E-cig Hysteria

Still on e-cigs, here’s a very relevant comment from Magnetic today:

The amount of time and effort being expended on e-cigs (to their demonization) is quite extraordinary. A flurry of “studies” and a magnifying glass on the few ingredients in e-cigs.

Consider the case of “fire safe” cigarettes (FSC). They’ve been made mandatory in a number of countries. The fire-safe “technology”, involving added glue rings to the paper, increased the chemical load of manufactured cigarettes. There were complaints of immediate symptoms from smoking these cigarettes, e.g., coughing fits, constant phlegm, wheezing, “lung burn”. Given the magnitude of scrutiny on e-gizmos concerning their safety, it could well be asked how much research went into the health effects of this fire-safe design. How much scrutiny did they attract? How much research did Tobacco Control nut cases demand before advocating this design be made mandatory? And how much research has been called for since they became mandatory?

Unlike the very considerable attention now given to e-cigs, there was NO – none, zero, zip, nada – research on the health effects of fire-safe cigarettes, before or after their introduction. It sounded like a great idea to the Tobacco Control folk. So they went right ahead and pushed for them to be made mandatory. Immediate detrimental health effects from these cigarettes? The Tobacco Control folk couldn’t care less….. as has been demonstrated.

Below I’ll post as much as I know of FSC as a reference point.

Magnetic added further comments on FSC here and here.

Still on e-cigs, I also came across this in the Telegraph:

‘I thought my e-cigarette was safe. Turns out, I was smoking the equivalent of 40-a-day’

When Rachael Lloyd took up vaping, she thought she’d stumbled across a miracle alternative to smoking. Little did she know, her ‘friendly’ e-cigarette was actually damaging her health – as the World Health Organisation is now starting to realise…

When my local chemist told me to stop vaping immediately, or risk seriously damaging my health I thought he must be having a mad half hour.

Kindly Mr Patel has always struck me a cautious man. It seemed ridiculous that he was making such a fuss.

I just couldn’t grasp that something as innocuous as an e-cigarette, widely regarded as the safe alternative to real cigarettes – and commonly used by smokers to quit – could do any lasting damage.

Now, I know that he was right all along. The World Health Organisation (WHO) this week recommended that e-cigarettes should be banned indoors, because they emit chemicals potentially as dangerous as cigarettes and have a potential passive smoking risk. Doctors are also calling for more research into the long-term dangers of vaping, which they say may be more dangerous than previously thought.

The author’s rather implausible story was that she had only been an occasional ‘social smoker’ of cigarettes, but had taken enthusiastically to e-cigarettes, even puffing away on them at work, and started spending more and more money on them – until she’d consulted her local chemist, and had quit vaping by using NRT products.

I found it implausible because my local chemist wouldn’t be the first place I’d go for advice. Why should chemists know anything about e-cigs? They don’t sell them. But they do sell competing NRT products. And as such they have a vested interest in getting customers off e-cigs and onto NRT products. Which is exactly what her chemist did.

Secondly, NRT products notoriously don’t work. So it was rather remarkable that they should somehow manage to work a treat with ‘e-cig addiction’.

The entire story simply didn’t ring true. She seemed to believe everything she was told by absolutely anybody. And it had all happened too fast, the transition from occasional cigarette smoker, to e-cig addict, to finally being rescued by her trusty local chemist in what seems to have been about 3 months. So I concluded that it was really just another anti-vaping story planted in the mainstream media in support of the ‘big push’ against e-cigs by the WHO. Because it was an anti-vaping story rather than an anti-smoking story. In fact, one was left with the sense that she’d been better off as a ‘social smoker’ until she’d been sucked into a private hell of e-cig addiction, spiralling downwards in an uncontrollable spending spree (£30 a week!), until the saintly figure of her local chemist rescued her with NRT.

There’s probably good money to be made writing fiction along these lines. But I think there ought to be some romantic interest. And a good car chase. You know the sort of thing.