Did Glantz & ANTZ help to destroy ecig ban?

 

Ecigs are NOT medicines.

This was the conclusion of the Swedish Administrative Court today, ending a rollercoaster case that has been dragging on for over two years. The Swedish Medicines Agency Läkemedelsverket took an ecig shop to court under the presumption that nicotine-containing ecigs and eliquids should be regulated under medicines law and regulation. The Court has finally decided that ecigs should not be subjected to this law or any medicines regulation. It is a huge win for consumer-driven tobacco harm reduction and freedom of choice.

The most sublime part of this ruling was the fact that Läkemedelsverket’s case was built on their claim that since ecigs are effective cessation products, they should be brought under their juristiction in line with patches, gums, Chantix and other medicinal cessation products. The court ruled that after consideration of the available “evidence”, they didn’t consider ecigs to be effective cessation products.

So in their own special way, anti-vaping buffoon Glantz and the army of junk-science spouting “researchers” around the world have helped to prevent ecigs being banned as illegal/unlicensed medicines. It’s a delightful irony that a case whose central premise appeared to have been “These things are awesome cessation products, let’s ban them” has been rejected.

Of course anyone who cares to look around them and see the amount of ex-smoking vapers there are knows full well that ecigs are a superb choice for those who would like to switch to a less harmful product. And thanks to the junk science of Glantz et al, many more Swedish smokers will continue to get the opportunity to try for themselves.

So thanks Stan & friends. You have inadvertantly helped Swedish vapers to win one battle. Now the war really begins in earnest, as vapers, harm-reduction advocates and enlightened politicians fight both the TPD and the inevitable attempts of the Swedish government to gold-plate it.

The mask always slips

There was an interesting presentation given by Daniel Wikler, Professor of Ethics and Population Health at the Harvard School of Public Health, at a seminar in Stockholm last week. It was notable for  a number of reasons.

Firstly, among the audience were a number of Sweden’s tobacco controllers. I imagine they were choking on their biscuits every time Wikler talked positively about snus in particular and harm reduction in general.

Eyebrows must also have been raised when he spoke glowingly about the mass migration to vaping by the smokers of the world, and that this could well be put at risk by the sort of harsh and prohibitive regulations being demanded by zealous tobacco controllers, and being delivered by their tame and spineless politicians.

He hinted at the ability of consumer harm reduction products like snus and ecigs to act as prophylactics, and seemed to recognise their power to prevent significant population-level take-up of smoking by young people. Which is all very welcome, and exactly the sort of challenging thinking we would expect from a professor of ethics.

He even talked about the remarkable levels of positive consumer activism, and dashed the tiresome “astroturf” label that is so often bandied about by anti-vaping groups when they are unable to meet vapers’ arguments and evidence head-on.

At the beginning of his presentation the professor seemed to be trying to shock his audience with audacious pronouncements – that in the future he wanted to see a wide range of products, that devices should be powerful, that nicotine levels and/or delivery should be higher. Worryingly, he didn’t seem aware that this has already happened, that his “pipe-dream” is in fact the status quo, and that EU and FDA regulations are about to destroy it at the stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen. He also drifted off into a little “the Chinese make some weird shit, we can’t trust ’em” riff, which ought to have set some vapers’ alarm bells ringing.

But we’ll forgive him his ignorance of the market and imminent legislation for the moment. What’s important is that he seemed to be advocating exactly the sort of free-market, laissez-faire situation that has been at the very core of vaping’s success.

But alas, he works in public health and tobacco control. And so at some stage he was bound to let the mask slip. And when it did slip, we saw the unquenchable thirst of the public health industry to control other people’s lives and choices.

It was at this point that he introduced The Plan.

The plan included such bizarre, market-distorting wibble as “The World’s governments should hand out 180 days’ worth of whatever THR product suits them best.”

I guess it’s an admission at least that “Handing out unlimited amounts of patches and gum” has been an abject failure. But it still stinks on so many levels. He then swiftly moved on to some of the prohibitions required by his plan:

Vaping lounges? They’d have to go. Because The Children.

Sweet flavours? Oh no. Because The Children.

Advertising? Gotta go. Because The Children.

And then he delivered the punchline: “Basically what we’re looking for is a medicalisation of these products.”

It’s worth noting at this point that he was addressing the very swivel-eyed prohibitionists that are demanding public vaping, flavour and advertising bans in Sweden, and where the courts are deciding whether to prohibit ecigs completely as unlicensed medicinal products. It must have been music to their ears.

The global free-market for vaping products via bricks & mortar vape shops and online suppliers, with only the light touch of standard consumer regulations to ensure basic standards are met, is working perfectly. The last thing we need is yet another do-gooder from public health standing up and saying: “This is excellent. We must change it.”

The mask always slips.

 

Hot or cold – How would you like your surströmming Sir?

For those of you who enjoy vaping Swedish Fish, surströmming is one variant you’re unlikely to see at your local vape store any time soon. It’s among the most rank-smelling food products the world has ever known. But I’d happily scoff down a tin or two if it meant escaping the heads-I-win-tails-you-lose situation facing the ecig industry right now.

The Swedish government published its 174 page transposition of the Tobacco Products Directive today. I was expecting this mighty tome to contain a whole raft of gold-plating additions to the dismal Article 20 laws on ecigs. But there weren’t any.

Does this mean that Swedish vapers will only be subjected to the daftness of the common-or-garden Article 20, with no added wibble?

No. Or at least, not yet anyway. Because the document notes that they haven’t really bothered to look at Article 20 yet. That’s because everyone’s still waiting for the court judgement on whether ecigs are medicines. If it’s decided that they are, the government confirms that they’ll be regulated (banned) as such. If they’re not, then and only then will the government whip out Article 20 and get to work implementing it, with or without gold-plating.

The court decision is imminent. A cynic might conclude that with so little time left, the government has known for some time what the decision will be. But I would never question this fine institution.

In the absence of any fresh insight as to how things are going to pan out, the standout element of this document for vapers was the inclusion of some of the policy proposals from “stakeholders” – i.e. anyone but the public who will actually be affected by these new laws. And regular readers of this blog might be able to hazard a guess as to whose mask slipped the furthest.

That’s right – it was everybody’s favourite state-funded glantzian troughers.

“Tobaksfakta consider that e-cigarettes should be completely forbidden, because of the risk that they attract children and youth into nicotine addiction.”

Head, meet desk. Again.

It’s hardly a suprise I suppose, coming as it does from an organisation that includes health fascist Margareta “I’m not a health fascist” Haglund, but it’s yet another reminder of the need to put a stop to the considerable influence these creatures have on policymakers around the globe.

Put the constitution down Herr Wikström. It’s not yours.

One of the most important purposes of a nation’s constitution is to protect all individuals, organisations and companies – without discrimination – from the ever-present temptation amongst politicians and other rulers to restrict or destroy their rights and freedoms. Two of the sacred pillars of the Swedish Constitution are those which protect the freedoms of speech, expression and the press (encompassing all printed information). Which is why current events are sending shockwaves through the country, as well as chilling reminders of darker times.

The reason for this concern is the news that Public Health Minister Gabriel Wikström is planning to re-write Sweden’s Constitution in order to drive through his proposed policy of plain packaging for tobacco products.

You see, thanks to the constitution, the government can’t simply order companies to dispense with the intellectual property that constitutes their products’ packaging. Which makes sense. Otherwise governments could run roughshod over all manner of things that they personally happen to disapprove of at any given time. Think of it as a baby-harness to stop immature politicians from running astray.

So rather than break the constitution, the government intends to re-write it. Extraordinarily stupid policies require extraordinary measures.

It’s a distressing sign of the times that an elected politician in a modern democracy feels the need (and the power) to change the rulebook so drastically, purely in order to railroad through a policy that has had precisely zero effect on youth or adult smoking rates elsewhere. But that’s the inevitable result when you prostrate yourself before the ideological gods of the Public Health and Tobacco Control industries. You end up abusing the law to appease their addiction to increasingly far-fetched and illiberal demands. It displays such a shameless disregard for the democratic process in and of itself. But the consequences of such tyrannical action are as far-reaching as they are ominous.

Wikström isn’t acting alone of course. Not only will his policy be welcomed by a worrying number of politicians from all the major parties, he is also being egged on, as always, by the notorious gang of prohibitionists at anti-smoking, anti-snus, anti-vaping lobby group Tobaksfakta. Here’s their Chairman:

It’s incredible that this group of fanatics is still thriving, considering the scandals that it’s been involved in over the years. But I suppose it’s easy to thrive when you have a sugar daddy. It’s particularly sweet when that sugar daddy is Gabriel Wikström, who is always eager to dig deep into Swedish taxpayers’ pockets in order to hand out ludicrous sums of money to Tobaksfakta and their web of spin-off groups.

Of course, Wikström’s plans may yet be defeated, and be forgotten as a sad but ultimately harmless footnote in history. If it is waved through parliament, this disregard for a basic yet hard-won freedom is a trivial development for almost everyone outside of Sweden, and will likely go un-noticed by many within. But it serves as yet another reminder that nothing is sacred in the eyes of the world’s health fascists – not even the law.

As Christopher Snowdon has documented on countless occasions, this will not (and was never intended to) stop with tobacco. If Herr Boëthius and Minister Wikström succeed in destroying a freedom that is set in stone in the nation’s constitution, on the flimsy justification that it is necessary “to support health”, who can possible predict where it will end?  Boëthius & Wikström are polishing the most slippery of slopes. It’s not just the alcohol or food trades that should be speaking out, before they too become victims. This concerns anyone who believes in the right of the individual, the organisation, the company to be free from the puritanical diktats of an authoritarian regime.

No matter what your views on smoking may be, it’s vital that people speak out while they still can. You might even think that plain packaging is a good idea (and if you do, feel free to post your “evidence” below for us to laugh at). But no policy is worth it if the price is the trampling upon of basic, universal freedoms. Throwing the tobacco industry under the “public health” bus is a dangerous game. Because there’ll be another one bus along any minute.

 

Of interest: a conflict.

Picture the scene: Martin Mckee and Simon Capewell discover that a controversial piece of research on e-cigarettes, that made headlines around the world, was tainted by a conflict of interest. Imagine their outrage! Imagine their campaign of letters to the Lancet and BMJ, penned with lashings of venom and spite! Now imagine their reaction if it was discovered that this conflict of interest was not declared by the author. Supernova!

There’s a simple reason why they won’t be running for a coffee with Sarah Knapton to wibble about an industry-funded study author hiding their conflicts of interest. It’s because the study in question concerns their mate. The man who runs the charity of which Simon Capewell is a trustee. The study co-author was Robin Ireland, who is the Chief Executive of Pfizer-funded Hearts of Mersey, Director of SanofiAventis-funded anti-vaping pressure group Healthy Stadia, and a political activist who encourages and promotes the national prohibition of vaping in public places.

There are some rules concerning conflicts of interest that authors are expected to adhere to when publishing research in BMC Public Health, over and above the standard reporting of who funded the research (emphases mine):

Are there any non-financial competing interests (political, personal, religious, ideological, academic, intellectual, commercial or any other) to declare in relation to this manuscript? If so, please specify.

It would appear that Robin considers himself to be above such niceties. From the study, as published:

 

Doesn’t look good, does it?

Of course if Capewell & Mckee were concerned with real science, and not simply stirring up the anti-vaping mob and generating controversial headlines for journos, they would be less interested in Mr. Ireland’s COIs and more interested in the actual quality of the research. Because at the end of the day, that’s what matters isn’t it? Sadly, I doubt that they would have dismissed this study with the calm and rational authority of genuine experts in a given field. Thankfully, that is precisely what Carl Philips, Igor Burstyn and Brian Carter did. (It’s well worth a read – Carl’s review begins at page 24).

But scientific integrity isn’t really Public Health’s bag, is it? If you’re vehemently and vocally opposed to vaping and tobacco-harm reduction, real science isn’t going to be much help. Instead, you’re forced to resort to screaming “The Dark Forces of Industry have brainwashed scientists by funding them or something” – which is precisely what the anti-vaping fanatics sought to achieve with the sustained attacks on the PHE report.

The scandal here isn’t about taking pharma cash, or any other ideological or political conflicts of interest that Robin Ireland or anyone else in the anti-vaping camp might have. The purpose of this and my previous blog was to highlight their hypocrisy and lack of shame in using the declared funding of others to smear them. The real scandal is that anyone takes these people seriously, from the media who parrot their propaganda without scrutiny to the politicians who hand them our cash and make policy at their behest.

So much damage can be done by activists and ideologues when you can convince the media and politicians that no matter how good (or in the case of Hughes et al bad) the scientific method and evidence is, it is rendered impotent by conflicts of interest, both real and imagined. It’s high time our political leaders understood this phenomenon, and acted accordingly.

 

Vaping prohibited. Funding welcome.

The most pathetic aspect of the relentless smear campaign against the Public Health England report on e-cigarettes is that, rather than responding to the scientific evidence and positive public health messages contained within, the small group of fanatics who object to it (one of which even attempted to prevent it being produced), have focussed on an irrelevant funding issue from one of the researchers who contributed to a miniscule element of the overall report and its important public policy conclusions.

The sheer pettiness of this “shock revelation” by Mckee & Co is actually an admission that it was the only thing they could find to attack. Sadly, they succeeded in getting global coverage for their impotent complaint – aided and abetted by their chums’ medical journals and a media that delights in putting the boot into ecigs at any given opportunity. Sadder still is the fact that the PHE report is now often labelled “controversial”, and even (hilariously and wholly incorrectly on many levels) “tobacco funded”. The truth is that the only controversial thing about the report, is that it is so utterly balanced and (whatever your views on the 95% safer estimate, when it’s more likely to be 99% or more) evidence-based compared to the sea of junk science on ecigs that we are used to seeing from public health and tobacco control.

It’s truly illuminating that the most prominent and outspoken UK figures the attack on the PHE report – Martin Mckee, Simon Capewell and Robin Ireland – like to pretend that e-cigarette industry funding of a single piece of research in the distant past has in some way tainted an entire government department’s report. Of course we’re all aware, as Dick Puddlecote highlighted last week, that Mckee likes a good swivel-eyed conspiracy theory. And it’s always been a classic tactic of tobacco control to smear perfectly good scientific research with the “industry-funded” brush. Their hysterical knee-jerk reaction to the one minor piece of irrelevant “dirt” that they could dig up speaks volumes. Not least because it it is hypocrisy of the highest order.

“Exactly! What about Hearts of Mersey and Healthy Stadia” I hear you cry (well, I don’t, so I’m going to have to explain.

The Health Equalities Group comprises Hearts of Mersey, HM Partnerships and Healthy Stadia, which are wholly owned subsidiaries of the umbrella “charity”, as well as Food Active, which runs the truly pathetic GULPnow campaign. It is run by Robin Ireland, and low and behold, one of the trustees is none other than the hashtag-haiku-tweeting phenomenon that is Simon “Capslock” Capewell. HoM/HEG is partly funded by the taxpayer, via tasty grants from a number of the North West Directors of Public Health. (Getting very cosy this, isn’t it!)

It is also happy to take “kind contributions” from Pfizer:

I wonder if, in his position as trustee, the self-declared “exposer of industry funding” Professor Capewell might have taken Mr. Ireland aside, and said something along the lines of “This just isn’t cricket Robin – we can’t take cash from a company in the NRT business. It would be a conflict of interest and leave our fake charity open to accusations of being industry stooges. It’s bad enough that organisations such as ours are viewed by the public as tax-leeching illiberal prohibitionists, but “industry-funded tax-leeching illiberal prohibitionists” is a step too far.” It would appear that he did not, because another sack of cash arrived in 2012/13:

 

And as late as March 2014, they were still “collaborating on developing resources” with the global floggers of patch:

 

“So a “charity” got some Pfizer cash for anti-smoking programmes. Nothing new or shocking in that, despite the obvious hypocrisy,” I imagine you’re thinking. Indeed, and ’tis merely an amuse bouche, Dear Reader. To achieve real notoriety, you’d have to piss off not just the smokers, but vapers too.

In 2005/6 Heart of Mersey put in a bid for with the EU’s DG SANCO for another sack of taxpayers’ cash for their Healthy Stadia project. DG SANCO didn’t have any sacks, so they sent a truckload. €532,000 to be precise.

So what do vapers & smokers have to fear from Healthy Stadia? Put simply, they actively, aggressively and successfully encourage football, rugby, cricket and other clubs to ban smoking and vaping in any indoor or outdoor part of their sports stadia and surrounding areas. That’s right – if you’re planning on visiting Euro2016 this summer, you won’t even be allowed to vape in the concourse outside the stadia. And it’s all thanks to the shitpuffins at Healthy Stadia. It’s a horrendous policy that divides rather than unites sports communities and exemplifies the unscientific, fanatical and frankly inhuman creatures that dominate the public health industry today.

And what do you know? Robin’s Healthy Stadia is also funded by patch floggers. Yes indeed ladies and gentlemen. Vape-free stadiums, brought to you in association with and thanks to funding from the makers of Nicoderm:

I wouldn’t like to put words in Robin’s mouth about the enormous hypocrisy and massive conflict of interests that arise when you encourage and promote anti-vaping measures whist receiving funding from not one, but two global Nicotine Replacement Therapy giants, so I’ll let him dig his own hole with a piece on advocacy and funding. That Capewell can sit in the trustees’ chair while penning poisonous attacks on vaping and Public Health England’s report in medical journals and on social media is a disgrace.

Robin and Simon seem to think that they can reduce smoking rates in the North West (and everywhere else) by attacking vaping and getting more industry and taxpayer funding for their fake charities. However, the success of independent ecig manufacturers, vaping retailers and of course the success of tens of thousands of former smokers in the region suggests that ecigs are doing the job that HoM were supposed to do. Only they’re doing it much faster, much more effectively, with no moralising or hectoring from public health loons, and with no state funding or intervention. I suspects that’s the real reason that Mckee et al hate vapers. We’re too independent of these meddling fanatics by half.

Rather than giving in to demands that the taxpayer give these hypocrites more of their hard-earned readies, the swamps inhabited by the likes of HEG and Healthy Stadia cannot be drained by government soon enough.

Don’t go there. Don’t… Oh. They went there.

In a poorly disguised piece of political lobbying, two state-funded Swedish ANTZ groups wrapped up a call for extreme measures on vaping in a huge “Think of the Chiiildren” blanket this week.

Their demands for public vaping bans, total bans on advertising and marketing of e-cigarettes and flavour bans are ridiculous measures that will have the biggest effect on adult smokers, vapers and vendors. So the only way they could present them to the public (without provoking laughter, followed by calls for their funding to be stopped), was to link all these prohibitionist wet dreams to the fact that it isn’t currently illegal to sell ecigs to under-18s.

As I have written before, the only reason why the Swedish government has been unable to follow other EU countries and introduce sales bans to under-18s is because they can’t legislate such restrictions while the Medicines Authority is busy in court trying to classify (and therefore ban) all ecigs as illegal medicines. Whatever your views on the potential harms/benefits of under-18 sales bans, the “problem” is one created by Sweden’s bureacracy, NOT by “evil” vendors. And as also covered before, vendors in Sweden are displaying admirable responsibility in this area. Under 18s are likely to be getting hold of ecigs from the same people they get cigarettes and snus from, despite the long-standing bans on under-18 sales for these products.

They even had the gall to squeal about rising “ever-use” of ecigs as evidence of the inevitability of the now legendary “gateway to smoking”. Yet the National CAN Survey of 16-18yo Swedish students that they cite with such outrage shows quite clearly that smoking rates have been dropping (as they have in every other country with ecigs, eh Prof Chapman) with each and every year that ecigs have been available. If 16-year-olds have actually discovered this mythical gateway, they’re taking an age to walk through it.

The authors represent two groups that might be familiar – one became infamous for organising a “fall-down-and-die” prank – a la South Park (complete with a Pfizer fiddler to call the tune), and for their bizarre “Let’s peer-pressure (sic) Daniel Radcliffe into stopping smoking” campaign and also for building a “Fear Clinic” in Minecraft, complete with burny, smoky things on the wall and a shrink to talk to. They also have some dubious partners when you consider their attitude towards vaping. The other group seem to like to spend their time throwing “snus cushions” around at political events. For this article, they threw in all the usual lies, misinformation and junk-science to “support” their demands, which were exposed by Atakan Befrits here.

But the real humdinger, hidden at the tail-end of a paragraph about health risk wibble, was a statement of “fact” that, as far as I am aware, has only ever been reported second-hand by journalists and ANTZ groups, in a “Don’t blame me, I’m as thick as pigshit when it comes to reading and understanding science, so I’ll use the handy prefix “according to this study/ this researcher”” kind of way.

They wrote “E-cigarettes can cause…an increased risk of lung cancer.”

Now that’s a pretty bold thing to write in a national newspaper. Particularly when the assertion is made with no evidence whatsoever to support it. I contacted a few Swedish vendors to bring this to their attention, figuring that at the very least they ought to demand some sort of official, written apology, even if they refrain from calling the lawyers. One of the vendors got on the case immediately, and penned this reply to the article.

It actually contains a reasonable response to the gist of the article given the limited space allowed, stating that everyone in the industry would welcome sensible but proportional regulations. But it then drifts into an oddly protectionist vibe, calling for a stop to the trade in “unregulated products, mostly from China”, which, given there is currently no regulation anywhere (apart from the 17-odd national & EU regs covering electronics & general consumer, natch), is exactly what they themselves sell.

The reply does make vague reference to the original authors’ wild and unsupported scaremongering, but stops short of mentioning the elephant in the room. Then it encourages the government to slap sin taxes on ecigs.

Some days, there simply aren’t enough facepalms to go round.

The Argvargen Vaping Awards 2016

I’m getting a time machine for Christmas this year. I know this because I’ve already did got it, or something. So I was able to travel back to today to write this blogpost. But not before I took a trip to December next year to witness the Argvargen Vaping Awards for 2016, which were/are/will have was be sponsored and presented by our new vaping overlords – the Medical Licensing Agency of Sweden, Läkemedelsverket.

So without further ado I’ll hand you over to Läkemedelsverket’s Vaping Expert in 2016, Imma Pööritan-Tåsser:

“Ladies, Gentlemen, and alkoloid-addled degenerates, welcome to our prestigious awards, celebrating the best in e-cigarette and vapour technology! The first category is:

Best RDA

Woah there, nicotine fiends! I don’t think you understand where we, the Holy Verket of Läkemedels, are coming from. There will be no building or rebuilding under our juristiction thank you very much. Who do you think we are, IKEA?

And dripping is a non-starter mmm-kay? Our good friends at the laughably self-declared “independent” think-tank Tobaccyfactoids told us that just one drop of this stuff, this devil’s-own-sperm of a liquid that you insist on vapourising, could wipe out every pine forest in Sweden, and will turn our children into ABBA-hating free-thinkers.

We will build the atomiser for you, we’ll drip the broth of Beelzebub into it and then we’ll weld it shut, before attaching it firmly to a battery and wrapping it in the kind of packaging that befits an overpriced and ineffective cure for your frankly pathetic weakness.

Best RTA

The best tank is our approved tank, because it is tiny. And because we med-regged it. You can’t get better than that (No really, you can’t. If it were better than that, we’d ban it). And of course it’s not rebuildable. Haven’t you listened to a word I’ve said?

Tanks don’t get any better than this OK? And anyone who says they do must be some sort of shill for Big Vape.

 

Best New Product

Well this is obvious. It’s the one we approve as a licensed medicine. It wins because it’s the best. And because there aren’t any others. Because we banned them. When did a banned product ever win best anything? You see? You’re starting to get the hang of our logic now. You don’t have to worry about which product is right for you, because we already know which one it is. We’ve saved you so much time, so a little gratitude wouldn’t go amiss.

Best Big Battery Device

We’ve decided to combine this category with the small and medium-sized battery categories. Because as some of you may be realising by now, we’ve banned everything except for this tiny-weeny piss-poor battery device. Isn’t it great? It’s so under-powered and ineffective we felt able to give it a medicinal license. And several awards. That’s how good it is.

Best Mech Mod

Which wag left this category in? Aren’t we the class joker? Get me a corset Göran, I think my sides are splitting with laughter.

 

This isn’t actually the one that’s allowed. That would mean you had a choice. You don’t deserve choice.

 

Best Flavour

It’s been proven that flavours, and in particular the almost infinite range of flavours available on the open market, are one of the key features behind the success of vaping for those wishing to discover an alternative to smoking lit tobacco. So we’ve put a stop to that. You can have one. Maybe two at a push. Wait….what’s that?…..Oh, Public Health Minister Gabriel Wikström just banned menthol. One it is then. Which makes it the winner by default: the winner of the best flavour to abstain from smoking lit tobacco is….<opens envelope> The Flavour of Smoking Lit Tobacco!

We think you’ll like tobacco flavour: after all, you’ve taken the decision to try an alternative to smoking lit tobacco. So we’ll help you make the switch by letting you savour something that is designed to taste exactly the same as what you’ve decided to get away from. Unfortunately our approved manufacturer has failed miserably, and what you’ll actually get is a pale imitation of the real thing, leaving you with a sense of immense disappointment, regret and longing for the familiar taste you’ve become so accustomed to over the years.

Best Eliquid

Don’t you go worrying your pretty little head about that. We’ll put it in for you, and you’ll like it. Or at least enough of you will tolerate it for us to continue to scrape through clinical trials without totally embarrassing ourselves. If you really can’t bear it, quit moaning and get some fruit-flavoured gum from GSK. Or go back to smoking, you filthy, unsocial addicts.

So that concludes the awards for 2016. We hop..hang on! Where is everyone? Where are you going? Don’t tell me you’re all smoking again. Already? Wait! Try this! I approved it myself…”

2016: the year that Swedish vapers left the building, and went back outside for a smoke.

 

Merry Christmas to all dedicated and advocating vapers, snusers and smokers, wherever you are. Let’s hope 2016 works out a bit better than many are expecting.

“What’s is it Charlie? Not happy with our crappy device? We don’t care, it’s med-regged so that’s all you’re getting. Sweden reserves the right to fuck with your freedom of choice until you learn to obey and conform.”

 

 

 

Think of the Children! (Reprise)

It’s nearly a year since I wrote this piece about under-18 vaping in Sweden, highlighting the responsible behaviour of both a vape shop and a parent. I also linked to what I still consider to be the most pragmatic and understanding article written on this subject.

The reason I wanted to return to it is two-fold: firstly, CAN (the national body responsible for providing statistics on drug, alcohol and tobacco use in Sweden) have released their annual report; and also because I was intrigued by the SR (the state national radio) report on their findings, and how these stats will likely be interpreted by the enemies of vaping in particular, and harm-reduction in general.

So let’s start with how it was reported: More youth are trying e-cigarettes and one of the reasons could be that anyone can buy them

Apart from the fact that they ought to sack the sub-editor for that less than snappy headline, they are implying that both of these facts are a BAD THING. But as I’ve documented previously, one of the benefits of having a wide availability of THR products is their prophylactic effect: if young people can choose between two options, the majority are smart enough to choose the safer one. (Although it must be noted that Snus clearly appeals more to Swedish males than females for a multitude of reasons, not least the taste, the image, Swedish culture and tradition of use, and the anti-THR propaganda of the past 30 or so years).

Young people experiment. So if more young people are experimenting with vaping, and fewer are experimenting with smoking, surely public health bodies and the media alike would see this as a GOOD THING? Let’s have a look at the stats:

Well now. That’s interesting. Very interesting indeed. We only have two years’ worth of data to go on for ever-use of e-cigarettes (and on first inspection I couldn’t find and data on daily or even regular use), but it appears that as one goes up, the other goes down. It’s also noticeable that unlike the heavily male-oriented prophylactic effect we see with snus, this seems to be a largely gender-neutral phenomenon.

To return to the Swedish Radio website’s epic of a headline, is this GOOD THING a direct result of the fact that “anyone can buy” e-cigarettes? To be honest, I doubt that’s the case at the moment, though that’s not to say it wouldn’t have had an effect in the long-term. The reason being that despite all the scaremongering headlines in the media, e-cigarette retailers simply aren’t that prevalent in Sweden, and those that exist appear to be selling responsibly.

One of the results of the ongoing court case to ban ecigs from sale entirely is that there are very few retail outlets, since few people were prepared to take the risk of investing in a business that could be closed down at any given moment. And it doesn’t take a genius to work out that if over 20% of young people are still experimenting with smoking, it’s not actually necessary for them to walk into shops in order to try things. So under 18s (and especially under-16s) are no doubt getting access via the same methods they get cigarettes – nicking them from parents and older siblings, and from mates who have already nicked them.

The headline invites the inevitable outrage from the usual suspects that, as the law currently stands, a 10 year-old could walk into a shop and buy an ecig (assuming they could actually find a shop that sells them of course). But Sweden only has itself (or more accurately its Medicines Licensing Agency) to blame for the current state of affairs: this court case has been going on for over two years. And until it’s resolved, the Government is unable to introduce legislation prohibiting the sale of e-cigarettes – to anyone, of any age. Don’t you just love unintended consequences?

Since it’s unlikely that anyone will ever dare to analyse the 6-7 year experiment that has resulted from inadvertantly allowing young adults free (though not widespread) retail access to e-cigarettes in Sweden, it will be hard to determine the overall impact (if any). What we can say for sure is that widespread use of e-cigarettes has happened, and that just as in the UK and US, it has coincided with several years of large declines in both occasional and daily smoking amongst the same groups of young adults. What remains to be seen is the effect on youth smoking rates for 2016/17, after either the total retail ban under medicinal regulation or the EU TPD takes effect.

UPDATE

I’ve tracked down the CAN smoking rates for 16 and 18 year-olds in Sweden. The vertical columns represent years 2011-2015 (they messed around with data-gathering methods in 2012, but this doesn’t appear to have affected the patterns), and the horizontal ones are: Male Smokers, Female Smokers, Male Daily Smokers, Female Daily Smokers.

16 year-olds

18 year-olds

 

Sources: CAN Skolelevers Drogvanor 2015

The Tobacco Products Directive: worst. sequel. ever.

Ban that. And……yep, ban that. Because children.

 

I had a good chuckle earlier today after a friend sent me a link to the latest edition of Purse-lipped Puritan, with its December centrefold Miss Sweden:

 

I’d have left it at that were it not for the fact that I spotted the name Martina Pötschke-Langer on the advisory board.

I was well aware that these two worked closely together at the extremist, fanatical end of the Tobacco Control anti-harm reduction spectrum. After all, when Public Health Sweden hosted a conference with the PH Minister Gabriel Wikström earlier this year, the presentation on ecigarettes was led by the wibbling moonbattery of Martina’s DKFZ outfit. As you can imagine, they were simply gushing with praise for this harm-reduction revolution.

 

Oh. Surely they must have had something nice to say?

 

 

Ah. A begrudging admission that respiratory improvements were likely, assuming you don’t die of all the scary but implausible, highly unlikely and/or impossible stuff they focused on.

This is what really boils my piss about these cross-border scaremongering initiatives; the way the junk science & scaremongering, which is ultimately intended to influence and coerce politicians and public alike, spreads like the cancer they pretend they are trying to prevent. The anti-vaping Powerpoint assault gets exported to Sweden, while a quick glance at Pötschke-Langer’s documents on this site highlights how decades of anti-snus propaganda and lies can be neatly bundled together and exported to Germany. It’s one of the worst pieces of anti-THR drivel ever created, and that’s a pretty competitive field.

Little wonder then that other organisations who are represented in this group, such as ASH Ireland and UKCTAS, are so woefully uninformed.  They’ve been subject to a relentless barrage of blood-curdling Nordic Noir, courtesy of the pens of Stockholm’s Karolinska University researchers. International prohibitionists play a never-ending game of chinese whispers, and the junk science gets ever more exaggerated, abused and exploited with every border it crosses.

The EU snus ban was a triumph for hysterical fanatics, who succeeded in spreading the junk science of a small group of researchers with highly dubious motives, and by provoking the knee-jerk instincts of uninformed and more often than not misinformed politicians to “be seen to be doing something”.

If you haven’t read Christopher Snowdon’s excellent account already, treat yourself to a Christmas present and discover more about the remarkable series of events that led to the ban. The parallels between that and the current war on vaping (by the same protagonists) is uncannily familiar:

Flavours!

Gateway!

Nicotine!

Poison!

Not a proven cessation product!

THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

The implementation of the EU Tobacco Products Directive in May 2016 will uphold the original EU snus ban, as well as introducing a raft of wholly arbitrary bans, restrictions and unnecessary and prohibitive regulations on e-cigarettes. As sequels go, it is nothing more than a pale imitation. What makes it as scary as the original is that they believe they can get away with it again.