative? What outright lies have you heard in the public and in the media? 

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