Vested interests will always use regulation to protect that interest

From Dick Puddlecote a shocking example of a private business using regulatory pressure to protect its private interests:

The website for Vype e-cigarettes www.govype.com, was seen on 13 March 2017. The home page of the website featured a carousel with four slides. Text on the first slide stated "VYPE PURPLE ePEN STARTER KIT +1 PACK OF PREMIUM CARTRIDGES. FOR £19.98*". Smaller text below stated "*ENDS TUESDAY 28th MARCH 2017. P&P CHARGES WHERE APPLICABLE". The text was next to images of the starter kit, and a link which stated "SHOP NOW>". Text on the fourth slide stated "BUY 5 GET 1 FREE. INCLUDES VYPE PEBBLE CARTRIDGES, ePEN CARTRIDGES & eLIQUID BOTTLES*. SHOP NOW>". On the web page for the Vype Pebble Starter Kit, text stated "The small and mighty Pebble".

This complaint - partly upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority - wasn't from a concerned member of the public or even some shocked anti-smoking campaign group but from Johnson & Johnson, manufacturers of nicorette and other no-tobacco nicotine delivery systems. They're straightforwardly nobbling their competitor with this complaint.

So when we're talking about regulations supposedly protecting health or safety, we should always ask for the independent evidence and should further ask who benefits - which private business - benefits. Johnson & Johnson along with other pharmaceuticals with very profitable nicotine products campaigned very hard to firstly get e-cigs banned, then to get them regulated as medicines and then to hobble their marketing and promotion. Not for reasons of public safety or health but purely and simply to protect their business from competition.

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Smoking cessation: it stopped being about health years ago

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In 2003 Hon Lik registered the patent for the first modern electronic cigarette since when millions of people across the world have stopped or significantly reduced their consumption of regular old-fashioned cancer-sticks. There is no doubt - really, there is no doubt - that this is one of the biggest public health boons ever. Instead of people having their lives cut short by using combustible cigarettes to get a hit of nicotine, they'll mostly be using a delivery system that's pretty near harmless - as harmless as getting a caffeine hit by pouring hot water over coffee beans.

The smoking cessation business (or most of it - there are a few notable exceptions) has spent almost every waking hour and bucket loads of research cash since Hon Lik registered that patent trying to discredit the electronic cigarette and the practice of vaping. Urged on by the pharmaceuticals industry and tacitly back by Big Tobacco these so-call smoking cessation folk have acted to protect their business interests - funding, jobs, research grants - rather than accept that vaping disrupted smoking by making it possible to enjoy the lift from nicotine without the health costs of smoking.

And these people refuse to accept the reality and are still throwing money at research into new smoking cessation devices:

Chemists at the University of Bristol have been awarded £930,000 from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to develop potential new aids to help smokers stop smoking.

Professor Tim Gallagher, in collaboration with Professor Adrian Mulholland (School of Chemistry) and Dr Richard Sessions (School of Biochemistry), will use a combination of synthetic chemistry, computational modelling, structural biology and pharmacology to develop potential new smoking cessation agents.

I'm sure the science here is fascinating but do we really need to spend nearly £1 million of taxpayers money (especially in these tough times for public funding) on researching "potential new aids to help smokers stop smoking". That's 'potential' aids not actual aids that can be put on the market for smokers to use. What we'll have instead is some quite interesting chemistry (all those ligands and that partial agonism) but little practical health value. And all this at a time when there's a pretty damned effective aid to quitting that the same government funding this research wants to limit, stop from being effectively promoted and placed in the "we rather disapprove of this sort of thing" category of consumer goods.

As I say, smoking cessation stopped being about health years ago. Now it's more about preserving the jobs of smoking cessation advisors and the funding of researchers. The minute there was a breakthrough disruptive technology - one produced without government research funding and promoted successfully through a free market - the smoking cessation funding should have gone and the research investment directed into other areas of public health challenge. But the public health isn't about health at all really, is it?

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Questions to which the answer is "no": "Are e-cigs a gateway drug"

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This should be seen as brilliant - only 4% of US teens now report having smoked. This is a dramatic switch and the reason for it is vaping, the e-cig. Yet the people reporting on the finding are now trying to suggest that somehow children vaping will, once their hooked on nicotine, switch to good old-fashioned cigarettes:

Twice as many teenagers are using e-cigarettes than conventional smoking with fears this could potentially lead to an addiction to nicotine.

The findings have raised concerns that e-cigarettes - widely viewed as harmless to health - might act as a 'gateway' to tobacco.

The study, based on surveys of 50,000 students in 400 secondary schools in the US, is the first sign among this age group the use of e-cigarettes has surpassed the use of traditional tobacco products, researchers claim. 

Let's be clear about one thing here - there is precisely zero evidence to support the suggestion from these 'researchers' that e-cigs "might act as a 'gateway' to tobacco", In fact the evidence tells us that the reverse is true - people who have used tobacco are switching to vaping.

Almost one-fifth of smokers who try ECs once go on to become regular users. ECs may develop into a genuine competitor to conventional cigarettes. Government agencies preparing to regulate ECs need to ensure that such moves do not create a market monopoly for conventional cigarettes.

There's no reason to believe that the situation with children will be markedly different from adults. But even if children are opting for vaping rather than smoking this has to be significant in terms of general health benefits. So why is it that researchers - and newspapers like the Daily Mail - persist in trying to suggest that e-cigarettes and vaping are somehow a gateway to smoking smoking? Even when Action of Smoking and Health (ASH) tell us this ain't so?

'Nicotine can be harmful to the growing brain so it's best if young people avoid it. But if they're going to experiment it's better to use e-cigarettes as vaping is far less dangerous than smoking and much less addictive.

'So far in the UK and the US, smoking rates are going down more than e-cigarette use is growing. This would not be the case if vaping really were a gateway into smoking.'

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In which I help NHS England with the answers to questions about eicigs

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NHS England seem to be having some difficulty answering questions about e-cigs. Their latest effort is described as (thanks to Red Head Full of Steam):

KSS REAG (Respiratory Expert Advisory Group) meeting we had a very interesting discussion about e-cigarettes, the pros and the cons and potential uses, to try to form a consensus on where we stood as clinicians regarding e-cigarettes and their use

The questions they wanted to answer are below. To help them, I've provided the pretty definitive answers. So now you know NHS England, just get on with it!

1. Are e-cigarettes a safer alternative to smoking?  Answer: Yes

2. Should we be encouraging their use to aid quitting?  Answer: Yes

3. Are e-cigarette users counted as smokers?  Answer: No

4. Should e-cigarettes be banned on Smokefree sites? Answer: No

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Public health - might some truth be getting though at last?

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One swallow doesn't make a summer. But there are two current news items that suggest that the truth is gradually seeping through to one or two bits of the public health world.

Firstly there's a letter from fifty odd doctors, researchers and public health folk urging the WHO not to regulate e-cigs out of existence. As one pointed out:

"If the WHO gets its way and extinguishes e-cigarettes, it will not only have passed up what is clearly one of the biggest public health innovations of the last three decades that could potentially save millions of lives, but it will have abrogated its own responsibility under its own charter to empower consumers to take control of their own health, something which they are already doing themselves in their millions." 

Progress (although it didn't stop the BBC running a ghastly phone-in essentially to plug some egregiously misleading documentary it's planning to air on tobacco - at the presenter said to one smoker who called: "that's basically the tobacco industry line" as that chap explained why he wanted leaving alone).

And then the radio headlines were filled with news that we aren't drinking quite so much:

Between 2005 and 2012 the percentage who drank alcohol in the week before being interviewed fell from 72% to 64% for men, and from 57% to 52% for women.

The survey also shows that the percentage of men who drank alcohol on at least five days in the week declined from 22% to 14%.

The percentage of women who drank frequently fell from 13% to 9%.

This was all part of a slightly scaremongering report (so typical of health fascists to wrap up good health news in scary stories about girls drinking) but Radio 5 Live ran a couple of substantial items focused on the core fact - on average, we drink a hell of a lot less than we did ten years ago and the latest cohort of teenagers are the more abstemious since the 1950s.

It may be a false dawn - yesterday I was told by one of Bradford's public health consultants that 'hazardous' drinking would increase in Bradford without 'further intervention. This - as I pointed out - is simply untrue yet these people carry on with the misinformation. Still, though it's a long way to go, I am reassured that some of the truth might just leak into the public health debate for a change.

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Plain packs, e-cig bans and the triumph of ignorance

Today marks the publication of the Chantler Review into standardised packaging for cigarettes, which follows the proposal from the Welsh government to ban the use of electronic cigarettes in enclosed public spaces. I haven't read the whole of Chantler's review but it's summary contains the observation that:

There is very strong evidence that exposure to tobacco advertising and promotion increases the likelihood of children taking up smoking. 

We know that advertising does not act to raise demand both generally and specifically for products such as cigarettes. So I have to assume that the 'evidence' relied on by Chantler is primarily the qualitative studies undertaken by tobacco control researchers that essentially show how children prefer pretty colours to drab colours. This may be true but there's a leap from 'I like pink' to 'I'll start smoking because I like the pink pack' that simply doesn't have evidential support.

Chris Snowden points out that Chantler finds only a 'moderate' impact on uptake - something that would be very difficult to prove one way or another especially since advertising (even where it is still permitted) has only a marginal impact on the decision of a person to experiment with smoking. More importantly Chantler says that this impact will only be realised 'over time' creating more vagueness and imprecision. I remain unconvinced that this is the best option for public intervention if our aim is either (or both) to reduce levels of smoking adoption or increase rates of smoking cessation.

Indeed, if the evidence is right that it is the person's environment (do parents, other family members and peers smoke) that plays the dominant role in the decision to experiment with smoking then the emphasis should be on smoking cessation rather than smoking adoption. And this brings us to the proposal in Wales to apply the same restrictions to using electronic cigarettes as apply to smoking tobacco.

The Welsh health minister, Mark Drakeford, said officials were considering a ban amid concerns that the products could "re-normalise" the use of conventional cigarettes.

He said there were also concerns that their spread could undermine the ban on tobacco smoking in enclosed public spaces, making it more difficult to enforce.

This is a truly egregious proposal since we know that electronic cigarettes are widely adopted by smokers to either quit or reduce their use of tobacco and that they eliminate nearly all the personal as well as all the environmental risks associated with smoking tobacco. Worse still, the argument made here contradicts the rationale for the smoking ban - protecting the health of others in the smoking environment.

Since we want fewer smokers then we should be supporting the adoption of electronic cigarettes by current smokers. Not just to benefit the health of those smokers but to reduce the probability of their children, brothers, sisters and friends taking up the habit. By seeking to denormalise electronic cigarettes, the Welsh government is describing the devices as no different from tobacco with the result that children are as likely to adopt the latter as the former. Plus, of course, increasing the likelihood that the vaper will switch back to tobacco - a point succinctly put by Tim Stanley:

Force me to stand outside and I’ll calculate that I may as well go back to the Marlboro Lights.

Although these proposals are filled with analysis and wrapped up in stuff that looks like science, they are at best selective and at worst simply ignorant. In the case of packaging, the review relies on studies by non-marketers working in tobacco control research and completely ignores the substantial body of research evidence on the role and effectiveness of brand advertising. And for electronic cigarettes, the assumption is that they will act as some sort of gateway for tobacco rather than (as the evidence suggests) quite the reverse.

It does seem that what we have here isn't an example of good evidence-based policy but rather a victory for anti-smoking obsession and a triumph of ignorance.

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Health Fascism - the new normal for public health

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Today marks a new low - we've got used to the endless dribble of health scare stories in the media but there has been a shift. Where response was once left up to our judgement - if the Daily Mail told us some bloke in a white coat had found that bacon causes cancer we were left with a choice of whether to ignore his advice. Now though, officialdom throws out misinformation, scares and exaggeration in order to prosecute their philosophy - I've called them nannying fussbuckets for some while now but this no longer fits, it's too friendly, too cuddly.

These people are fascists. Health Fascists.

Here's today's selection of their health fascism:

The winner is Dame Sally Davies, Chief Medical Officer with another demand for sugar taxes based on the complete fiction that "overweight is seen as the norm". Perhaps she can explain that to this woman who was told she was 'obese' by Dame Sally's cohorts.

Not content with talking rubbish about obesity, Dame Sally then launched into an idiotic attack on soap operas. Apparently there's too much drinking:

Hard-drinking soap characters offer an "irresponsible" portrayal of excessive alcohol consumption, according to the Chief Medical Officer for England

Elsewhere we've got:

The doctor who thinks e-cigarettes are like methadone. Seriously.

Or the people who want to ban cigarettes for everyone born after 2000 - which means come the end of this decade some adults can buy fags and some can't. These people are barking mad.

Still we can rely on academia to provide some bad research. Like that showing e-cigs don't aid quitting.

Plus public health people complaining because Council's have directed public health spending into things like reducing road accidents, improving air quality, reducing excess winter deaths in the elderly and improving food safety education or enforcement. Aren't all these things actually public health? It appears the doctors don't think so.

Health fascism everywhere you look. For public health it's the new normal.

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An e-cig tale from Bradford Councillor Imran Khan - sometimes I despair

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I was in the local paper being quoted about e-cigs. This followed the awful decision of West Yorkshire Metro to ban vaping on buses and in bus stations. I'd written a letter - here's an excerpt:

Forcing e-cigarette users out into the cold and wet with regular smokers is a stupid idea and one that will merely encourage people to go back to smoking regular – and much more dangerous – cigarettes.

Perhaps Metro and its partners would care to explain how they justify this ban, especially since there is no secondary or sidestream smoke risk and the devices are acting to reduce the users harm from smoking.

I suspect the argument will be as crass as “well it looks like smoking”, which is frankly pathetic. 

This prompted a little article where Bradford Councillor, Imran Hussein, a vaper, said this:

 “I think there’s a big difference between traditional smoking and vaping. If there wasn’t, there would be no need for me to use an e-cigarette. But it’s a matter of public perception.

“I think the sight of adults vaping could encourage children to try cigarettes. If they see vaping as not harmful, it could be the first step to smoking.”

The man is an idiot - doesn't he realise that it's the very similarity with smoking that makes vaping work? And am I the only one who finds the who "it looks like smoking, it must be bad" argument a little tiresome? There is precisely no evidence to suggest that e-cigs are dangerous to health but the BMA and others among the health fascists persist in pretending that somehow these things are scary.

E-cigs are saving lives. This is really all you need to know about them. Millions of people have switched from lethal cigarettes to take up vaping. And that's millions of people less likely to be in the lung cancer and heart attack queue. Isn't that what we want?

Sometimes I despair

Update: The eagle-eyed will spot I made an error - got the wrong Imran! The Council Deputy Leader is a vaper (so an easy mistake) and is called Imran. Nothing much to add except 'oops sorry'!

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Science doesn't support EU proposed restrictions on e-cigs

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The New Scientist reports that:

Fifteen prominent scientists who have investigated the health consequences of electronic cigarettes have accused European Union regulators of misinterpreting their results. The scientists say the EU aim is to draft an unjustifiably burdensome new law to regulate e-cigarettes.

These scientists - including several cited in the EU's justification for stricter controls - argue that:

...regulation must be built on robust science. The cited errors relate to the strength of nicotine solutions allowed, the doses needed to match the nicotine "hit" from real cigarettes, an overstatement of the known dangers from nicotine and unwarranted assumptions that e-cigarettes will become "gateway products", tempting non-smokers and young people to try real cigarettes.

Of course the usual suspects are still wriggling with the BMA calling for more studies to find out things we already know (e.g. nicotine content, safety, health risks of nicotine). Nothing changes - although it's notable that the New Scientist gives the issue such coverage.

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Let's not let a few facts get in the way of our anti-smoking, eh?

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We should know better than to wander onto groups and forums - even on the shiny business place that is Linked In. But resistance is futile and I found myself making the case for e-cigs - the case supported by the Royal College of Physicians and other well know shills of the tobacco industry. This is the response:

I can see all your facts and figures but they simply don't stack up against the actual pain that goes with cancer and they won't change my mind. 

This was from an intelligent businesswoman (who started by saying she would never employ a smoker - imagine the reaction if it had been a disabled person she wouldn't employ) and it reminds us of how the anti-smoking campaigns have poisoned the well of truth.

Shortly after came this comment:
 

E-cigarettes are a blatant attempt to circumvent anti - smoking legislation by unscrupulous companies. Ban them now and cigarettes in 3 years time.  Should give people time to get them out of their lives.

Such care and consideration here! Such a closed mind and such ignorance.

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Doing my bit for sanity on e-cigs..

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My question to Council next week:

Bradford Council leader David Green will be asked to clarify the authority’s policy on smoking electronic cigarettes in council buildings. Cullingworth Coun Simon Cooke will ask the question at a full meeting of the council on Tuesday. The electronic devices, which look like cigarettes but are much safer, have seen a surge in popularity. 

Dave Green is, of course, an enthusiastic smoker!

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So the BMA prefers people to die...

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Or so says its nannying fussbucket in chief, Vivienne Nathanson:

"I would either take them off the shelves or I would very heavily regulate them so that we know the contents of each e-cigarette were very fixed,"

Dr Nathanson would, of course, prefer people to die.

Not everyone agrees:

"Nicotine itself is not a particularly hazardous drug," says Professor John Britton, who leads the tobacco advisory group for the Royal College of Physicians. 

"It's something on a par with the effects you get from caffeine.

"If all the smokers in Britain stopped smoking cigarettes and started smoking e-cigarettes we would save 5 million deaths in people who are alive today. It's a massive potential public health prize."

As I said the anti-tobacco fundies would rather people died.

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Wanting an e-cig ban: is it tax revenue, ignorance or stupidity?

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Here's a reference to a literature review in the journal, Addiction, on the subject of e-cigs:

...“removing e-cigarettes from the market or discouraging their use could harm public health by depriving smokers of a potentially important option for smoking cessation.” It would “seem misguided,” the authors argue, “to ask people to discontinue an approach that is working in favour of an approach that has already been ineffective for them.”

Yet Canada bans e-cigs and the EU intends to (unless we can stop them). Why is this? Some suggest:
 

By dismissing this technology outright, the anti-smoking crowd is showing their true colours. Their actions show a deep-seated antipathy toward smokers and anything that resembles a cigarette, rather than a concern for overall public health.

It is the smoker who is bad not the cigarette. And there's some truth in this argument - the success of 'denormalisation' has been to turn smokers into evil pariahs. But is there also an argument that support for the ban is driven by ignorance and stupidity (things that are well represented in public health circles).

Plus there's this - the UK government generated £12.1 billion in duty and VAT from smokers last year. Imagine if, say, the smoking rate dropped from it current rate of about one in five adults to the rate in Sweden (about one in seven adults). That would see some £3 billion less revenue for the government - revenue they'd have to make up in other taxes or cuts to services.

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You want real evil? A comment on the idea of banning e-cigs

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Absolutely:

You want real evil? What's truly evil is attempting to deny people addicted to a profoundly damaging substance the opportunity to transfer that addiction to a product most medical professionals rate as 99% harmless. The gathering European opposition to electronic cigarettes is the result of kneejerk cultural prejudice, puritanical vindictiveness, corporate collusion, and the unconscionable greed of tax authorities that won't be able to heap the same punitive, confiscatory, opportunistic duties on a product that doesn't hurt anyone.

Hard to disagree with a word of this.

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They do not give off smoke and contain no tobacco....

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...but they are not popular with the nannying fussbuckets:

Dr Vivienne Nathanson, head of science and ethics at the British Medical Association, says employers are right to be cautious given the lack of data on the long-term effects of e-cigarettes and thinks it could give employees the wrong message.

Dr Nathanson said: "They are designed to look like smoking so what they do is they renormalise the concept of smoking, just at a time when we've all got used to the fact that smoking in the workplace is not normal nor allowed."

As ever, read that carefully - e-cigs "give the wrong message". And that message is that smokers must be shunned, stigmatised, denormalised. A product that does little or no harm - even the woman from ASH Scotland on Five Live this morning admitted they were much safer than smoking - must be stopped because it looks like smoking.

Presumably we'll be banning sucking pencils now? After all that's like smoking isn't it?

And fire risk? NHS Fife must be joking - you'd have to work hard at setting fire to something with an e-cigarette. This is just scrabbling around for excuses to ban something. Pathetic.

It really is time we started to behave like grown ups on this subject. E-cigarettes are safe and really can help people quit smoking. Why on earth are the anti-smokers so opposed?

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So why do ASH - and the EU - and the WHO - want e-cigs banned?

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Perhaps it's because they're not controlled by their friends in the pharmaceuticals industry? Whatever, it certainly isn't because they don't work:

What sets e-cigarettes apart from other non-traditional nicotine delivery systems is that it has a high conversion rate, meaning that ‘smokers’ are less likely to return to regular cigarettes—a trend not enjoyed by other non-burning nicotine outlets like patches...

Update:

A clue comes from the latest piece of deranged ideological nonsense from the World Health Organisation:

...Parties may also wish to consider whether the sale, advertising, and even the use of electronic cigarettes can be considered as promoting tobacco use, either directly or indirectly. Regardless of whether or not ENDS contain nicotine or tobacco extracts, they are used to mimic smoking, which could be considered as a (direct or indirect) promotion of tobacco use."

That's it folks - e-cigs mustn't be allowed because using them looks like smoking. It doesn't matter if thousands of smokers are escaping the damage of cigarettes through 'vaping'. It looks like smoking and might:

"...undermine the denormalization of tobacco use."

We truly live in a mad world when a product that can help people quit smoking is banned because it looks like smoking.


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Lies, damned lies and public health

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It beats me why those promoting public health campaigns feel the need to (how do I put this) make stuff up.

I understand that some people have a nannying, controlling, interfering world view. They're brought up to believe it OK to go around telling other people that their choices are wrong. It's a world view I hate but why do its adherents feel the need to tell massive porkies all the time?

Don't believe me? Here are a couple of recent examples:

The rest of the story is that the European Respiratory Society is lying to the public. The Society claims that electronic cigarettes were developed by the tobacco industry. This is false. The tobacco industry played no role in the creation of electronic cigarettes and for the past four years, has had no involvement at all in the electronic cigarette industry. It was only recently, when Lorillard acquired Blu cigs, that the tobacco industry entered the electronic cigarette market. The claim that electronic cigarettes were developed by the tobacco industry is an outright lie.

And from the same set of public health campaigners and even worse lie:

The claim that electronic cigarettes cause cancer is without scientific evidence. While it is true that trace levels of tobacco-specific nitrosamines have been detected in electronic cigarettes, similar trace levels are also present in nicotine gum and nicotine patches. If electronic cigarettes can be said to cause cancer, then so can nicotine replacement therapy.

There is simply no scientific evidence that NRT causes cancer, because it is unclear that the trace levels of tobacco-specific nitrosamines in these products have any clinical significance, are capable of inducing cancer, or that there has ever been a human case of cancer caused by NRT.

Similarly, there is simply no scientific evidence that electronic cigarettes cause cancer, because it is unclear that the trace levels of tobacco-specific nitrosamines in these products have any clinical significance, are capable of inducing cancer, or that there has ever been a human case of cancer caused by electronic cigarettes.

So you've never heard of the European Respiratory Society. How about the BBC?

Programme makers asked Sheffield University to model the effects of a 50p per unit minimum price, which would push the price of the cheapest bottle of vodka from about £9 to £13.

Statisticians estimated the effect would be 50,000 fewer alcohol-related deaths in England among over 65s, over the course of 10 years.

The current affairs programme, to be broadcast on BBC One at 7.30pm on Monday, examines problem drinking among Britain’s ever-growing population of older people. 

Let's be clear about these statistics. They are utter rubbish. Complete and absolute tosh. Yet the BBC proposes to broadcast them without challenge. Here are the facts on alcohol related deaths (or a close as we can get using the entirely questionable approach preferred by public health people).  The figure - allowing for estimates of homicides, suicides and drownings - is around 13,000 per year. And declining.

The BBC wants us to believe that introducing a 50p per unit minimum price will result in 5,000 fewer of these deaths. That's a 40% drop. More to the point these statistics mean that nearly every single death of someone aged over 65 currently listed as 'alcohol-related' is eliminated. This is complete nonsense as a moments perusal of the actual statistics would show.

I think you get the picture. On everything - from smoking in cars to the effect of salt consumption the public health lobby simply makes stuff up. And repeats it time and time again until everyone assumes it is correct. Policy affecting millions of people and their choices is being made on the basic of dodgy science, misrepresentation of statistics and, it seems, outright lies.

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Nannying Fussbucket of the week: Simon Burns thinks e-cigs are harmful

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Apparently we're about to see action on e-cigs - the health minister, Simon Burns says:

ELECTRONIC cigarettes face a crackdown amid fears they could be harmful to smokers trying to quit tobacco.

Figures show TWO MILLION Brits have tried them and 650,000 use them regularly. But Health Minister Simon Burns said some e-cigs had been “found to pose a potential danger”. 

That's news to me but the idea that they might be more harmful to smokers trying to quit than actual cigarettes is frothingly dumb. Those 650,000 regular users are doing their health good not ill - maybe Mr Burns has had a visit from Pfizer?

“It’s illegal to sell e-cigarettes as a ‘quit smoking’ aid unless they’re licensed as a medicine.” 

Apart from "no it's not", I have little to say about this except that the makers of medical nicotine must be sweating at the success of e-fags.

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The end of risky smoking (but not if the anti-smoking industry has its way)

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To a certain extent the battle over tobacco covers up a profound change - albeit one that the anti-smoking fanatics are opposing. The decision of Lorillard - part of "Big Tobacco" - to acquire an e-cig company tells us that these companies see less risky means of delivering nicotine as a significant growth market (unlike their cash cow of cigarettes).

This decision puts a tobacco company at the forefront of smoking harm reduction:

Through its acquisition of blu ecigs®, Lorillard is now officially in the business of harm reduction and it is devoting a substantial amount of resources to promoting smoking cessation via the use of electronic cigarettes.

The problem is that the anti-smoking brigade will not accept e-cigarettes as a legitimate means of reducing the hard from tobacco use - indeed ASH, the main anti-smoking use is actively trying to ban e-cigs:

Attorneys general in 49 states are being petitioned to ban the further sale of e-cigarettes until their safety can be determined by the Food and Drug Administration [FDA].  They are being petitioned to follow the lead of the Oregon Attorney General's office which has just obtained such court orders, by Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), the group whose legal petition, and scheduled appearance on NBC-TV Nightly News, precipitated last week's FDA warning about some of the dangers of e-cigarettes

A proven means of stopping smoking is not recommended by those campaigning for people to stop smoking - unlike a leading tobacco company:

In an irony of epic proportions that is an embarrassment to the anti-smoking movement, the Lorillard Tobacco Company is now promoting smoking cessation among thousands of consumers using electronic cigarettes, while most anti-smoking groups are not.

Believe it or not, here is the actual advice that Lorillard and anti-smoking groups are giving - publicly - to current smokers who are thinking of quitting smoking using electronic cigarettes:

Lorillard: Do.
Anti-Smoking Groups: Don't.

But then it's not about smoking any more, it's about control and, too often,acting on behalf of their paymasters in the pharmaceuticals industry - the big competitors to e-cigs.

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How could a smoking ban review be acceptable to smokers and non-smokers?

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A while ago the Freedom to Choose blog posted a 'loneliness' trilogy that reported on the experiences of smokers - especially elderly smokers - following the ban in public buildings. As one elderly woman concluded:

"I am now on anti depressants and wish that I had the courage to kill myself and join my dear husband.

Thank you politicians for making my life not worth living after working from age 14 until 68. I am now 74 and have lost my soul and will to live in this lonely place.”

While the ban has made pubs, restaurants and such like more pleasant places for us non-smokers, it has made for a lonely life for many smokers and especially women. So, when the Joseph Rowntree Trust began its examination of loneliness - partly in Denholme, a village up the hill from Cullingworth - I sent them the material from Freedom-to-choose and others about the negative impact of the smoking ban on loneliness and, indeed, on the mental health of elderly smokers.

So what should we do? Going back to few restrictions on smoking wouldn't be acceptable and would represent an imposition on non-smokers - including those who have conditions such as asthma that are exacerbated by passive smoking. But equally we need to allow a space for those who smoke within our public places - treating smokers as lepers is perhaps as damaging to health as the smoking itself. Depression and loneliness are big problems among the elderly contributing significantly to ill-health.

Loneliness is bad for your health. Researchers rate loneliness as a higher risk than lifelong smoking. Researchers also link lack of social interaction with the onset of degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s: an illness which costs us an estimated £20 billion a year and has an even higher human cost. One study reported a doubled risk of Alzheimer’s disease in lonely people compared with those who were not lonely.

It has been shown that loneliness makes it harder to regulate behaviour, rendering people more likely to drink excessively, have unhealthier diets or take less exercise. There is also evidence that loneliness adversely affects the immune and cardio-vascular systems.

So the efforts to reduce smoking - well-meant as they are - contribute to increases in something that is a higher risk - loneliness. We really cannot continue with the current 'denormalisation' approach - quite literally, it is killing people. So what could we do?

• Promote and support the use of e-cigarettes - these are perhaps the most effective harm reduction system for smokers since they mimic the act and deliver only nicotine to the smoker rather than a cocktail of carcinogens from the burning tobacco. And e-cigarettes have no sidestream passive smoking risks - the 'smoke' we see is just water vapour
• Allow premises above a certain size to have a separate, well-ventilated room for use by smokers - by using negative pressure and modern extraction technology (of the kind used to prevent odours and gases escaping from industrial processes) the negative impact for non-smokers can be more-or-less eliminated
• Permit - perhaps on a trial basis - smaller premises to have times when smoking is permitted. This doesn't deal with the lingering smell but it avoids the sidestream/passive smoking risks

I'd welcome other suggestions as it must be within the wit of man to design a society that tolerates smoking (while being clear about its health risks) - the situation at present is both unfair and dangerous.

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