Tobacco Control - Lib Dem response - AFTER the fact! Parrots, Politics and Petitions

28th AUGUST 2013 SENT AS TEMPLATE VIA NO THANK EU PETITIONS

Dear Mr Tim Farron MP,

As one of your constituents I am writing to express my opposition to the EU’s proposed revisions to the Tobacco Products Directive. 
I agree that children should be discouraged from smoking but prohibiting adults from purchasing products they have bought legally for many years is neither fair nor reasonable.
In my opinion the EU has no right to stop adults buying slim or menthol cigarettes. Nor should unelected bureaucrats dictate the size and shape of a pack or pouch. 
There are other more effective ways to tackle youth smoking rates. They include a ban on proxy purchasing and better enforcement of existing laws to stop shopkeepers selling tobacco to children.
Smoking is a legal activity and I am concerned that attempts to over-regulate the tobacco market may have serious unintended consequences with counterfeiters and illicit traders set to profit from public demand for products that have been banned or excessively regulated. When the Tobacco Products Directive is voted upon in the European Parliament I hope you will take into account the views of adults like me who believe that the revisions to the Directive will make very little difference to public health but will alienate and antagonise a great many consumers throughout Europe. 
I look forward to hearing from you.

25th OCTOBER 2013 (AFTER THE DIRECTIVE ACCEPTANCE ON 8TH OCTOBER 2013)

Dear Elizabeth

Thank you very much for your recent email with regard to your call for the revised EU Tobacco Products Directive to be scrapped.

The use of tobacco remains one of our most significant public health challenges. As you’ll be aware, smoking causes nearly 80,000 premature deaths each year and is the single biggest preventable cause of death in England. Around 20% of the adult population in England smoke, with rates in some areas even higher. I think it is very important that the health impacts of smoking are taken into consideration in the revised Tobacco Products Directive.

The European Commission published its proposal for a revised Tobacco Products Directive in December 2012. The Department of Health is currently coordinating the Coalition Government’s negotiating position on the Directive.

We welcome the Commission’s intention to strengthen the functioning of the internal market in tobacco products. This will help protect public health, particularly by reducing the uptake of tobacco use by young people. We will make sure that the final text of the Directive is proportionate and based on evidence.

It is important to note that there will be around two years of negotiations and possible amendments ahead in the European Parliament and among the 27 EU Member States. The final text that we adopt may look significantly different from the European Commission’s current proposal.

With best wishes 

______________

I am not voting for you Mr Farron - ever. You told me nothing in this template email that I hadn't already heard, over and over and over again EXCEPT, EXCEPT  "smoking causes nearly 80,000 premature deaths each year and is the single biggest preventable cause of death in England." 

  

Using round down or round up rules in Math - the figure is 79 000  (correctly) according to ASH  - whats another 1 000 people? 

" In 2011, there were a total of 442,759 deaths of adults aged 35 and over in England of which 79,100 (18%) were estimated to be attributable to smoking"

So - just playing with numbers - roughly -  20% of 63 million people inthe UK smoke. 12.6 million people smoke. According to Tobacco Control, half of all smokers die because of smoking. So, according to my thinking 6.3 MILLION people should die from smoking. 79 000 people died from smoking in 2011. If smokers have "shortened life expectancy" then many of the 79 000 were old people (up to 100 years old). They died prematurely? I wonder how many? It doesn't say.

There was no significant difference in cigarette smoking prevalence in adults 16 and over pre and post introduction of the smokefree legislation on the 1st July 2007.

 12.6 million consumers and voters are a hefty chunk of our population. I hope they haven't been beaten into total submission by the drip drip drip of persecution and that, when it comes to the election, they use their votes  wisely.

The last paragraph from my template reply of Lib Dem Policy for constituents is "It is important to note that there will be around two years of negotiations and possible amendments ahead in the European Parliament and among the 27 EU Member States. The final text that we adopt may look significantly different from the European Commission’s current proposal."

Mmm - I thought October 8th action was the acceptance of the proposals which eventually get into legislation by the EU Parliament?  ARE there further "negotiations and possible amendments?

If there are - then us vapers might have to mobilise again! Otherwise "there are around two years of further negotiations and possible amendments" is just fobbing me off. 

For me, both these letters are how not to do things. I think the NO THANK EU form letter is not the way to petition anyone. Us vapers have proved it needs thousands of hours of personal effort, approaching each MP or MEP with our own wording, personality and stories.

I think I deserved the form reply I got. It simply outlined Lib Dem Policy and exposed to me they aren't going to do a damn thing now, or ever, in consideration of consumers using a legal product. The illogicality of stopping tobacco being sold in small amounts - 10 cigarettes and 25gm RYO pouches - forcing smokers to buy MORE and not less has completely passed them by. In fact, I don't think Tim Farron has the foggiest clue. He's just a parrot in a flock of parrots.

Ah! A party? using my new stuff then..

In our house, we've been somewhat down in the dumps - heart attack blues one could call them. The doctor says "take up your lives again - have fun."

We've been invited to a party on Sunday - well a "Soiree" actually, I hope it will be fun.

I just got a delivery from USA. Some people wouldn't be excited by it. I had to pay VAT before I could get it which everyone should know if they get stuff from America. But for this delivery, I had to order from USA because it's been commissioned from there! I'm sure some of the Eigate BDC Aspire tanks they also sell - are available in the UK, but that is not what I wanted. I'm not into stuff like that - well not for everyday use. I haven't used dual coil anything for yonks. But, just by accident I have a tank right now that is. It gobbles up e liquid at lightening speed. I am not a big vapour maker vaper. I just want a good throat hit and some vapour. I admit, the tank I'm using makes impressive vapour - but there is no one around me that would be impressed by that.

No - I ordered what I currently think is the best little battery and the best little tank I've ever tried. It's slim, it's light, it's black and it even has a wretched blue light on the end. But years ago I solved that problem by simply painting over the end with thick silver nail varnish. Permanent marker in black, applied over the silver makes it neat mean black machine. But it's the tiny tank that's fantastic. And that's what I ordered most of. They are like nothing I can find on the Internet in the UK or even in China where they are made by Kanger - Place of Origin: CN;GUA. They last forever, give a really excellent throat hit and the tiny amount of e liquid in them, gives me as much pleasure and lasts far longer than my massive dual coil vapour maker.

I have very simple tastes!

So I'm looking forward to the soiree on Sunday evening - just what we could do with - just what the doctor ordered in fact - and also an opportunity for discreet (but not stealth) vaping on a very elegant device!

The vaping bans - life with the smokers

As I have been foretelling, our biggest problem in the future - the VERY NEAR future - i.e. - now, will be anti tobacco and its "smokefree" ideologists, lumping us into the smoking ban.

Town hall ban on staff using e-cigarettes in public view Manchester Evening News-19 Oct 2013 Salford council has banned staff from using the devices – which taste and feel like cigarettes without the tar – close to any of its buildings.

London restaurants consider E-Cigarette ban ITV News-22 Oct 2013 ... want diners to go outside if they want to puff on electronic cigarettes. ... it happened for the first time quite recently, because [the e-cigarette] ..

 
The smoking ban itself needs to be re-assessed, which was what smokers were promised, but which did not materialise as the Government fell deeper and deeper into the anti-smoking pit.  And as smokers have progressively been made invisible even though there are millions of them in the UK.

The smoking ban has always offended me. I see it as an act of vengeance rather than anything to do with public health (not Public Health). Public Health is a body that is used to promote the anti smoking ideology.

Millions of people smoke despite years of persecution. And I consider myself a smoker. I haven't actually smoked a cigarette for over two years, but I think like a smoker and the smoking ban turned me into a recluse like so many other people my age. I remain an angry smoker.

So now that I am a 50 year habit smoker who vapes, I point out that I am old and wise - and healthy! My wisdom tells me us vapers are in for a hard time. Everyone else considers us to be smokers and therefore the smoking ban must be applied to us too.

I'm not bloody having that happen AGAIN! I feel, as a smoker who vapes, that the smoking ban needs to be re-assessed. And as a vaper, it really does need to be re-assessd. By banning vaping as has suddenly started happening all over the place, it exposes to me that the smoking ban has been a kind of insanity that has gripped the nation  and the world. 

The smoking ban was put in place to make life as awkward as hell for smokers so they would desist from smoking. And have they? Hell no. They just carry on smoking. Some have switched to vapng like me, or (worse! in the anti's eyes) they dual use.

I don't mind if people smoke or vape - there are millions of smokers and vapers. I will be voting for the party that restructures the smoking ban sanely in favour of public health, and not insanely in favour of an ideology that has perverted society into blind and deaf intolerance.

Aw shucks! Please find here everything you need to make your stomach turn!

Dr. James Aw is the medical director of the Medcan Clinic, a leading private health clinic in Toronto.

"They claim the devices can even help people stop smoking. But a recent editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal took a more troubling line, wondering whether the products are “a Trojan horse that will allow the tobacco industry to reverse decades of global progress in reducing smoking prevalence.

>>>>>>>>>>>Here, then, are three reasons I’m concerned about e-cigarettes:

1. The intense marketing push  According to newspaper reports, something resembling e-cigarettes were first patented in 1963, but they didn’t come to market in North America until 2006 — and since 2011, they’ve been the subject of an enormous marketing push, one that seems to have gained traction this year. The gift bag given to guests at last year’s Oscars included an e-cigarette starter pack. Celebrities such as Katherine Heigl and Leonardo DiCaprio have been seen using them, and the devices were all over New York’s Fashion Week. This sort of marketing seems calculated to make the act of smoking “cool” again. The products even come with their own lingo — rather than smoking, you’re apparently supposed to refer to the act of using an e-cigarette as “vaping” — a reference to the fact you’re inhaling vapour instead of smoke. The potential upside for manufacturers is enormous, with an e-cigarette market estimated to reach $10-billion in five years — and possible spillover effects related to greater sales of traditional cigarettes.

2. Don’t believe the hype  The marketing thrust seems to be two-fold: E-cigarettes are being spun as smoking cessation products that likewise provide smokers with a safe and convenient way to indulge their habits in the company of others. Are they completely safe? Not according to the FDA, which found carcinogens in e-cigarette’s aerosol mist, as well as a toxic chemical, diethylene glycol, that’s also used in antifreeze. And a study published earlier this year in the online, interdisciplinary journal PLoS ONE, found metal and silicate nanoparticles in one leading e-cigarette manufacturer’s aerosol mist.

What’s more, evidence is slim that “vaping” will lead to smoking cessation. One recent double-blinded study concluded that e-cigarettes are only about as effective as a nicotine patch at encouraging people to quit smoking.

Worse still, the marketing of e-cigarettes tacitly encourages people to continue behaviours associated with cigarette use. The marketing leverages and perpetuates a perceived “coolness” of smoking, with lots of images of attractive and fashionably dressed people with cigarettes between their lips.

The youth cohort is responding by taking up e-cigarettes in troubling numbers. A U.S. survey reported use among youths doubled between 2011 and 2012, from 4.7% to 10% among high school students and, more worryingly even, from 1.4% to 2.7% among middle-schoolers.
 
Studies have shown that peer pressure and family role-modelling influence smoking behaviour on youth and that smokers who start at a young age are more likely to be heavy smokers later in adulthood.  Will future studies show that young e-cigarette smokers end up transitioning to harmful tobacco smoking?

3. Complementing rather than supplanting smoking  The U.S. survey found that 76% of e-cigarette users also smoked conventional tobacco-burning cigarettes. What also concerns me is the way e-cigarettes make it so much more accessible for smokers to indulge a nicotine addiction. Smoking is banned everywhere but the great outdoors. E-cigarettes, by contrast, are able to be used anywhere — on the subway, in an office, at a restaurant or nightclub. My fear is that e-cigarettes will be used by smokers in conjunction with cigarettes, to perpetuate nicotine addiction.

I’m wary of any consumer device, regardless of how clean the delivery mechanism, that represents a way for people to indulge in an addiction such as nicotine use, particularly in young people. Parents should talk to their children about the dangers of so-called “vaping.” And more studies are required, period, on the health effects of e-vapour.

One of the great public health victories of the 20th century was the way groups from all aspects of society co-operated to marginalize smoking. Now, e-cigarettes could incrementally reverse this trend by normalizing the set of behaviours associated with lighting up. The industry markets e-cigarettes to consumers as healthy alternatives to actual smoking. But a device that forms a gateway to a deadly habit is anything but healthy."
 ________________________________________________

They claim the devices can even help people stop smoking  - well they do!

E-cigarettes are being spun as smoking cessation products - I thought they were usually spun as a substitute for smoking?

What’s more, evidence is slim that “vaping” will lead to smoking cessation  Mmm - not according to the hundreds of letters I get on my You Tube Channel.

Worse still, the marketing of e-cigarettes tacitly encourages people to continue behaviours associated with cigarette use  Oh dear - what behaviours would thise be? Inhalation? Pleasure?

 This sort of marketing seems calculated to make the act of smoking “cool” again. Well no actually - it would be nice if it made vaping "cool".

Will future studies show that young e-cigarette smokers end up transitioning to harmful tobacco smoking?  Mmm, that's a hard one, more likely the other way round. Smoking has been so demonised it's a good rebellion tool.

What also concerns me is the way e-cigarettes make it so much more accessible for smokers to indulge a nicotine addiction. Yup - that is the rub. It's about smokers finding pleasure.
 
One of the great public health victories of the 20th century was the way groups from all aspects of society co-operated to marginalize smoking. AAAAAARRRRGH!

 Now, e-cigarettes could incrementally reverse this trend by normalizing the set of behaviours associated with lighting up. Well I hope they bloody well do!

Now, excuse me, I'm going to be sick.

 

Anti tobacco needs reining in otherwise "Smokefree" becomes "Vapefree"

We have a smoking substitute!

Who in the Tobacco Control Industry could ever have imagined that smoking was so loved by people that our ingenuity could produce a satisfying substitute and our love affair with the act of smoking could go on? And our source of pleasure would continue despite their world putsch to eradicate smoking completely from the human psyche?

Oh they must be hating, simply hating the idea that smoking and smoking in the new form - vaping - will continue hand in hand way into future history. I am sure, in the early days, when Public Health first turned it's attention on the very real damage that smoking tobacco with poisonous additives was doing to people, the concern for our health was their first impulse. At that point, they could have taken the decision to educate smokers about the dangers of their habit. After that, their moral obligation was over. But unfortunately, they morphed into the monster they are now. They entered a sinful pact with Tobacco Control and Anti Tobacco ideology that would stoop to any activity, immoral, deceitful, criminal even, to promote their cause. Smokers were purposefully turned into a class of people to be outcast, ignored, and prohibited.

Vaping is the new smoking. Even worse for Anti Tobacco, vaping can occur where smoking is not appropriate, or prohibited.  And worse still, it can substitute for smoking to get around the smoking bans  by those smokers who have no intention of quitting. Electrofags simply pacify till they can have a real one.

That must be the biggest horror of all.

I predict that the smoking ban(s) are the next hurdle for vapers. Already the insanity of the anti smoking ideology is making itself shown. And, I point out that smoking in Britain is legal in the open air.

I don't know how the criminality of Tobacco Control can ever be exposed to a public so vitiated by implanted anti smoking ideas, that they believe they are on the side of "good". The media, politicians, medical establishments and academia have accepted the sinful pact between Public Health and purposeful social manipulation without a whimper. No one questions the morality of nocebos on cigarette packs, or the morality of purposefully turning citizens against each other because of smoking, or the morality of persecuting a minority group, not by their colour, creed or sexual tastes, but because they smoke - and now, vape.

This small blog travels nowhere that can change society on a scale that is needed. What is needed is a message to ordinary people, who are unaware, of how they have been twisted to believe what they do by deliberate manipulation. Ordinary people need to get the knowledge of how devious and deceitful anti tobacco has been and is. How their own taxes are used to denormalise what to millions is perfectly normal. How heart, cancer and other charities use the money they donate, not in kindness and research, but in anti smoker hate. That smoking bans that are in force now are actually nothing to do with anyones' health. That smokers cost them nothing. That their fear of SHS has been specially implanted in them. And that the smoking ban(s) have caused misery to millions of people and that it is time for everyone to accept that people DO smoke and vape. And there's nothing abnormal in that.

Maybe one day, vaping will supercede smoking, who knows?  But if vaping falls victim to the smoking ban(s) that are enforced now - simply spiteful rather than necessary -  many smokers may feel they might as well simply go on smoking. E cig vendors could find their sales falling not rising!

"Smokefree" regulations imposed on us in places where it is actually legal to smoke, are there to denormalise smoking and not for anyone's health. In fact the whole UK "Smokefree" smoking ban needs to be re-assessed. Without some speedy action on our part, they might just become "Vapefree" too.

The smoking/vaping ban - what is ACTUALLY legal?

Yesterday I wrote a blog in which I put forward the idea that the smoking ban is a tyrannical and unnecessary law that is now in place almost everywhere in the world - and if it is not, Big Anti Tobacco are making sure it will be. The smoking ban(s) should be challenged.

Smoking has been falling since the first reports of it's connection to lung cancer were offered to  us as knowledge. I remember, it was first avoided by "the educated" - those people that have a primary conduit to knowledge. At that time most people smoked. Soon, Doctors and Educators were disseminating their knowledge that smoking caused nasty things to happen to people and the message began to spread. Smoking rates started falling amongst ordinary people as a natural response to knowledge.

Enter the Events Managers - Big Tobacco Control Industry

 Excerpts from a 1991 US gov’t (NIH/NCI) “Blueprint for Public Health Action in the 1990′s 
 “As social beings, humans are subject to a desire to conform, to adopt the social conventions and norms of the majority, To the extent that individuals perceive their actions as deviant, there will be pressure to conform… Efforts to control tobacco use, then, should focus on creating a social environment that provides persistent and inescapable cues to smokers to stop smoking”

Another’90′s Blueprint  -  “To foster public perception that smoking is a socially unacceptable behavior.” ....... “Restrictions on smoking in public places remain a keystone in the overall challenge to achieve a tobacco-free society.”

The motive behind bans, then, was not to protect the innocent from secondhand smoke but, by officially excluding them by law, to make others begin to see all smokers as unacceptable and deviant. (my bold) The “desire to conform,” then, would cut both ways as the conformist nonsmoker would hop aboard the bandwagon of Public Opinion, and the now-excluded smoker would clamor to be let back in (or out, in the case of outdoor bans) to the Brotherhood of Man.

( Quote from Waltc on This blog from Frank Davis)

 __________________________________________________________

Banning smoking/vaping to 25ft away from entrances, in parks, picnic sites, open stations, outdoors in any form, or in ventilated smoking rooms, is not about protecting people from our second hand smoke or, now, vapour. it is a manipulative action against yourself personally - a dangerous law that has made smokers (and now vapers) into a socially persecuted minority. And the crime is that it was done deliberately and with the knowledge that SHS was the hook on which to hang it - to "de-normalise" smoking and ESPECIALLY smokers. And a question I ask is - is the ban you endure on your train station or local park legal?

Smoking is normal to 21% of us and yet we never challenge our situation. We have been well disempowered by our shame at what we do. We are a larger minority than Gays and Lesbians, Muslims, Jews, and many other groups - but the only group society may persecute without restriction.

Exemptions to the Health Act 2006

There are very few exemptions to the law and where they do exist they do not apply to the entirety of the premises but to “designated rooms”.

These include:
Guest bedrooms in hotels and guest houses and certain rooms in care homes, hospices
and prisons

Private homes
However, if part of a home is used as a workplace, for example a room set aside for childminding or music lessons, that room must be smokefree. Where work is undertaken solely to provide personal care for a person living in the dwelling, to assist with domestic work or to maintain the building, the private dwelling is not considered to be a workplace and is exempt from the smokefree legislation.

Places such as open air (my bold)

Sports stadia are exempt. However the owners of such premises may choose to implement a smokefree policy.

Bus stops may be exempt if the shelter is not “substantially enclosed”.

In England, smoking by actors may be permitted if appropriate for the artistic integrity
of the performance. This exemption does not apply to other countries of the United
Kingdom.

Offshore installations such as oil rigs, may designate a room for smoking.

Specialist tobacco shops. Exemptions are allowed only for the sampling of cigars or
pipe tobacco and are subject to stringent conditions

Quote - "Prior to the implementation of the smokefree law, it was estimated that exposure to secondhand smoke in the workplace caused around 617 premature deaths in the UK each year.

By comparison, the total number of deaths in the UK from all other industrial accidents was reported to be 235 in 2003/4.

The degree of risk depends on the extent and duration of exposure. Particularly at risk were bar staff, casino workers and other employees in workplaces where smoking was routine. It was estimated that secondhand smoke caused one premature death a week among workers in the hospitality industries.
__________

Is that 617 minus 52 workers a year, or is my Math bad? How did they come to such estimations when an "accident" is so clearly caused, but a premature death is not. I was surprised the numbers of deaths caused by second hand smoke were so low - I expected millions of workers to be dropping dead daily all over England. I wonder where I got that idea from? Silly me.

In the UK, the open air is exempt from the smoking ban - many of the "laws" we endure are made by those drones who "desire to socially conform" i.e. brown nose to TC. But are they acting according to our law - or making it up themselves? Exempt from the ban - "Places such as open air"!

The smoking ban is the beginning and end

I have had some time away from blogging. My husband had a heart attack.  But I have been watching what is going on in the vaping world.  I saw the people who were standing outside in the rain and the wind having a smoke outside the doors of the hospital.  I thought to myself that it would be great if those people simply switched to vaping.  I just vaped in the hospital  - inside.  STEALTH vaped that is.  The mammoth problem with vapers is that we are inextricably linked to smokers. Vaping is banned where smoking is banned. The single most important problem is the smoking ban.  The smoking ban is not logical. The smoking ban is not anything to do with health. The smoking ban is a method of persecution against one quarter of the population of our country.  This law needs to be reassessed. Smoking rooms or protected areas for smokers should be enforced. Smoking in open places cannot be banned for any reason, especially if the motive is persecution against one quarter of the population that sets people one against the other, that causes deep social division, loneliness and suffering. This cannot be legal.

Until the anti smoking industry is put in its place, there will be the same persecution against vapers.

The smoking ban is the beginning and the end of it.

Every vapour that trashes smoking is shooting themselves in the foot Every vaper that supports the anti smoking industry is shooting themselves in the foot.  Smoking or vaping is a personal choice under threat from tyrannical legislation.

Well done lovely vapoteurs! My blog will be temporarily suspended so celebrate for me too please!

Wow! Democracy works - if you WORK at it. Thank you everyone for all the hard work and constant slogging away at being actvists. Our work is not over. We will have to turn our attention to the MHRA if they persist in being idiots.

I am feeling REALLY GOOD!  Party people, party!

But I am not feeling personally so good. My husband had a heart attack on Sunday night and is now in the safest place - hospital - still alive and ok'ish. My life has been frenetic (and me not being very well either with play-school-tonsillitis) so I am hoping everyone will party on in our triumph. I will be watching from the side. But I'm taking a break from this blog until we all get sorted out!

Blessings lovely vapoteurs! Well done! (You can expect your cheques in the post from whoever it is who pays you for AstroTurfing!!!!!) Ha ha. Silly Linda!

She's no witch - she's a B****!

I came back from town feeling really cross. We had to call where my husband used to work (about a four man business). They had a new employee upstairs in packing. He was telling hubby about vaping and how he wants to switch. Hubby tells him I promote vaping and gives him my Video Channel . So the boss comes to the car where I am sitting and asks me to tell her about vaping. I do. Somewhere along the line I asked if "Tom" (the new employee) gets a smoke break. So the Boss, knowing full well he smokes says "I won't allow him a smoke break. I'm a witch." and laughs. Then she says "He's just asked to go out to buy cat food. I know he's going to have a smoke."

Instant dislike fills my heart. Fancy making a grown man have to lie and laughing about it as if it's "fun". Witch? No. Bitch? Yes.

I then explain that anti smoking law has gone too far and that it is now insane to prohibit people smoking outdoors, and that it's obviously nothing to do with health, but a lot to do with control and vicious persecution. I explain that businesses are even entering into a deeper madness by forbidding their employees to vape even though it is harmless and much safer than smoking. I rant, to be honest.

I hope "Tom" switches to vaping. At least he could take a stealthy drag, or vape in the loo.. Or maybe he should just switch jobs. That would leave the witch control freak bubbling around in her own stew!