Anti-smoking posters in Moscow have used the image of U.S. President Barack Obama smoking to deter smokers — saying that both he and cigarettes are killers.
The poster has a photoshopped image of the U.S. president and the words: “Smoking kills more people than Obama, although he kills a lot of people. Don’t smoke — don’t be like Obama.”
Bizarre. Perhaps he’s still smoking after all?
The claim of nicotine having addictive properties is well accepted by professionals in the health and medical fields, but is not supported with definitive clinical evidence. Smokers have been told they are addicted by health professionals around the world. This tactic has a term called “proof by assertion.” Wikipedia’s definition of proof by assertion is “an informal fallacy in which a proposition is repeatedly re-stated regardless of contradiction.”
Most of what’s said about tobacco seems to be repeated assertion.
Frank Davis 
Nicotine is not addictive, no conclusive evidence found
No conclusive evidence, clinical trials, or studies exist showing dependence to nicotine alone
By Kevin Crowley 16 Feb 2016
http://us.blastingnews.com/opinion/2016/02/nicotine-is-not-addictive-no-conclusive-evidence-found-00792157.html
That’s because the decision was based on political expediency not proper science.
It doesn’t work because it doesn’t have to work, it just needs to be stated with authority
1994
“Over the past few months, the FDA’s commissioner, David Kessler, has been campaigning for tobacco to be regulated in the same way as many other drugs. To do so legally, he must demonstrate that nicotine is a powerful drug, and that the tobacco companies depend on nicotine’s addictiveness to keep smokers smoking.”
Whole thing further down the page.
Don’t forget that at the time even the people who should have known didn’t know that nicotine was a common plant chemical in the vegetables that people eat everyday and the possible consequences of such a decision.
Rose ever so slowly the junk political based science industry is being destroyed, this mans article on nicotine is just one more of the political fallacies being undone by jow public and a few good scientists around the globe.
Remember the Mummy study,it destroyed in less than 2 years much of the last 60 years of lifestyle claims in one bold sweep.
The rest is coming apart at the seems now day by day.
Frank, I agree, most of tobacco control’s rhetoric is repeated assertion. It’s nice to see their foundation of propaganda start to erode.
Right now everyday we are seeing a ton of stories ripping down the Tower of TC………
It certainly cant last very much longer.
My musings on “repeated assertion” and how to run a prohibitionist campaign. I suspect that this is how the anti-smoking pogram got going and that it is what other industries have to look forward to unless these vile people are stopped:
1. Get a few politicians on side.
2. Warn the target industry that legislation will follow unless they voluntarily put health warnings on their products.
3. Once the industry has complied then follow up with propaganda until time is right for step 4.
4. Pronounce that it is time to act: “Nobody disagrees with our claim of harm. Even the industry agrees with us. Just look at the warnings they print.”
5. Ratchet up the claims and denounce the industry for deceiving the public by not printing warnings earlier and even then only printing mild ones. The industry won’t fight back because they’ve already shot themselves in the foot.
They threaten them with governmental blackmail like using the revenue agencies and others if they don’t comply. Im not kidding you that’s just what they have done.
Brainwashing == repeated assertion.
Utah Senate votes down bill to eliminate S.L. airport smoking rooms | KSL.com
Citing concerns about Utah’s image and personal freedom, the state Senate narrowly snuffed a proposal Tuesday to remove smoking rooms from the Salt…
https://ksl.com/?sid=38531612&nid=757
On addiction.
In the U. S., the 1964 Surgeon General’s report (page 349) grudgingly concluded that smoking was a habit. This changed in the 1988 report, called Nicotine Addiction. (1988 was about the time that drug companies began selling smoking cessation products to “treat” this “condition.”) Today salt, sugar, soda, and anything considered “unclean” by prohibitionists is proclaimed addictive (more addictive than heroine!), so tobacco has lots of company.
The concept of addiction dates back hundreds of years. You could probably find hundreds of “scientific” definitions of this “disease.”
Hi Frank o/t but just thought I would update you on the smoking status trials I mentioned a few weeks back for people diagnosed with lung cancer. Recruitment began in March 2010 and finished in March 2015 and the volunteers were to be split into 3 groups: 1. Never Smoker’s, 2 Ex Smoker’s and Current Smoker’s and the trials title is ” Studies Examining The Importance Of Smoking After Being Diagnosed With Lung Cancer “. It can be found at https://ukctg.night.AC.UK and the leader of the study is r.e.roberts@swansea.AC.UK. Apologies for the capitals in those address’s my tablet won’t have itvany other way.
The link didn’t work for me but I found stuff on various sites just by googling the trial name. No results are posted yet but due soon. The description says it’s…
“A large project consisting of: 1. an observational trial where smoking status is recorded on 1400 consecutive people newly diagnosed with lung cancer. Smoking status is biologically validated with exhaled carbon monoxide (eCO) levels every 3 months. Survival, cancer progression and treatment complications will be recorded and compared in smokers, ex-smokers and never smokers. 2. 400 smokers with lung cancer who express a desire to quit, will be offered entry in a randomised trial. Here they will receive either standardized physician advice or intensive specialist support to quit smoking. eCO, survival, quality of life, cancer progression and treatment complications will be compared in both groups. The cost-effectiveness of the 2 quit-smoking strategies will also be estimated.”
There was speculation last year that the Prez is still smoking:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/06/white_house_denies_obama_still_smoking_after_pic_shows_him_holding_pack_of_cigarettes.html
US ruling turns smokers into junkies – 1994
“Nicotine is addictive, a panel of experts on drug abuse decided last week. The decision leaves the door open for the US Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco as it does other addictive substances.
Over the past few months, the FDA’s commissioner, David Kessler, has been campaigning for tobacco to be regulated in the same way as many other drugs. To do so legally, he must demonstrate that nicotine is a powerful drug, and that the tobacco companies depend on nicotine’s addictiveness to keep smokers smoking.”
But the tobacco companies continue to insist that nicotine is not addictive. To settle the issue, Kessler asked the Drug Abuse Advisory Committee to give its expert opinion.
“The drug abuse panel listened to a whole range of definitions of addiction. But the debate highlighted some important questions. What makes a substance addictive? What is the difference between an addiction and a habit? Has the term ‘addiction’ become meaningless?
In 1988, the US Surgeon General concluded in a report on tobacco that nicotine is addictive in the fullest sense of the word. It is psychoactive, having a direct effect on the brain; it is reinforcing, meaning that users will keep using the drug; it is used compulsively despite harmful effects. The desire to smoke takes precedence over other important priorities, such as health, and smokers become physically dependent on nicotine.
Despite this, a handful of scientists – inside and outside the tobacco companies – claim the Surgeon General stretched the traditional meaning of addiction too far. They claim his report adds to the growing abuse of the word as in pop psychology’s ‘food addiction’ and ‘sex addiction’.
‘The smoker’s ability to think or reason clearly is not diminished when making the decision to quit or continue smoking. In short, this is clearly not a behaviour that the smoker has lost control over.’
“He points out that until the 1960s, most definitions of addictive substances included the intoxicating effect.
He said that this part of the definition should still apply, and as nicotine in normal doses is not intoxicating, it should not be considered addictive.
Some scientists outside the tobacco companies agree. For instance, Robert Cancro, head of the Department of Psychiatry at the New York University Medical School, claims that ‘addiction’ has become ‘a modern shibboleth’. ‘A person who seeks pleasure from smoking . . . is different from a person ‘strung out’ on drugs.
The former may enjoy the activity and pursue it; but the latter will reshape his life to obtain the drug,’ he said.
Robert Cloninger, professor of psychiatry at Washington University in St Louis, also rejects the notion that nicotine is addictive. He does not believe it causes loss of control over behaviour or physical dependence”
But scientists on the winning side of the debate last week claim the critics misunderstand or misrepresent what constitutes an addiction.
‘Tobacco representatives seem to focus in on one element of any definition. They say nicotine cannot be addicting because it does not cause intoxication.
But that’s only one of the things that goes into an overall definition,’ said Richard Hurt, director of the Mayo Nicotine Dependence Center in Rochester, Minnesota.
Jack Henningfield, chief of the clinical pharmacology branch at the National Institute on Drug Abuse Addiction Research Center, points out that in high enough doses nicotine can be intoxicating, while very low doses of drugs such as heroin and cocaine may not be intoxicating.
Henningfield also rejects most of the other alleged differences between nicotine and other drugs. For instance, the fact that many people can quit nicotine does not prove that it is not addictive, as people do give up other addictive drugs.
And the fact that smokers do not turn to crime to feed their addiction has more to do with the ready supply of cigarettes than a lack of addictiveness, Henningfield says.
Comparing smoking to eating chocolate or other compulsive behaviours misses the point says Henningfield. ‘Of course you can see compulsive behaviours for anything.
Drug addiction requires a certain kind of chemical to act on the brain. The chemical activity in the brain reduces the freedom of choice whether to use that drug or not.’
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14319381.300-us-ruling-turns-smokers-into-junkies.html
In 2009 David Kessler tried the same thing again against the food manufacturers.
How the Food Makers Captured Our Brains
2009
“As head of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. David A. Kessler served two presidents and battled Congress and Big Tobacco. But the Harvard-educated pediatrician discovered he was helpless against the forces of a chocolate chip cookie.”
“When it comes to stimulating our brains, Dr. Kessler noted, individual ingredients aren’t particularly potent. But by combining fats, sugar and salt in innumerable ways, food makers have essentially tapped into the brain’s reward system, creating a feedback loop that stimulates our desire to eat and leaves us wanting more and more even when we’re full.
Dr. Kessler isn’t convinced that food makers fully understand the neuroscience of the forces they have unleashed, but food companies certainly understand human behavior, taste preferences and desire.”
.
1994
“demonstrate that nicotine is a powerful drug, and that the tobacco companies depend on nicotine’s addictiveness to keep smokers smoking.”
2009
“food makers have essentially tapped into the brain’s reward system, creating a feedback loop that stimulates our desire to eat and leaves us wanting more and more even when we’re full.”
Note the similarities in approach.
Ignored voices
Paper presented to the FDA’s Substance Abuse Advisory Committee meeting, 2 August 1994, Silver Springs, MD.
Is Nicotine Addictive? A Re-evaluation of the Data
“In this brief statement I will develop the argument that research has failed to substantiate the claim that nicotine is addictive. To the contrary, it is difficult to document even mildly rewarding effects from nicotine.”
http://wings.buffalo.edu/aru/ARUreport03.html
Nicotine as an Addictive Substance: A Critical Examination of the Basic Concepts and Empirical
Evidence – 2001
“There are so many findings that conflict so starkly with the view that nicotine is addictive that it increasingly appears that adhering to the nicotine addiction thesis is only defensible on extra-scientific grounds.”
“In summary, apart from numerous conceptual and definitional inadequacies, the notion that nicotine is an addictive substance lacks reasonable empirical support. There are so many and such grossly conflicting findings that adhering to the nicotine addiction thesis is only defensible on political, not scientific,grounds.”
Click to access atrens.pdf
Weird, isn’t it? Smoking rates were declining steadily before the antis really kicked off with a vengeance – the more they insist we’re addicts and force us to quit, the more we’re inclined to tell them to fuck off.
Well everyone is entitled to their own view, it’s when they use the power of the Law to inflict their views on us that people get angry.
I think that’s what got us in this mess in the first place, being far too polite.
The solution is outlawing Buildings not people
The solution is outlawing Buildings not people. Funny first you have to believe in the so called ” HARM BELIEF SYSTEM” Since nobody can prove a…
Nice to have some numbers for a change.
New figures reveal number of smokers kicking the habit in Oxfordshire has dropped by almost half
18 February 2016
“The county is investing £500,000 of its smoking cessation budget on outreach and support services, £150,000 on GP cessation services and £30,000 on pharmacy services.
The county’s public health budget includes £285,000 for nicotine replacement therapies such as gum, patches, inhalers or lozenges.
http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/14283842.Number_of_smokers_kicking_habit_drops_despite_health_service_spending___980k/
.
Global Warming Is The Greatest And Most Successful Pseudoscientific Fraud In History
“The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.” – Prof. Chris Folland, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research “It do…
On the subject of addiction and Jack Henningfield’s role, particularly as advisor to the US surgeon general and as a consultant to Glaxosmithkline, I recommend reading the McTear vs ITL court judgement paras 5.394 through 5.398.
In order to claim nicotine was as addictive as morphine and amphetamine, Henningfield drew apparently similar graphs. But closer inspection revealed that they had been drawn to quite different scales. (meaning that in reality nicotine was comparable to chocolate).
I believe this dodgy Henningfield paper was the primary justification for the US surgeon general’s 1988 conclusion that nicotine was as addictive as morphine or amphetamine rather than just habit forming. And that claim subsequently got misquoted to read ‘heroin’ or ‘cocaine’.
http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/search-judgments/judgment?id=c77c86a6-8980-69d2-b500-ff0000d74aa7
I’ve just found my earlier notes:
ITL’s expert witness:
[5.398]… “Figure 5 showed nine histograms each showing two bars, one for placebo (P) and the other for the “drug” under investigation (D) or simulated gambling (SG). In all nine histograms the D or SG bar was higher than the P bar. Professor Gray said that the significance was said to be that nicotine increased scores on this scale to the same degree as that seen for morphine and amphetamine, for example, and from the way the figure was drawn that appeared to be the case. It has subsequently been pointed out by Warburton, however, that the scales on the vertical axes of each of the histograms were quite different from each other. This was standardly regarded as very poor scientific methodology and should have been pointed out by the referees of the paper at the outset; it was something that graduate students were taught at an early stage not to do. For morphine for example, the P value was below 4 and the D value nearly 10; the same for amphetamine. For nicotine, the P value was 5 and the D value just below 7. But the scales had been set so that the difference between P and D for nicotine appeared to be as large as that for amphetamine and morphine, though this was simply not the case.”
And then the judge’s view:
“[6.206] Professor Gray’s evidence accordingly is consistent with the averment for the pursuer that once individuals such as Mr McTear have started smoking it is difficult for them to wean themselves off the habit. It provides no support for the proposition that tobacco is more addictive than cocaine, or more addictive than heroin for that matter. There is no evidence before me which provides support for the conclusion in USSG 1988 that the pharmacological and behavioural processes that determine tobacco addiction are similar to those that determine addiction to drugs such as heroin and cocaine. Indeed, insofar as this relied on Henningfield 1984, it lacked a sound scientific basis.”
The Henningfield paper is here: http://tobaccodocuments.org/pm/2057063013-3023.html although I can’t get it to load right now.
Is this questioning of Jack Henningfield at all relevant?
If BT was lacing heroine or cocaine into tobacco cigs. The Nazis might have have had a case. It appears they are losing on every front these days on everything they ever claimed.
That’s an interesting find. At the very least, there’s a lot of background information on Henningfield there and probably a lot more.
In 1993 the prize was nearly swept from their grasp.
More on the Nicotine Content of Vegetables
November 18 1993
Jack E. Henningfield, Ph.D.
National Institute on Drug Abuse, Baltimore,
To the Editor
Domino et al. (Aug. 5 issue)1 suggest that nicotine obtained from the consumption of vegetables could complicate the interpretation of studies of exposure to environmental tobacco smoke based on the detection of nicotine or its metabolite cotinine. The crux of their argument was that typical levels of vegetable consumption could result in an exposure to nicotine equivalent to that from inhalation of air with “a low concentration of nicotine from tobacco smoke.”
“Second, as acknowledged by Domino et al., nicotine exposure would be greatly reduced if vegetable skins, which contain most of the nicotine, were not eaten or if they were cooked in water, thereby extracting the nicotine. Third, ingesting nicotine is not equivalent to inhaling it, since absorption from the stomach is poor and 70 percent of the nicotine entering the circulation is metabolized during its first pass through the liver.”
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199311183292118
“Dr. Domino replies:
To the Editor: Eating vegetables does not make you an addict to nicotine. Since the publication of our letter, I have been overwhelmed by dozens of inquiries and commentaries from all over the world, ranging from the appropriate to the curious and bizarre.
The purpose of our letter was to point out that small amounts of nicotine in some vegetables may be one possible explanation for the presence of nicotine and its metabolite cotinine in the body fluids, especially urine, of nonsmokers. The amount of nicotine in certain vegetables is obviously too small to produce any pharmacologic or toxicologic effects. The difference between the small amount of nicotine in certain vegetables and the large amount in one average tobacco cigarette offers a marvelous lesson, both pharmacologic and toxicologic, on the importance of dose-effect relations. We never intended to suggest that vegetarians could become nicotine addicts, or that children who hate vegetables have a legitimate reason for refusing to eat them.
Dr. Henningfield apparently agrees with us that nicotine can be found in certain vegetables.”
When the CDC drew the state cancer rate graphs and smoking rates to deaths. That’s what they did the regraphed it to appear ky was like heavies smokers and biggest cancer deeaths. But when you lay it out and actually check the stats all the states trended precisely with each other and it didn’t matter if it was tons higher in smoking rates or tons lower,they still trended precisely together.
Graphing or regraphing to create an illusion seems to be a big deal with TC.
Frank…… just read Isabell Hardman at the Speccie. Journalists are hanging around the glass ‘smoking pen’ at the EU headquarters, waiting to see what happens tonight with Camerons latest theatre.
My point being…… THE SMOKING PEN!!!!! INSIDE an EU parliament building. I thought no one was allowed to smoke inside, whether it be airport, hospital, prison, work place. Yet here is Isabelle reporting a smoking pen inside an EU building, without seeming to find it in the least bit odd.
Talk about one rule for them and another for us.
They have an actual smoking pen and its inside…….. no standing out in the cold and wet for them.
I am shocked, I tell you. Your thoughts?
I’m not in te least surprised. Hypocrisy comes naturally to these people.
2007
European Parliament scraps smoking ban after only six weeks.
Health organisations condemn European Parliament for failing to protect staff and visitors and wasting millions of Euros
“On Monday 12th February, the European Parliament Bureau voted 14 to one to scrap recently introduced provisions banning smoking in it’s premises. Te rules were introduced in all Parliament buildings in Belgium, France and Luxembourg on 1st January 2007 as a result of a 2004 case to the European ombudsman who found that the Parliament was failing to protect the health of it’s staff.” 1
“According to a report in the Parliament’s Newshound magazine the rules were scrapped because of “enforcement” problems and because the smoking ban wasinterfering with the “smooth running of our parliamentary and administrative business.”
The EP is now proposing to adopt smoking rooms after consultation with
Parliament’s administration.”
Click to access EP_ban_press_release-2.pdf
1 http://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/decision/en/030260.
htm
She also has photos…….. because at first I thought it must just be a misnomer…… but no, there are photos of people SMOKING in this smoking pen.
Sheeeeeeesh!
There has always been smoking allowed inside the EU parliament. Many of the MEPs smoke in their offices with impunity. The smoking bans don’t apply there. They (the MEPs) are there to make the rules, not to follow them.
Same here in the U.S. Case in point: John Boehner.
post the pics here………..I can have a lot of fun with them
Formosa Oolong. Tasty tea.
Album cover of Wes Montgomery.
Wes is the Best.
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/02/camerons-eu-summit-long-night-ahead-in-brussels/
GO GET EM TEAR THEM A NEW ONE FOR NICK HOGAN HAS COMMENTS