The chart of an audience poll from the Global Tobacco Dependency Treatment Summit 2016 (23-24 May 2016, twitter:#TDTSummit16) is deeply disturbing…
Continue reading “Are they nuts? The dysfunction and decadence of tobacco control in one chart”
Category: Public health
Who or what is the World Health Organisation at war with?
The World Health Organisation does a good line in war-like rhetoric when it comes to tobacco policy. But what is it actually at war with? In this post, I examine the confusion in ‘tobacco control’ about what it is actually trying to achieve. Continue reading “Who or what is the World Health Organisation at war with?”
Who cares about a few thousand dead? Defending EU limits on the strength of nicotine e-liquids
Updated 16 May 2016
Apparently, there are still people in public health trying to defend the EU Tobacco Products Directive as it applies to vaping! It’s a ludicrous measure, that protects the cigarette trade, has costs and risks that vastly outweigh the non-existent benefits. ASH (London) appears relaxed about the nicotine strength limit: New EU rules on nicotine strength not a problem for most vapers it declares this morning (16 May 2016).
ASH claims that because ‘only’ nine percent of current vapers use liquids over the limit set by the EU Tobacco Products Directive, concerns raised in Parliament (Lords debate, Prime Minister’s Questions) are unjustified:
Concerns raised in Parliament [4] about the EU rules are not borne out by the ASH Smokefree GB Adult Survey. Only 9% of vapers report using e-liquid containing 19mg/ml or more of nicotine (the limit set by the EU Tobacco Products Directive is 20mg/ml).
Or maybe Parliament is right and ASH is wrong…? How might one respond to this defence of the indefensible? Continue reading “Who cares about a few thousand dead? Defending EU limits on the strength of nicotine e-liquids”
Professor Glantz brings his anti-vaping crusade to Europe – I review his presentation
Regrettably, the influence of Professor Stanton Glantz of the University of California at San Fransisco is not confined to California or to the United States. Last month he made a visit to Europe – to Austria in fact. As good Europeans, we always take our American visitors seriously and listen to what they have to say. So I have done a review of the presentation he gave at the Austrian Acadamy of Sciences in Vienna.
Fighting the Vape Militia Online and Off – a reply to the speakers
This session from a California tobacco control conference was circulated on Twitter and caught my eye. To me, it summarises a lot that is wrong with the anti-nicotine crusade and also with the behaviour of public servants and public health professionals in this field. Here was my reaction on twitter, but I decided to go further…
Continue reading “Fighting the Vape Militia Online and Off – a reply to the speakers”