The whole point about vaping and harm reduction

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So we're sat in a cafe in Bradford having something to eat. Outside the cafe there's a little gathering, about ten or twelve young people - boys and girls - aged 14 or 15. They're behaving exactly like you'd expect young people this age to behave - joshing with each other, lots of braggadocio from the boys, preening and giggling from the girls. All pretty normal and almost certainly a bunch of nice kids.

And three or four of them were vaping.

Now before you get all shocked, imagine the scene a few years ago. A dozen working class fifteen year olds in Bradford away from parents in the City centre - three or four of them would have been smoking good old-fashioned cigarettes. Instead they're vaping - doing something that Public Health England tell us is at least 95% safer than smoking.

It may be that you'd prefer these young people to do nothing - no smoking, no vaping. And maybe you're right in your preference. But if they're going to do something surely it's better they choose the least harmful option? Just like I was back in the 1970s, the young people are doing the naughty thing they're told not to do - in my case it led to being a heavy smoker for thirty years. For these young people their choice means they won't have the coughs, the shortness of breath and the massive risk of lung or throat cancer that I had.

Which is why it's very stupid to try and make vapers and vaping equivalent to smoking.

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Stupid, stupid, murderously stupid...

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It was going to happen, they were going to get their way, they couldn't allow e-cigarettes to succeed. So they've set about killing them:

"Reducing the harms of smoking to smokers and those around them is a key Government health priority. Our research has shown that existing electronic cigarettes and other nicotine containing products on the market are not good enough to meet this public health priority.

“Some NCPs are already licensed and the Government's decision to work towards medicines licensing for all these products is designed to deliver quality products that will support smokers to cut down and to quit.

“The decision announced today provides a framework that will enable good quality products to be widely available. It’s not about banning products that some people find useful, it’s about making sure that smokers have an effective alternative that they can rely on to meet their needs."

Some 1.3 million people have already switched to e-cigarettes. To stop this process is stupid.

It's stupid because e-cigarettes are 99% safer than smoking regular cigarettes

It's stupid because e-cigarettes are not a medicine - unless a cup of coffee is a medicine

It's murderously stupid because it means that people will die unnecessarily.

But then it never was about health, was it.

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So why is there less research into lung cancer compared to other cancers?

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Here are the statistics from the USA - which is the biggest spender on basic cancer research:

A

Which of course begs the question as to why this is happening:

The stigma of smoking is largely to blame. Anti-tobacco campaigns have, in a way, done their job too well, leading many to see lung cancer as self-inflicted. That stigma keeps some families and patients from speaking out, while corporate donors stay away from the disease, and some scientists and policymakers question whether scarce research dollars should be devoted to a smokers’ illness.

And, of course, the cancer research bodies wouldn't dare take money from the tobacco industry which might actually be interested in funding research into lung cancer! And the situation is the same in the UK:

In 2010 lung cancer attracted 5.5% of funding spent on research into specific types of cancer (£11.8m / £213m), an increase from 3.9% (£6.1m / £158m) in 2006.

Lung cancers are responsible for over 20% of cancer deaths yet research into the disease has lagged behind research into other cancers and especially breast cancer and leukaemia. We can also note that spending on pancreatic, bowel and stomach cancers also lags behind.

The reason for this relative underspend on lung cancer is that the "researchers" strategy has but one club - stop people smoking. Which is a bit tough on the 10-20% of lung cancer patients whose cancer isn't caused by smoking! And - more importantly - for the past ten years the 'stop people smoking' strategy has ceased to work quite as effectively (if at all):

Since 2000 overall adult smoking rates had been declining by around 0.4% per annum.2 Between 2007 and 2009, overall smoking prevalence among adults in Great Britain remained the same at 21%, dropping to 20% in 2010 (21% of men and 20% of women).

It seems to me that - notwithstanding our opinion of smoking - the purpose of public health would be better served focusing on harm reduction, early diagnosis and better treatment than on what seems a pretty futile process of "denormalisation".

But I guess no-one's listening. They prefer just to ban stuff.

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A reminder how the Tobacco Control Industry is killing people...

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Most smokers want to give up smoking. But most of those who want to give up fail to do so. Yet the Tobacco Control Industry - ASH and its associates in any number of local NHS "smoke free" bodies - persist in denying the value of harm reduction strategies and insist on abstinence or nothing.

And this approach means that people are dying unnecessarily - here's the facts (well American facts):

i) There are approximately 46 million tobacco smokers in the United States.
ii) While three-quarters say they want to quit smoking, and about one-third try to quit each year, fewer than 10% succeed.
iii) The FDA-approved smoking cessation aids simply do not work: They improve quit rates only minimally, if at all, therefore …
iv) About 450,000 American tobacco nicotine addicts die prematurely each year from smoking-related causes.

You see, while it is the nicotine that we get addicted to, it isn't the nicotine that kills us. It's the smoke.  Which means that if we remove the smoke, we reduce the harm and save lives.

We see tobacco control people wanting to ban e-cigarettes - despite their proven effectiveness as a smoking cessation aid. And to ban smokeless tobacco products like snus despite the almost complete absence of any evidence indicating harm.

As the author who pointed out the facts above observes:

Despite the demonstrated benefits of harm reduction, and the lack of efficacy of the approved pharmaceutical products (such as patches, gum, and medications), public health spokespersons, governmental and private, adhere to the mantra, “there is no safe tobacco product.”

While inexcusable, their rationales for such unscientific policies understandably derive from deep-seated mistrust of tobacco companies and their phony promotion of ostensibly “reduced risk” products like “light” or filter-tip cigarettes.

But this “won’t be fooled again” policy — ignoring the fate of the millions of addicted smokers — enforces an abstinence only, “quit or die” approach.

But rather than grasping the opportunities presented by a harm reduction approach to tobacco control, the New Puritan fundamentalists focus instead on ineffective, unproven controls such as plain packaging.

And as a result people who might not have died are dying.

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