No Smoking day, Big Pharma and the House of Lords. Before this article is complete, all 3 will be tied together perfectly. However, for the time being I want you to think about the political climate and approach to the vaping industry in the United States. We have a federal, state, and local crack down on anything vape related, whether it is taxing products out of existence or raising the “smoking age” to protect minors from tobacco addiction. We have politicians who decry vaping as more dangerous than heroin and crack cocaine combined, and a public health sector who would rather see people dying horrible deaths than trying something as crazy as quitting smoking with the help of vaporized nicotine products.
Quit or die is the basic premise of tobacco harm reduction in the United States. Keep paying the tobacco industry for their products or give our friends in the pharmaceutical industry your money for junk that has been proven time and time again to be nothing more than a failure. Chew gum, lick a patch or get suicidal on pills, but whatever you do, DO NOT VAPE! It’s dangerous, we don’t have enough information about the effects of vaping, blah, blah, blah – you all know the mantra by heart.
No Smoking Day
Recently there was a “No Smoking Day”, a British Heart Foundation initiative to put the idea into the heads of smokers that there is life after cigarettes. A great way to encourage people to step away from the cancer sticks and try to improve their health. My twitter feed was full of posts from the UK, health departments, government agencies, and random people who I follow who all had one commonality in their threads.
VAPING As An Alternative To Combustible Tobacco, Because It Works.
We have two governments, allied in many of their respective mindsets, at opposite ends of the spectrum. One decrying vaping as evil, while the other heralding it as the biggest breakthrough in preventable medicine in the last century. It’s all between the 2,350,000 people who die every year from smoking-related illnesses, yet they see the problem from completely opposite directions.
Smoking is a problem, everyone, myself included, will agree with that statement. 50 years ago, the consensus was that nicotine without the products of combustion, the tar, carbon monoxide, and all the other nasty by-products was fine. Nicotine itself is not dangerous in small doses, regardless of what people now want you to believe. If nicotine were as addictive as they say, I would constantly be cramming potatoes, tomatoes, and eggplants in my mouth for a fix – as would every other person on the planet who eats any of those vegetables. Fun fact, they all contain nicotine and we feed them to children every day, just thought I would point that out.
The Americans have taken a view that nicotine is the enemy while the British are still taking a Tobacco harm reduction approach. The British Government happily admit that almost 900,000 people in the United Kingdom use electronic devices and vaporizers to quit smoking, while the United States claims there is no evidence that vaping works. The UK states that vaping is not a gateway to youth smoking and has the evidence to back it up, while California is about to kill the vaping industry for that very reason.
What IS The Difference
While both countries have the same problem with combustible tobacco, the big difference is money. On one side you have a government who pays for the health care of its people, and another one that is paid off by the people who pedal the solutions. Look at the campaign contributions of American politicians who are decrying vaping, they are mostly bought and paid for by the pharmaceutical industry. The people who are losing money, hand over fist to vaping, are the people who put these guys in office.
The tobacco industry hates vaping just as much, but they can get a piece of the pie. If no one is quitting smoking anymore because vaping IS 95% safer than smoking, the pill, gum, and patch, producers will be going out of business. Guy Bentley wrote just yesterday how Pharma has been overtaken by vapor products as a viable solution to smoking and that they are scrambling to stay relevant in the future.
They already tried, and failed, to seize control of the American industry as medical devices and they are now doing the next best thing. If you can’t buy out your competition, destroy them.
In Europe, they believe they still have a chance with the TPD (Tobacco Products Directive), but the English are fighting against it as they have seen the light at the end of the tunnel, a light which is definitely not showing the best side of the Pharma giants.
Tying back into the title of this post, the video below shows a debate from the House Of Lords discussing the TPD and vaping. The most telling portion of the video is Viscount Ridley asking the question if the TPD is nothing more than the pharmaceutical industry attempting to have the competition regulated out of existence. The people in the house are not politicians who rely on campaign funding to get a seat and on the issue of vaping are very clear.
If vaping can save the British Government £740 billion per year in health care costs, and reduces the number of smokers in the country, imagine what it could do here. It is time for the politico’s to quit worrying about the people who paid for their ticket and start worrying about the people they are supposedly there to represent. Just because the corporation pays for the commercials doesn’t mean Joe Public will vote for you next time around. If you have proven that you care more about padding your friends wallet than telling the truth about vaping, this time, we are ready to make the truth be heard.
Vapers have the evidence on our side and a government who’s now willing to back up our claims, and it is only a matter of time before the lies catch up with those telling them. While they are making plans to crush our industry for the sake of a few billion dollars, we are preparing to destroy their careers to save a billion lives.
As always, enjoy your vaporizers and vape safe!
