Invisible, discounted and politically disembowled.

I just read Rise of the fake brands and shortly after Cancer Council slams big tobacco on report -

Quote "THE Cancer Council has slammed a report backed by big tobacco showing that illegal trade in the addictive substance has increased since plain packaging laws were introduced. The KPMG report, commissioned by British American Tobacco Australia, Philip Morris International and Imperial Tobacco Australia, says tobacco smugglers are costing taxpayers more than $1 billion a year. It says the illegal tobacco market now comprises 13.3 per cent of total domestic tobacco consumption. Australia’s world-first plain packaging laws came into effect in December 2012, removing all logos, colour and design from cigarette packets. Cancer Council Australia says the report is part of big tobacco’s push to unwind those laws. “The tobacco industry would do anything to stop plain packaging, especially after recent Australian research showed the plain packs were a turn-off to smokers,” the council’s director of advocacy, Paul Grogan, says in a statement."

The study was funded by Big Tobacco and therefor CANNOT be true.

Yesterday I wrote a blog Smokers have the right to be heard as a spin off of of Simon Clarke's blog asking for our ideas on smoker's rights HERE.

Some responders felt Tobacco Companies should have done more to support smokers as their persecution has unfolded.

It seems to me that both smokers and tobacco companies have the right to be heard. But both have been so completely muzzled that anything they say is simply discounted as having no worth, no weight and no truth.

Vapers are sitting on the fence, dangling their toes on the side of anti-tobacco. We really need to wake up to the truth of their world drive to eradicate smoking in every way possible, by any means. If we are not aware of their nefariousness in doing so, we will be taken by surprise/are taken by surprise when vapers are simply considered smokers. In that capacity we will be invisible, discounted and politically disemboweled.

I'm not holding my breath that we will be considered any differently than smokers and vaping will become simply NRT.