Beyond reason - Smoking bans are Vaping bans

The anti smoking movement has constructed a whole "Industry" based on smokers and smoking What they promote is now beyond reason. Somehow, thinking people, need to be able to protest the litany that has become lodged in the public mind, that using cigarettes or cigarette substitutes is a terrible, unacceptable behaviour.

Take ASH UK, (Action on Smoking and Health in the UK). ASH was established in the 1970's by the Royal College of Physicians.  ASH says it has a dual focus - (I have made bold two points)
Information and networking: To develop opinion and awareness about the “tobacco epidemic” Advocacy and campaigning: To press for policy measures that will reduce the burden of addiction, disease and premature death attributable to tobacco.

They have done this for almost 45 years.

Well, the thrusts change - first, ASH promoted awareness of the danger of smoking to the personal self, then the dangers of second hand smoke to everyone else.They have striven to reduce the burden of addiction by banging on about the "burden" of smoking, so that even smokers believe it, never addressing the great pleasure smoking gives. It was ASH that manipulated the Government, at the last minute, to introduce the total smoking ban that has been so detrimental to society in the UK. It's aim since 2008 is to have Plain Packaging in law. Its feeding tube to Government is the All Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health.

Smokefree (the anti smoking arm of The National Health Service) similarly releases anti-smoking speak and works towards a "smokefree" world. It offers help for smokers in the form of clinics and NRT therapies. It re-enforces the attitudes of the industry into the mind of the people. It develops opinion.

All sanity leaving, anti tobacco now promotes no smoking in parks or open spaces. Smoking mustn't be seen as any kind of thing that people do.

"Smokefree" has come to hospitals, old age homes, your own home, prisons, psychiatric units, reform schools, and even the army - where it is truly inappropriate and should have no moral place. 

Society has been assisted to develop (the) opinion that nicotine is a terrifying addictive carcinogen.

All sections of the anti smoking industries need smoking to be de-normalised good and proper. Profitable lobby groups linked to "medicine" or "government" will develop (that) opinion . They will put down anyone who points out any suspicions about the motives for the existence of tobacco control, or complains about legislative intrusions into peoples lifestyles, or the adverse effects of the smoking bans on society and the economy that have occurred in the UK, or who questions the very shaky science of SHS. 

They are already putting down vapers.

There appear to be small cracks in the facade of the anti smoking industry. There are disagreements between the "quit or die" crowd and the "harm reduction crowd". Vapers are seemingly being favoured by the latter.

Both those crowds are anti smoking. They are the ones who have responsibility for the situation as it stands now. They are the ones who have promoted ideas to us via the press, medicine and government and  have made sure that ordinary people, who didn't really give a damn once, will by now have developed (the) opinion that those who smoke are suffering  the burden of addiction and that smoking is a terrible curse to everyone in our modern age of science. 

The smoking bans are a vaper's problem. The smoking bans are in place because of the work of the anti tobacco industry. 
 
I'm watching how vaping is following along behind the smokers. "Vapefree" has come to to hospitals, old age homes, your own home, prisons, psychiatric units, reform schools, and even the army - where it is truly inappropriate and should have no moral place. And now, suggested in Scotland, vaping to be banned in your personal car!

Nicotine is a devilish addiction, it seems, to be banned at all costs.

Smoking is not going to go away even if it were banned outright. And it probably never will be, being a profitable tax source for every government, and, if banned, to a black market. Smoking has been an easy target to tap profits from because it was so common to everyone. SHS fear has been the most easy to promote(aka to develop opinion) in because it pollutes the air and everyone can object to that - especially the moral middle classes that have been so easy to brainwash.

Now vaping, like a genie let out of the bottle that cannot be stuffed back in, will be truly difficult to police.  Vaping is NOT like smoking. Vaping is also here to stay. A vaper's problem is not that they have the moral high ground because vaping is "better" than smoking, their problem is the smoking ban. To others, vapers are smokers, first and foremost, who are addicted to a drug. Anti tobacco wishes to reduce the burden of our addiction. And ordinary people have been so turned against smoking by social engineering, that they simply see us as smokers.

It is a deeply sad if not an insane situation that society "accepts", religious freedom, dangerous sports, LGBT freedom, legal highs, marijuana in various areas, alcohol, porn, sex workers, movie violence, scorns racism, upholds peoples rights for all kinds of minority groups in all sorts of situations, yet smokers, have had no voice having been strangled into silence by law and shame.

The smoking ban should be revised in our Parliament to give smokers their dignity back. And to show the rest of the world that wrongs pushed onto citizens by anti smoking lobby groups can be put RIGHT. Once that happens, vapers will find themselves free of the insanity too. And our world will be a better one.

Well that's me done.

And NO - I have had no funding from any tobacco group!

What Vaping made me learn

I smoked for 50 years. In 2009 I bought one of the very primitive electronic cigarette devices of the time to take away on holiday where smoking was banned.  It was a dreadful thing, giving only a headache and no satisfaction. I returned to smoking after the first day, shivering out in the freezing December weather, next to the rubbish bins out back, with the other smokers.

2009 was only two years on from the indoor smoking ban in the UK. At that time, it was legal to smoke in places that was your "home" away-from-home even if it was a designated hotel room, a mental health ward, a prison, an old age home. Even so, banning a legal activity on private property, overriding ownership, seemed an illegal action to me. Unlawful. Since then, prohibition has got worse. No smoker escapes the persecution.

So my attempt to vape in 2009 was a disaster. I became a smoker more determined to continue smoking in the face of every unlawful action against me. I accepted that using an electronic cigarette was something I would never do.

I became a VERY angry smoker. The anti tobacco groups were becoming more and more vindictive. The immorality of what they promote was seared into my mind when I watched a loved one in psychosis, banned from smoking in a mental health ward - her "home" and old people dying outside in the cold whilst having to smoke there. Something loving disappeared from the world when prohibition entered it.

So I learned from my own smoking life experiences, that anti tobacco ideology, is as immoral and vicious as any promoted in History for the suppression of humans. I suspected that what society was told about smoking, was not actually true, but lies.

I determined to smoke till I died. Smoking was such a pleasure. I loved it. And furthermore, in my own life, I knew of no one who had died from "smoking related" illnesses. And I was well and healthy, myself.

In 2011, we went away again. and I have told this story before - I bought a device, which I had carefully researched on the Internet. This time, everything about it worked for me. It looked good, it worked well, and it was SATISFYING! At first I dual used. But gradually, I found I somewhat preferred vaping (new word for me in those days) to actually smoking. I liked the fact I could "smoke" inside. I especially liked that!

I learned that "smoking" inside a room with friends and family, the comradie of NOT having to go outside in the cold drizzly weather, was something I had been starved of by law.  The pleasure of smoking, the friendship, the old delight was recaptured for me.

Vaping, supplanted smoking in my life. This old determined smoker, without huge effort, switched her brand. To me it seemed miraculous.  I told others about it on a YouTube Channel. Those videos show another thing I learned.

I see how quickly the technology has changed. It does so almost weekly. It gets better and better.

So, because of my own miracle, I started this blog to share my delight. But it wasn't to be for long. At the back end of 2012, nasty rumours started to appear in the press. Anti smokers were becoming anti-vaping. My angry smoker came to the fore because, to me, the ideology is the problem. Vaper's problems stem from the anti smoking ideology.  I blogged my feelings.

I have learned that what we are told about smoking and vaping, is not actually true.

I learned this because I see how the ideology is working out against vaping. Our anti smoking health experts have absolutely no shame. If they can behave like this about vaping, they have done the same against smokers - you can bet on it.

I am very wary of "harm reduction" scientists too. They appear to be on our side. They are part of the big ideology. We need to be "saved" for our own good.  I believe we need to be "saved" for the  benefit of the whole group of anti smoking industries and their charitable and medical corollaries for THEIR own good - jobs, funding, futures.

How public health is treating vaping has opened my eyes to a lot of other stuff too. I have become sensitive to anti vaping spin. I realise that most of everything we read and hear in the media about any topic, here in the UK, is an illusion. What is offered to us, has someone's ideology attached to it.

The banning of vaping indoors is on the way. The untruths and lies are being promoted to make sure that society will conform.

My vaping has confirmed to me that the anti smoking industries, collectively, are wicked. 

Vaping is not smoking

Vaping is not smoking. It really isn't.

Smokers who try vaping and are displeased with it, know that.

Smoking is not vaping.

Vapers who have substituted smoking by vaping, trying smoking again and are displeased with it, know it.

There are some undeniable facts about smoking and vaping.

Smoking and vaping as ways to enjoy nicotine, do not satisfy everyone.

Smokers have become very anti vapers and vapers, anti smokers.

It's like the chicken and the egg - which came first?

My own sister, who is a smoker, is strangely aggressive to me about my vaping. She did try vaping but "hates" it.  That's fine by me - it's her choice. But I sense she is cross with me because I no longer smoke. It's as if I have become the traitor!  It's extremely strange, really it is....and if you follow my blog, you know I have always defended  smokers.

If there had been no Tobacco Control Industry dividing society into hate factions with nasty mantras like smoking kills, complete myths like smokers lungs are black, monstrous lies like Second Hand Smoke is deadly, and introducing prohibition, would smokers smoke and vapers vape in perfect harmony?

Or not?

Vaping - down memory lane - before the prohibitionist packs

I stopped smoking in September, or was it October 2011? I accidentally started a You Tube Channel called "Vaping for the Over Sixties". I started this blog six months into vaping.At first it was fun - more light hearted than grim.

2012

Do you remember Steeljan? Vaping Trolls

After I did a radio interview at Vapersplace - Sobranies for Kev at vapersplace

And Triple Coils with Scott Bonner Cripes! Triple coils

 

My kind of science! - I don't need science - the cat tells me

Vaping was fun - lighthearted - even in the loo! Shriek!

But sometimes it was more serious.

Alienating vapers - We ARE smokers!

Alienating smokers - My world of vaping is not like my world of smoking - uh uh

Here are my blog stats six months in  - Thank you Vapers

And I thought THAT was quite impressive. I'm obviously easy to please!

I've always done my own thing. I am not affiliated to anyone, and I have no reputation to defend. I have no career that's threatened. I'm free. I love it when lots of people read my posts and talk to me - and often they do. It makes me feel it's been a worthwhile three years. 

I'm not trying to get noticed by important people. 

I naively feel that people are good - and nice. I like people. Except when they run in packs,  In vaping and smoking circles I am finding there are packs - people running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. Or snarling at each other. In-circles politics, reputation protecting. Or smokers against vapers or the other way around. 

I don't like "Government" because of the packs. Packs bully, snap and threaten. They are empowered by the subservient mentality of their members. They self perpetuate. Tobacco Control is a pack. Public Health has become a pack.

We vapers and smokers have only one force implacably against us - prohibition by the dominant packs. I don't know what we can do about it - it's some kind of modern mental illness inherent in modern packs who are rewarded by their members with prestige, degrees and funding. 

It's grim.

Dodgy science unpicked for vapers but smokers deserve it too.

I have been taking a rest. But I have been watching the behaviour of the idiots, the fundamentalists and the sages.

I am an ordinary person. What more can we do, but watch? Ordinary people - not criminals - smokers like I used to be, have no academic power, no political power, no financial power. Everything a smoker does is legislated for in some way.

No group in the West, have been treated in such a way for an activity that is legal.

I point out that everything vapers are enduring in the pogrom against us, directly stems from the smoking ban.  The motive for the smoking ban should be reassessed. It was not about health - not remotely. To get it accepted, the fundamentalist anti smoking groups seeded the minds of smokers and non-smokers alike with fear - and the science behind their facts, is as dodgy as it is about vaping.

Smoking is a normal occupation to millions of people who choose to smoke. Rates of smoking were already dropping as people, without any intimidation by regulation, were giving it up out of their own choice. I believe technology would have produced an electronic cigarette because technology is inclined to do that kind of thing. Hon Lik was not motivated to make an electronic cigarette by the smoking ban, but by wishing for something safer than smoking!

Enter the prohibitionists! And real misery. Best if they had left well alone.

I WAS a smoker, and the pain of the anti smoking persecution has not left me. There are millions of voiceless people out there, just like me! The total smoking ban that was, to our utter disbelief, passed by an unwitting UK Parliament in 2007, was not in OUR name. It was the result of heavy lobbying by Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) which is an industry set up to further the anti smoking ideology and guarantee their own jobs from (mostly) Government Funding - aka a fake charity.

Fake Charities are Britain's shame! 

http://www.theguardian.com/society/salarysurvey/table/0,12406,1042677,00.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2835947/The-Great-British-rake-really-happens-billions-donate-charity-Fat-cat-pay-appalling-waste-hidden-agendas.html#ixzz3JEe5pWq7
http://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/where-the-workfare-money-goes-charity-rich-list-released/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2550648/Fury-234-000-salary-boss-Save-Children-Charity-chiefs-huge-wages-reined-say-MPs.html


Clive Bates has just published another brilliant post. It's a pity smokers have no Clive Bates!

I wish someone would question the dodgy science about Second Hand Smoke too - in defence of smokers and the warped fracturing of society that THAT dodgy science has caused.The anti smoking ideology and the massive world-wide industry it has now become, needs to be unpicked piece by piece on the basis of the faulty science it has promoted.

Some strange societal mutations have been spawned from it. Only smokers are assumed to develop lung cancer. So that if you are a non smoker, you miss out on early diagnosis. The idea that no young people get lung cancer except smokers is an illusion created by Anti Smoking Ideology.

The idea that at age eighty-something, you die from old age, but if you were or happen still to be, a smoker, you die from a smoking related illness, is another unpickable piece of science. Strangely illogical don't you think?

I enjoy Clive Bates posts on behalf of my vaping-self. But my used-to-be-a-smoker-self sees them as an exposure of how corrupt all the Anti Smoking Industries are. If they are doing this to vapers, one can assume the same was/is done to smokers. They have made an anal, terrified and abstinent society on purpose by engineering it so. The world is not better for it!

Growing wise to corruption

This post is the result of my last post Tobacco Control in action - harming the people 

It is about my illumination into the world of corruption. It is about my illumination into the world of manipulation of the people by those who have money and power. It is my illumination that ordinary people, even in our democratic systems worldwide, have absolutely no way to change anything because democracy has been soiled by the world of corruption. 

I have blogged often that the trouble for vapers is caused by the way the many tobacco control industries have purposefully engineered society to hate smokers. There are not words enough to describe the fracturing of society that has followed. In the UK here, one simple example of unfortunate outcomes, are the demise of Pubs due to the smoking ban and now the fact that there are thousands of older people who need  costly "loneliness caring" where once they would have been socially nurtured by going down to the Pub.

As I write this, I am listening to the TV on how the culture in the UK "needs to be changed" in its attitude to drinking. Drinking is costing too much. Prevention is better than cure, they say. I point out street drinking might have got worse since the smoking ban since people are out in the streets.

When do we stop winging about the money it costs when we do things to ourselves? Do we ban sports? Do we tell future knee/hip replacement applicants that they did it to themselves by running too much? Do we ban bell ringing, dancing, headphones, motorbikes, bicycles, gardening, DIY? Or any other activity that produces injuries we did to ourselves that cost?

COST. Money. Money. It makes the world go around. I don't have the solution, but it truly is an evil thing. I am no righteous person. I see how it affects one aspect of my own life. I do social networking for tourism to the village I live in. It used to be a paid job. I did it well. But a few years ago, the funding ran dry. I still do the same job (actually the work load has increased because I also work on the website too) but because there is absolutely no reward and I am already a busy person, I do the job very badly - when my guilty conscience makes me uncomfortable! I have grown to hate it. 

So that gets me to Clive Bates Doctors, Smoking and Money.

I have slept on the illumination that, in the UK, doctors who work for the National Health Service (NHS) are PAID to prescribe to their patients. I have looked up how very beneficial my husband has been to our local surgery in earning them money. Overnight several ideas have come to me.

The first is that this system is open to profound corruption.

What a doctor may prescribe is tightly controlled by NICE

How incorruptible is NICE?

NHS doctors are paid to promote treatment.

Illness is a doctor's best friend - every referral/drug prescription gains more cash.

Collecting points is financially beneficial to surgeries, yet might not be in the interests of patients.

How many referrals for further treatment/diagnosis are unnecessary? 

Is data gathered from points registration by surgeries  a true reflection of national health?

Points for the surgeries might feed points for specialists, hospitals, and other services   a sort of points "layer cake"  - everyone conforms at an enormous cost, for simply doing their jobs which are already salaried.

I think the points system is a  perfectly understandable effort to make doctors tow the line and provide proper healthcare to the people. But the discovery of it for me, has been like exposing the Wizard in OZ

So doctors in the UK that work for the NHS, are paid extra if they do their jobs as prescribed. I am sure that being a conforming doctor is worth the effort, and might be done better through it. I know not being paid for all the effort of social networking I do, not for me, but for something else,  has made me a sloppy worker who couldn't give a damn!

But the biggest danger in the practise of paying doctors to conform, reach targets etc is that it makes doctors into robots of the prevailing political system.

Yesterday I wrote Quote - The system of bribing paying doctors to induce fear into people who smoke is evil and it is the way society has been molded into a fearful, compliant, hypochondriac mass. It soils the government, the medical profession, any science that might be extrapolated from data collected from this "points" system, the drug companies and all the many tobacco control industries promoting antismoking that are complicit. It is an immoral use of power. This is politics at it's worst.

Even if doctors were paid to promote vaping. I would object on moral grounds. Paying the medical profession to promote anything - anything at all - is a scandal.End quote

Today, that seems a bit over the top. Yet, yet....something inside of me, my moral compass, is greatly uncomfortable. Corruption is so EASY with money and power.

All that ordinary people, like me, have to fight it with, are words.

Tobacco Control in action - harming the people

This post is the combination of three thoughts that exposed themselves to me whilst reading other people's posts. The first post/paper I  read was  The Scientific Scandal of Antismoking. (see more below) . The final conclusion hit me as being pertinent to what is happening in the Vaping world.

Quote - It may now be apparent why there is such a general belief that smoking is dangerously harmful. There are 3 reasons. First, studies which in any other area of science would be rejected as second-rate and inferior but which support antismoking are accepted as first-rate. Second, studies which are conducted according to orthodox and rigorous design but which do not support the idea  that smoking is harmful are not merely ignored but suppressed. Third, authorities who are duty-bound to represent the truth have failed to do so and have presented not just untruths but the reverse of the truth.

It may be argued that this is news about an old and settled subject. And who cares about smoking anyway. But smoking is really a secondary issue. The primary issue is the integrity of science. This has no use-by date. When the processes of science are misused, even if for what seems a good reason, science and its practitioners are alike degraded. End quote

Then, as I see that antismoking is so very tangled up with vaping and that the promotion of the antismoking ideology, is the complete and total enemy to vaping and vapers and how evil it has been in fracturing society, I was fascinated to read Clive Bates illuminating piece on how doctors have been bribed to promote antismoking and smoking cessation here in Britain. See Doctors, Smoking and Money

His post made me realise how naive I am, how little I truly know, how others like me, get caught up in evil, thinking it is good. The system of bribing paying doctors to induce fear into people who smoke is evil and it is the way society has been molded into a fearful, compliant, hypochondriac mass. It soils the government, the medical profession, any science that might be extrapolated from data collected from this "points" system, the drug companies and all the many tobacco control industries promoting antismoking that are complicit. It is an immoral use of power. This is politics at it's worst.

Even if doctors were paid to promote vaping. I would object on moral grounds. Paying the medical profession to promote anything - anything at all - is a scandal.

This brings me to the next bit of information I found that semi answers my suspicion (and it's only a suspicion because I am not an academic with the power to prove anything) that constant nocebos/negative implications on cigarettes and anti smoking promotions, make people sick. It is really strange that the big smoking generation (mine) are the ones that are living the longest and are causing annoyances because we are not dying. This is supposedly because of better healthcare. Yet a huge proportion of us smoked/grew up in smoking homes. This seems to suggest there IS life after smoking. And something is not correct about things Tobacco Control terrify the younger generation with - like "There is no safe level of smoking" and "Second Hand Smoke Kills". We must be an embarrassment!

So here is an interesting piece of information from Denmark  Frank Davis. Quote - It has already been shown very clearly that health paternalism does not work: Diseases and hospital admissions in Denmark have skyrocketed since politicians began to interfere in people’s lifestyle – with the smoking law in 2007 as the most significant intervention, and with the other health paternalism that has followed:

End quote

Wonder what our British hospital admissions look like? Where can I find out?

Interesting bit in this paper here The Scientific Scandal of Antismoking

Quote And so appeared the results of the whimsically acronymed Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial or MRFIT, with its 12,886 American subjects. Similarly, in Europe 60,881 subjects in four countries took part in the WHO Collaborative Trial. In Sweden the Goteborg study had 30,022 subjects. These were enormously expensive, wide-spread and time-consuming experiments. In all, there were 6 such trials with a total of over a hundred thousand subjects each engaged for an average of 7.4 years, a grand total of nearly 800,000 subject-years. The results of all were uniform, forthright and unequivocal: giving up smoking, even when fortified by improved diet and exercise, produced no increase in life expectancy. Nor was there any change in the death rate for heart disease or for cancer. A decade of expensive and protracted research had produced a quite unexpected result.

During this same period, in America, the Surgeon General had been issuing a number of publications about smoking and health. In 1982, before the final results of the Whitehall study had been published, the then Surgeon General C. Everett Koop had praised the study for "pointing up the positive consequences of smoking in a positive manner". But now for nearly ten years he fell silent on the subject and there was no further mention of the Whitehall study nor of the other six studies, though thousands of pages on the dangers of smoking issued from his office.

What the MRFIT authors themselves had to say about their work was quite different:
 "In conclusion we have shown that it is possible to apply an intensive long-term intervention program against three coronary risk factors with considerable success in terms of risk factor changes. The overall results do not show a beneficial effect on CHD or total mortality from this multifactor intervention." (Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial Research Group, 1982)

But in 1990 the Surgeon General published "The Health Benefits of Smoking Cessation" and at last the subject was addressed. The Whitehall study was rejected because of its "small size". A once praiseworthy study had become blameworthy. The MRFIT results were described, this time truthfully: "there was no difference in total mortality between the special intervention [quit] and usual care groups." This and the other studies were rejected because the combined change in other factors - eg diet and exercise - made it impossible to apportion benefit due to smoking alone. End quote

Vaping on YouTube - expect trouble!

Here is a nice link to a "scientific" study, that I predict forecasts TROUBLE for vapers. It will be followed by other studies as soon as the funding is found. Tobacco Control will see that it is.

How will it be used? There will be a flurry of anti-vaping videos promoted on YouTube.  Hundreds of them! In every language. Pushing fear. Tobacco Control will make sure of that.  They have the money. Already, the promotion of electronic cigarettes to the public in the Media will be controlled by new European legislation coming in.

And YouTube might not be exempt. YouTube will conceivably be forced to comply by blocking the new illegal videos or pod casts or broadcasts etc. Who knows?

And I am extra interested because of MY channel "Vaping for the over sixties" which promotes vaping, obviously. THIS little old lady will be exceptionally pissed off if she ever gets picked up by the radar.

 Quote - "This study presents the first surveillance studies of the portrayal of e-cigarettes on YouTube. The results presented in our study highlight the extent of “pro” e-cigarette content on YouTube. It is critical to develop appropriate health campaigns to inform e-cigarette consumers of potential harms associated with e-cigarette use. Further research is needed to evaluate the influence of e-cigarette messages in YouTube videos on people."end quote

If you are interested do read the whole study, or just whizz through the summary..... note - the people doing this study never used the search term "vaping" but used "smoking" - shows what ignoramuses they are. I'm sure the study results would have shocked them even more had they done so!

Here is a summary.... and the last paragraph is key.

Portrayal of electronic cigarettes on YouTube

Background
As the most popular video sharing website in the world, YouTube has the potential to reach and influence a huge audience. This study aims to gain a systematic understanding of what e-cigarette messages people are being exposed to on YouTube by assessing the quantity, portrayal and reach of e-cigarette videos.
Methods
Researchers identified the top 20 search results on YouTube by relevance and view count for the following search terms: “electronic cigarettes”, “e-cigarettes”, “ecigarettes”, “ecigs”, “smoking electronic cigarettes”, “smoking e-cigarettes”, “smoking ecigarettes”, “smoking ecigs”. A sample of 196 unique videos was coded for overall portrayal and genre. Main topics covered in e-cigarette videos were recorded and video statistics and viewer demographic information were documented.
Results
Among the 196 unique videos, 94% (n = 185) were “pro” to e-cigarettes and 4% (n = 8) were neutral, while there were only 2% (n = 3) that were “anti” to e-cigarettes. The top 3 most prevalent genres of videos were advertisement, user sharing and product review. 84.3% of “pro” videos contained Web links for e-cigarette purchase. 71.4% of “pro” videos claimed that e-cigarettes were healthier than conventional cigarettes. Audience was primarily from the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada and “pro” e-cigarette videos were watched more frequently and rated much more favorably than “anti” ones.
Conclusions
The vast majority of information on YouTube about e-cigarettes promoted their use and depicted the use of e-cigarettes as socially acceptable. It is critical to develop appropriate health campaigns to inform e-cigarette consumers of potential harms associated with e-cigarette use.

White feathers for smokers

During the first world war, a marketing technique to get people to sign up for service, was to have young ideologically brainwashed women presenting men, not in uniform, with White Feathers to infuse them with shame. This was done in public so the shame was seen by everyone else too. Men were frightened of actually going outside. To counter this agoraphobia, the government issued badges for those men who had done their active service, or who were home, injured, or were doing war work somewhere, so they would not be given "The Order of the White Feather".

Shame was used as a tool to control soldiers too. There was no bigger shame than running away, and deserters were shot. Conditions of war were hell on earth. People broke under the stress. Those who went insane were considered weak - not courageous. They and their families were shamed. This attitude left a whole generation deeply and irreparably damaged.
 
The marketing of war through shame technique is used by Tobacco Control in marketing their war on Tobacco. They are shame marketers. Sometimes what their White Feather Brigade does, is simply DISGUSTING! They are the ones who should be ashamed.

From
"Oi - stop smoking, you" Taunton hospital gets kids to tell parents to stub out the fags

It is a classic image that dates back to the earliest days of the NHS – lines of nervous fathers-to-be endlessly chain-smoking while their partners are in labour inside. But bosses at a Somerset hospital are so fed up with those soon-to-be dads – and even the women in labour – puffing away outside the door of the maternity unit that they have installed a special tannoy to shout at them to stub out their cigarettes.

The PA speaker system is being piloted at Musgrove Park Hospital and is specifically aimed at the entrance to the maternity unit, which nurses and midwives said was ‘a hotspot’ for the problem.

As well as smoking being banned inside the hospital buildings – as part of the smoking ban – smoking is prohibited across the entire Musgrove Park site, outside as well as indoors.

But try as they might to get the visitors, relatives and patients to stop smoking within yards of the doors, the Taunton hospital is still often surrounded by a fug of cigarette smoke – and the maternity unit is the worst place.

“Despite initiatives and campaigns encouraging people not to smoke on site, and to ask staff to approach smokers on site to remind them of this policy, the maternity unit remains a hotspot for patients and visitors smoking,” said a hospital spokesman.

Hayley Stone, who is the midwife with the special responsibility to get mums-to-be to give up the evil weed, came up with the idea of having a personal announcement system. It is operated by the receptionist to play out a pre-recorded Smoke Free message. When a smoker is seen to be smoking outside the main entrance of the maternity unit, a receptionist can press a button to operate the PA device.For extra-powerful guilt trips, the messages telling them to stop smoking have been recorded by local schoolchildren.

“The idea for using children’s voices for the speaker system came about after hearing that posters using children’s’ artwork, encouraging no smoking, had been positively received when put up in public spaces, such as parks,” said Lucy Rexworthy, whose job is to get people to stop smoking across the whole hospital.

“After a lot of time with Hayley planning its implementation we are all thrilled that the PA speaker system is finally here; and I know that the receptionists in particular are really pleased to have this to encourage people to stop smoking outside of the maternity unit,” she added.

“The Smoke Free team are extremely grateful to all of the children involved in the project and to their parents who helped make it possible. It is hoped that the PA speaker system will have a good and positive impact on eliminating smoking at Musgrove Park Hospital,” she said.

Smoking and vaping WILL survive

As a vaper, I have been in a state of shock that vaping and vapers are being treated just like smokers. As a human who has now reached the grand old age of seventy, I have nostalgia for the past, and the way things were before the Tobacco Control Industry appeared on the planet. I cannot explain to young people how strangely "cold" the world has become; how alien to freedom; how artificial and contrived; how rigid with legislation in many ways - not just about smoking.

I have told this before, but I have never experienced the horrors of smoking in my life. My five children grew up in a smoking home as both my husband and I smoked. In those days, people smoked everywhere, even in front of the cheeeldren! None of our cheeeldren died a cot death (I smoked whilst breastfeeding to keep myself awake at night). None of them has asthma. And none of our cheeeldren smoke!

I think smoking is like carrying around your own pollution chamber. I think cigarettes as manufactured by Big Tobacco have extra harmful ingredients added to them. I think Tobacco Control could have insisted that only real, unadulterated tobacco as it is meant to be smoked was offered to smokers - and that would have been REALLY worthwhile! Cigarettes as we know them today are fake things - horrible mutations of what smoking could be.

I really know this from my own experience. I smoked commercial cigarettes for about thirty years,  Rothmans. When I got to the UK, the Rothmans were horrible! They burnt down excessively quickly, and they left me totally unsatisfied. Tobacco Control's meddling did that! So I switched to rolling my own. For some years I smoked rollies. Then I discovered Natural Tobacco. And switched. In twenty four hours, I could feel the difference physically. It was the same when I switched to vaping. I think it was easy to change to vaping because I was not used to the added chemicals that made my smoking of commercial cigarettes so addictive.

So, I wonder about the insanity of man. How, now that China has signed into The Tobacco Control Directive, banning people from smoking in the street where dogs and children collapse in the pollution from vehicles, and people wear masks, can possibly be considered by any thinking person as "sane"! Is banning smoking in London, or New York sane? Is banning vaping ANYWHERE sane?

I think the world has gone mad. I think vapers will be ground down by legislation. We will enter a "colder", more artificial and contrived society, rigid, joyless, insane. Smoking and vaping will be private pleasures - but they WILL survive.

WE will see to that!

Apologies to vapers, smokers and Tobacco Control

I wrote a blog post Changing vaper-hate to love

I need to apologise for several things I said in it. My errors have been revealed to me.

I apologise to Carl V Philips, whose writing I really enjoy, for lumping him into anti tobacco. It has been pointed out that he himself has been attacked by Tobacco Control and he feels everyone should have choice as to whether they smoke or not. Carl Phillips - Dear Public Health: the public despises you, so you are probably doing it wrong

I apologise to vapers who I accused of standing on the head of smokers to save vaping, who promote vaping by using anti tobacco propaganda to do it.  I have been less than insightful. It has been suggested and only just dawned on me that they actually and genuinely BELIEVE what anti tobacco has been using to socially engineer them with. They are ashamed of being smokers, relieved they can vape instead and they trustingly accept what anti tobacco says about smoking and second hand smoke.

I apologise to Tobacco Control that in the past I seemed unable to believe very much they said. I might be in denial. They made my life miserable. I saw none of the things they warned me about in my own personal life. I must be a lucky one. I think they have exaggerated, overstated, twisted facts and manipulated society in a shameful way.

I apologise that now I am a smoker that only vapes, I am unable to change my attitude. I have always sympathised with smokers, having been one myself for 50 years. In fact, all my suspicions about how Tobacco Control, have exaggerated, overstated, twisted facts and manipulated society in a shameful way are being confirmed as I watch how they are dealing with vapers and vaping.

And, as a bit of fun, I apologise to the smokers I teased with the announcement that there was good news for them - Islamic State lifts smoking ban in Kirkuk
May the smoking bans be reviewed everywhere!

Soon!

How do smokers deserve respect?

I am trying not to blog too much, having just published Changing vaper-hate to love thinking it might be far too long for most people to read. I talk about respect for smokers. What do I actually mean?

I have just made a comment on the website of Social Change UK and I know it will never be published. This series of adverts promoting not smoking and not vaping, is a perfect example of the serious indictment we should hold up against anti tobacco.

          
            

No one is society should hold back any individual simply because they smoke or vape. And to brainwash 11 to 13 year olds that this is what happens, is scandalous. Even in the current anti smoking fervoured world, our lily livered Prime Minister (and other current politicians) WAS a smoker when he came to office. By all accounts he does not smoke any more. (I bet he vapes! and I bet the rest of them do too)

And, of course, not being able to fulfill your dreams because you are a smoker, is a situation anti tobacco have engineered themselves. It is how society now works. That is absolutely immoral and profoundly disgusting to me. We are, at last, not bashing race or gender orientation, we allow same sex marriage, house husbands, porn, movie and gaming violence; we encourage multiculturalism and  freedom of religion and all sorts of "rights". We call ourselves a free society. But smokers (and vapers) have no "rights".

Smoking has never held people back - until now.

Gallery of famous smokers.  

Another Gallery of famous smokers 

Following anti tobacco's example we can now say anything we like about smokers - doesn't matter how disrespectful - in fact the more disrespect, the better. And smokers can be discriminated against in any way with SOCIETAL APPROVAL!



Smokers are said to have 'Bad breath, stained teeth, clothes stink, bad skin, always broke. Conclusion = smoker' Link to Simon Clarke's post here or how about this disrespectful comment 'Greedy, lazy, sweaty, smelly clothes, greasy skin, often depressed. Conclusion: Obese person'  Isn't that insulting to all obese people?

Or what is now a politically incorrect, disrespectful description of a 'Greedy, lazy, sweaty, smelly clothes, greasy skin, often depressed. Conclusion: Black person' No one would DARE say such a thing.

I refuse to talk about smokers, or smoking in disrespectful ways. The smokers I know do not have bad breath, stained teeth, stinky clothes, bad skin, or are always broke. I was not like that when I smoked either - and I smoked for 50 years! What a disrespectful description of any group of people to be sure.

I refuse to say XXX million smokers will be "saved" by changing to vaping. No one can say that - not even anti smoking "scientists" - ESPECIALLY anti smoking "scientists". They do not speak the truth. They are not even truthful about the harm of Second Hand Smoke - or what is an age related death compared to a smoking related death. Smoking is now put out as such a shameful habit, I bet there are millions more smokers than ever own up - closet smokers.

But to get back to the 11 to 13 year olds, I'd like them to respect smoker's right to smoke and vaper's right to vape. And have the manners not to bad mouth them.

I would like them to respect ALL people and if any of them DO smoke or vape, they need to have respect for THEMSELVES despite it too. 

Changing vaper-hate to love

Goodness me! Must be in the stars? There is a concerted moving against "Public Health" by important people. These have been precipitated by the attacks on vaping that health nincompoops have put forward. However, as I bang on over and over again, the "Public Health" rot STARTED with the attitude towards smokers. And some of those public health people have turned against the very system THEY set up. Do they not see the mote in their own eyes? I WISH!

Carl Phillips - Anti smoking and harm reduction
Dear Public Health: the public despises you, so you are probably doing it wrong

Clive Bates - Anti smoking and introduced the smoking bans
Memo to public health grandees: vaping, vapers and you

These people, and others, all blogging against "Public health" are the very people that set the scene in the past for the persecution of smokers. And are still active.

Quote from an excellent piece by Rolygate "PH (Public Health) is never, in any circumstances, about making people happy or allowing them to live their lives according to personal choice. It is about conforming to a modern form of ruleset whose nearest relative is that of a religion."
Public Health - A Good Idea Gone Horribly Wrong

And Lorien's post Dear FPH - Just a quick word about John Ashton.
Quote - "In the course of trying to get the voice of the vaper heard and considered by those in public health, tobacco control, the media and those in politics, I (and many others) have been subjected to many accusations and insults. We have been shut out and discounted for many reasons. We have observed and listened to many experts in the field of Public Health talk in the media about things that we know not to be true and yet we have not be able to redress the balance with what we see as the truth and what the data refutes."

The first two bloggers are anti smoking and always have been. They have been hoist by their own petard and it serves them right.They are supposedly vaper's friends, but not friends to smokers.

The second two bloggers are vapers who know all about the savagery of a place in society as marginised smokers.

In the UK - in fact all over the world, the case for vaping is being waged by standing on the heads of smokers.

I am a great admirer of Henry David Thoreau. He said in Civil Disobedience - "If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself." and "There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly"

I believe we cannot get justice for vapers until smokers are treated with respect. We can only change vaper-hate by releasing society from their shriveled smoker-hate existence. Now is the time for all anti smoking activists to set themselves free from the dogma and creed they have placed in "Public Health". May enlightenment come upon you. Awaken! May the smoking bans be reviewed with moral honesty. The deceit you offered is now being used against vapers. It is YOUR faults! The REAL PROBLEM for everyone is the attitude to SMOKING.

PS - There IS good news for smokers - Islamic State lifts smoking ban in Kirkuk 

Going for a smoke break

If you follow my blog, you will know that I perceive things a bit differently to many other vapers. I have not allowed myself to be brainwashed to believe or re-cycle in any way, what the new industry called "Tobacco Control" has fed into society.  From the very start they used malice aforethought to twist minds and hearts.

They have not used truth to do so. They have been devious.  Instead of demanding cigarettes be made with real tobacco without additives and going at the source - the manufacturers of cigarettes, smokers have been made pariahs of society by being labelled slaves and addicts and killers of themselves and other people.

Unfortunately and because of this, society will not easily accept vaping as a legitimate recreational pleasure. Instead vaping is being labelled before my eyes as another filthy addiction that non smoking folks fear will kill them by our terrifying vapour polluting their air. This is directly because of the attitude to smoking and the Second Hand Smoke Myth.

But, in fact, again, the sources of all things pertaining to vaping - the manufacturers, could be regulated  with consumer protections already in place without any extra laws. And certainly attacking vapers as a group to persecute, is repeating what anti tobacco has done to smokers.

Thinking of vaping as a Nicotine Replacement is not helpful. And I don't like thinking of vaping as "harm reduction" either. The thousands and millions of lives vaping will "save" are figures pulled out of anti tobacco employees' computers. 

We have no idea how many smokers lives will be saved, because the estimated figure on smoking deaths and - worse - Second Hand Smoker deaths are perverted already.

Vaping, like smoking is using nicotine for PLEASURE. Smoking has given deep pleasure to humans ever since we first started inhaling smoke. We smoked real tobacco once. But Big Tobacco's commercially produced easy-smoking boxed variety of cigarettes has somewhat changed that. Old fashioned unadulterated tobacco was better.

I saw the nicest thing today - lovely day in the country. At least 25 bikers stopped over the road from our house. Every one of them stood around in a happy group smoking cigarettes. Everyone of them were smokers. Everyone of them were youngish. Most of them rolled their own. No vapers. But my heart warmed. Smoking is not dead - it lives!

And it gives just as much pleasure to people as it ever did!

Let your people vape

If you were on the Internet a long time ago, you might have seen a hilarious video. It showed a future of anti-smoking with cigarettes being passed surreptitiously from palm to palm in the streets as people traded in fags, anti smoking police at every corner and ended with a couple in bed enjoying their after intercourse cigarette. Suddenly, the anti tobacco swat team comes crashing through the door with rifles and ensuing pandemonium. The swat team confiscate the cigarettes. It was very clever - and funny. Funny because the situation was an impossible future we thought.

And yet, not such a long time from then, smoking is illegal almost everywhere.

This change has come so swiftly it is unbelievable.

I want my position on smoking to be clear. Inhaling smoke day after day is logically not a healthy thing to do. But having smoked for 50 years, I have been one of the lucky ones to escape obvious health effects.  I think there are a lot of people like me, healthy smokers. Smokers should not be made criminals.

Second Hand Smoke dangers have been a lie - don't believe me? Read THIS. Edit - if that link doesn't work read HERE
Quote -

THE world's leading health organisation has withheld from publication a study which shows that not only might there be no link between passive smoking and lung cancer but that it could even have a protective effect.

The astounding results are set to throw wide open the debate on passive smoking health risks. The World Health Organisation, which commissioned the 12-centre, seven-country European study has failed to make the findings public, and has instead produced only a summary of the results in an internal report.

Despite repeated approaches, nobody at the WHO headquarters in Geneva would comment on the findings last week. At its International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, which coordinated the study, a spokesman would say only that the full report had been submitted to a science journal and no publication date had been set.

The findings are certain to be an embarrassment to the WHO, which has spent years and vast sums on anti-smoking and anti-tobacco campaigns. The study is one of the largest ever to look at the link between passive smoking - or environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) - and lung cancer, and had been eagerly awaited by medical experts and campaigning groups.

Yet the scientists have found that there was no statistical evidence that passive smoking caused lung cancer.End Quote

It would have been perfectly possible, seeing we live in a technologically clever age, for smokers to have carried on using smoking rooms everywhere  - especially in pubs, hotels and the hospitality industries. And smoking outside is a no harm no brainer. Smokers should not be made criminals. The hospitality industry that harbour smokers have been made criminals too. And smokers that dare to show children what smoking looks like.

We have been fed inaccurate science about smoking by those against it. There is no doubt about that. (Please read this comment - it is most illuminating) We see noxious tactics in how electronic cigarettes are being demonised now. If I ever wanted confirmation that the anti smoking crowd have simply pushed their agenda on trusting people in dubious fashion - it is crystal clear.

The World Health Organisation and their Tobacco Control Directive, have made criminals of millions of smokers worldwide instead of co-operating to make smoking safer for those who do it. How could they have done that, you ask? Well by demanding that tobacco in cigarettes be additive free for a start. They have vainly tried to eradicate smoking by persecuting individual smokers by law. Smokers should not be made criminals.

No matter WHAT arguments are raised about smoking, there is one fact that cannot be argued against. Smokers smoke because it is PLEASURABLE. It is a social pleasure. It is shameful that smokers have to hang out together in the streets, when they could be affirmed as a cohesive group of people by having places to practise their pleasure in comfort. Smokers should not be made criminals.

The World Health Organisation has now pronounced against electronic cigarettes. The ripple from that will go on like a huge wave in the media unstopped, and unstoppable. Watch how all the anti-tobacco propaganda will be rolled into place against vaping - almost like a delicious vicious kind of sadism against a whole group of people. Smokers and vapers are not criminals. Smokers and vapers should not be made criminals.

Many vapers believe the anti-smoking blurb they have been bombarded with and feel the guilt and pain of smoking. That feeling of guilt was put in your heart with malice aforethought, by a carefully crafted strategic plan. That is your response to a brainwashing process called social engineering practised by Tobacco Control. No doubt those same vapers will now be questioning vaping. Some of the pleasure of vaping will be replaced with pain. Maybe you will stop vaping. Maybe you will go back to smoking - if you do, use natural tobacco. But most of all, understand that vapers are not criminals. Vapers should not be made criminals.

Smokers, smoke if you want to - I wish you were given some rights to pursue YOUR pleasure in a civilised fashion. Smokers should not be made criminals.

Vapers, vape if you want to - I hope we are given some rights to pursue OUR pleasure. Vapers are not criminals. But the track record of how smokers have been treated, when science has been perverted and solutions COULD have been found for smokers, does not bode well for us vapers.

It is shocking that we have to beg for something that not long ago was a personal choice. How the  world has turned. How much more restriction can we take? Smokers are not criminals, but we folded under allegations that Second Hand Smoke harmed others. Vapers are not criminals and we might fold under the same accusations.

Do we have to grovel and beg to our masters crying "Let your people vape!"?
 

Reformation for smokers will save vapers - our enemy's enemy is our friend

I feel sorry for Clive Bates who must be sick of me posting angry comments on his blog. He has just put up a new post (see above).

So I am having a rant here instead.

I really, really wish that the scales would fall from the eyes of people involved with Tobacco Control as he is.

The correct moral way forward is to expose Tobacco Control for what they are. I am not surprised at anything they do. It is to be expected. If they can lie about Second Hand Smoke, they can lie and HAVE, about anything.

EPIDEMIOLOGICAL EVIDENCE ON ENVIRONMENTAL TOBACCO SMOKE AND LUNG CANCER

No figures they put about should ever be repeated, because they are simply guesses to promote a particular idea. In science, that is frightfully dangerous. We can see dishonesty and manipulation happening before our very eyes as us vapers watch how it is all panning out for us world wide. And especially in Europe that houses the head of the snake! What is most obvious is how immoral it all is.

Quote from Clive's Post "The objective of this Convention and its protocols is to protect present and future generations from the devastating health, social, environmental and economic consequences of tobacco consumption and exposure to tobacco smoke by providing a framework for tobacco control measures to be implemented by the Parties at the national, regional and international levels in order to reduce continually and substantially the prevalence of tobacco use and exposure to tobacco smoke"End quote

The above is a sort of fundamentalist religious statement.

"devastating health, social, environmental and economic consequences of tobacco consumption and exposure to tobacco smoke " can all be challenged.

In fact, the exaggerations, misrepresentations, economic harm, personal and individual suffering the dogma has brought on in society has been vast. This religion has seeded fear and hate. Like all successful conquering religions have done, the devotees fail to see that the act of smoking - something - anything - can never be eradicated just like conquering religions fail in accepting that not all humans will be converts.

Action against the unconverted by the conquerors becomes more violent in their desperation to create the new world of perfection that they have visioned. The prohibitionist movements that plague modern society, are no different. There is a sort of Eugenics idea in the culture that makes me very uneasy - behaviour Eugenics so to speak - conform, or die. Tobacco Control are at the leading edge.

We need a reformation - but the first thing to go for is the bullshit preached by the priests of Tobacco Control. They have been able to use science in its very worst way, to promote a movement that most people born when I was, would never have believed could ever have happened in the democratic world.

Scientists need to have the guts to challenge the science used by Tobacco Control and to demolish the morality of their mission which has been so clearly exposed now they speak against vaping. And how is it that Vaping is anything to do with THEM - it's not even a Tobacco Product. They have been offered the solution to smoking, free gratis and for nothing and consider it a threat. The WHO pontificates today. And as I write this I hear the BBC spreading the terror about SHV (Second Hand Vapour.)

The threat Tobacco Control fears is a modern, technological smoking epidemic - a safer-than-the-old-one epidemic.

And I say - so what!

A Reformation might get Tobacco Control back on track. Those that haven't been exposed as selling indulgences for their own profit, or spreading ideological science instead of real science, the ones that are left after a cleansing reformation, could be trusted to offer the truth and be motivated by love of humanity instead of protecting their own futures in a very profitable job placement in a prohibition industry.

To all the scientists and academics involved with Tobacco Control in any way, I want to say that the unbelievable, headstrong, self righteous people trying to control vaping have used all that same power, money and social engineering before to persecute smokers. The immorality in THAT should be exposed. It needs to be accepted that smoking is something people like to do. It needs to be acknowledged that there ARE safe levels of smoking. It needs to be exposed that there is no evidence that Second Hand Smoke is killing anyone. It needs to be honestly recorded that older people who die from age related illnesses are doing so because they are old and not because they once smoked. It needs to be admitted that nicotine is not a deadly drug.

Smoking needs to be accepted as a thing that some people do.

People smoke tobacco and do it with pleasure. It even has some beneficial aspects. As a society, THAT needs to be accepted. Tobacco Control needs to accept it too and admit they have gone too far, interfered too much. That way, the smoking terror will stop. That way, the pogroms against smokers will stop. That way, vapers too will be accepted into society.

Am I the only one who sees that the demonisation of SMOKING is the cause of all the problems we vapers now have?

Am I the only one who sees that there is nothing at all that can be done for us vapers, unless some kind of sanity returns to our world about smokers and smoking?

For young vapers from an old one

In September I turn seventy. You might think I'm over the hill, finished, kaput. But I am actually physically well, despite fifty years of smoking, and a pretty sedentary lifestyle too.

How long am I going to live? I don't know. Ten, twenty years if I'm lucky. I come from a long lived family. Smoking was one of the great joys of my life. I was never going to stop, unless I had to because my body was too collapsed to continue or I died, making smoking rather difficult in such circumstances.

In 2009, our family converged from all over the world for a big celebration in a large Victorian House on the Isle of Wight. I had just heard of electronic cigarettes and I bought one because we couldn't smoke in the house. It was a cigalike with a cartridge.  It was foul. I threw it away.

Three years ago this month, I bought myself a little electronic cigarette from JACVapour in Edinburgh (my nearest shop in those days) because, again, I was going away where I couldn't smoke. The little black e cig was really good. It had a cartomiser instead of a faffy cartridge. The battery and cartomiser actually lasted and the whole setup was easy to use and felt and looked "good".  Furthermore, it was SATISFYING!

Within a few weeks, I had completely switched to vaping. In my mind that seemed miraculous. It completely changed my life. I found something I liked BETTER than smoking.

So what is my worth now that I'm old and finished?  Well, it's what I have in my memories that is important. I want to share my knowledge with younger vapers. The knowledge is not about devices, mods, latest trends, manners, atomisers, TFT or BFT, or any of that.

My knowledge is about what I have seen happening around me in the world. As a young person, you will not know, because you have grown up during the "new" time.

You might not believe it, but not so long ago, LGBT (this is a Government site) was illegal! People went to prison because of their sexual preferences. Of course people were still lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transsexual - but hidden, concealed,clandestine - subversive.

Girls who fell pregnant were considered disgraceful and their babies were taken away so that families didn't have to deal with the shame. It was hidden, concealed, clandestine - subversive. Being pregnant without being married produced legally termed "bastards".

Pornography was illegal and banned. Women needed to be chased and pure, wear little white gloves and hats and stay at home to cook, clean and look after the children. "Nice" girls never got drunk, or slept around. There were no birth control pills. How nice girls ACTUALLY behaved was hidden, concealed, clandestine - subversive.

Most people smoked cigarettes - even priest, nuns, judges, doctors, nurses, teachers, politicians scientists, psychiatrists, policemen, soldiers, Mums, Dads - you think it, they did it - everywhere. It was something people did for pleasure. Or to calm themselves. Or to control their weight. During the era of the smoking epidemic (when everyone did it because it was fashionable) cigarette tobacco was tampered with by manufacturers to make it more addictive and taste better. Thousands of chemicals were added to cigarettes, making smoking more harmful. Smoking was hard to stop. Everyone knew that. It also harmed you if you overdid it. Everyone knew that too. So after World War Two, the wisdom of the crowds knew stopping was good and smoking was bad - not BAD EVIL, but "silly".

There was no war on drugs. There WERE drugs and alcohol. People had trouble with both.There were no "designer" drugs or genetically engineered marijuana. There was no genetically engineered tobacco. There was no genetically engineered anything - that was science fiction.
 
There was no litigation mentality - suing someone because it was their fault you fell/broke your arm, whatever. The blame culture hadn't begun. There was no lawyer industry - only rich people could afford one.

The Government was expected to provide services in exchange for our income taxes. Museums, libraries, historical places and churches were free to all. There was no "public health preaching" or health Charity industries. A charity collected money from the people to do good works, and were not subsidised by Governments. Charities did lobby parliament - but were not supported by the Government to do so.

Hospitals provided care for sick people without blame. Patients were sick people - not expenses to the state, targets or statistics. There was no "elf and safety" - no European Union legislation and far less Government legislation than we have now. Every aspect of life was free-er.  Except when it came to sex. But that functioned actively in the background - hidden, concealed, clandestine - subversively.

Sex is now free-er, but many other aspects of life have become complex and tightly controlled.

One of the greatest accelerators of our progress to now, has been the use of science, data and statistics to prove, or dis-prove things about society. Computers can rustle up a lot of figures in the wink of an eye, that once took years and months to produce. There are millions of "scientists" working today, whereas in the past, scientists were few and the work laborious.

In the new scientific age the Government, to prove itself, creates data and statistics, and controls its workers by making them fill in forms and work to targets. Nursing, teaching and policing has been completely transformed by this.

Somehow, people live under huge stress to conform, to be politically correct (a new expression) and they are manipulated to do this by scientific evidence in this new scientific age.

What young people might not understand, is that science has changed from what it was - a tool for discovering information without ideology - to science funded by and promoting ideologies, social engineering and legitimising "nudges" - another word for Government interference in our lives.

Tobacco Control is a new modern industry - a  business employing many people who sustain it because it guarantees their jobs. Unable to destroy Big Tobacco, the enemy of the people, they have used science to promote the dream of a world without smokers. Smoker genocide targets ordinary behaviour to make it abnormal. Smokers are individual people. Some of the science Tobacco Control have produced is very suspect - the numbers of people dying from smoking for instance. And the idea that people get lung cancer from second hand smoke. 

We see the abuse of science to promote anti vaping fervour.  We, as vapers can see it happening before our very eyes! This is easy to do in a society already hardened to allow the persecution of smokers without personal thought, but as a result of the science presented by the prohibitionists, even though they, ordinary people, personally, have nothing against smokers or smoking.

I will not quote any figures put out by the anti-smoking industry for they are perverted by fundamentalism, profit and corrupt collusion with the pharmaceutical industry (also a new modern industry). The more I see how it is working with vaping, the more I realise how smokers have been alienated in a modern world where facilities to smoke comfortably would be easy to have, where pubs and the economy could revive, where happiness could return, where drunkeness and drug taking might reduce if there was a compromise in the smoking ban. I believe there are many more smokers than we are told. Smoking has become disgraceful, hidden, concealed, clandestine - subversive.

Our biggest problem is Tobacco Control. As a vaper, I will not regurgitate any of their words. I am appalled that we are trying to negotiate with them without exposing them instead. They have drained pleasure from society, taxed, twisted and restrained our vitality for living, all under the mantra of trying to save our lives. Smoking was a simple pleasure, without causing violence or danger. No one was admitted to hospital for smoking a whole pack of 20 in a day or being beaten up by a violent smoker under the influence of tobacco.

The biggest change I have seen in my life is withering legislation, taxation, financial greed and prohibition, prohibition, prohibition. I have heard it said "If alcohol/sugar/smoking was invented today, it would never have been allowed!" THAT is a thought that shows how twisted our thinking has become. People do not need to be allowed by an external force to eat, drink or smoke. We are individual people who should be able to choose what we do. We should be free to do that openly in our new enlightened age. We should not have to be hidden, concealed, clandestine or subversive.

 Our new scientific, secular age is riddled with fundamentalist ideology pinned in place by "evidence". The new industries of Tobacco Control, Public Health, European Union, Litigation, and Pharmaceuticals are supping at our happiness, making us miserable, guilt ridden and compliant. 

Do not believe everything you are told - even if it is supposedly proved by science.

Smoking does not kill everyone - I'm still here. And most of my smoking friends are too. Whatever happens, I intend to go on vaping till the day I die. It would be tragic if I had to do it hidden, concealed, clandestinely and subversively.

That would be a real shame

Quote - Dave Dorn "Vape on, vape hard and don't let the buggers grind you down"

Please share - 8th August is coming up! Basic information for future protesters

 Every vaper should know what is happening legally about electronic cigarettes. In the USA the FDA consultation? is that the right word? is almost up. Please respond before it is too late. The CASAA information link is below.

And in the UK, there is much we can still do. Please get involved. Links are below. This is just basic stuff for beginning. There are many, many people active for our cause. Please be one too!

Links here

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
http://blog.casaa.org/search/label/ FDA FOURTH CALL TO ACTION
http://casaa.org/ HOME PAGE 

UNITED KINGDOM
http://www.eccauk.org/  ECCA HOME
and
http://www.vapourtrails.tv/ VAPOURTRAILS TV

And don't forget to sign THE EUROPEAN FREE VAPING INITIATIVE

My YouTube channel "Vaping for the over sixties"

My Video Channel is what I like best about the social networking I do. I get hundreds and hundreds of letters and comments on it. I reply to every one. I get loads of comments of "love". I think it is because I am un threatening and I remind young people, who also watch my videos, even though the channel is called  "Vaping for the over sixties", I remind them of their grandmothers. I loved my grandmother too. I often wish I had taken more notice of her before she died. People who have bonded with me on my videos are topping up that feeling of a missing grandmother.

But more commonly, I get messages of thanks for being inspirational and starting people vaping.

I mostly use THIS blog for getting out the frustration and anger I feel at what is happening to vaping per kind hatred of the anti tobacco industry, which I dislike with a passion because of their devious anti smoking actions, now turned on us vapers.

But I don't want that anger to show up too much on my YouTube channel because beginners need encouragement, not rage.

Vaping has changed my life. It is the very best thing that has happened for smokers. I know that not everyone switches to vaping with ease - but millions of us prefer it to smoking.

I am glad my enthusiasm has started people vaping. I have tried to keep my videos simple, honest and home made. I do not represent anyone except me.

Here are my latest videos followed by my two most viewed.

Brilliant letter - thank you Hazel and thank you all!

There is something really good for me about this extraordinarily sincere letter. Hazel signed it, but I'm not sure who wrote it. To the  Independent Vapers’ Associations and Organisations of Belgium, Netherlands, France, Spain, Denmark, United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Norway, Finland, Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary.

I just want to say thanks.

Enjoy.

(COP6 is The World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and this year it is in Moscow, in October)

Letter to Dr Chan; Director of WHO; re: COP6 in October

July 22, 2014

 22nd July, 2014

Dear Dr Chan,

As their representatives, we write to you on behalf of European users of electronic cigarettes. We are unpaid, unfunded and independent of any industry. As vapers ourselves, this letter is a frank expression of our personal experiences and perspective.

We ask that the current situation, all the sound and the fury surrounding electronic cigarettes, be considered from the viewpoint of the millions of Europeans who have adopted them. The unfettered access that we have enjoyed so far has been a fundamental reason for their success. It has enabled us to transit from smoking towards an infinitely less dangerous way of consuming nicotine. Some of us have then decided also to stop using e-cigarettes. Others have continued to use them, but without nicotine. Yet others, whilst having completely substituted smoking with their use, prefer to continue consuming nicotine but without the dangers associated with burnt tobacco. And then there are those who have reduced their tobacco consumption, with e-cigarettes filling the void left by unsmoked conventional cigarettes.

Smoking is a complex phenomenon and there is no single way to help smokers change their behaviour. Until recently, we had little choice. Like most smokers, we found medicinal options, the gums, patches and psychotropic substances as well as the behavioural support, to be often unpleasant and certainly ineffective. The electronic cigarette has allowed us to tailor its use to our individual tastes and needs. If you were to constrain it so that it were available in a single format that could only be used in a prescribed way, then at a stroke you would make it as ineffective as the medicinal options have been over the past 30 years.

Personal Vaporisers, e-cigs, electronic cigarettes or whatever they are called, have given millions of smokers a choice and control they never had before. The freedom to choose! That is what has made the difference for us; the ability to take our time, to choose our devices, to develop preferences for flavours. All of which we have paid for from our own pockets and purses. Let us examine perhaps the most controversial issue of all: flavours.

We are constantly being told that flavours exist only to entice new consumers and especially the young towards smoking. They excite so much fear amongst those who advise you! But listen to our experience, to what we know and understand about these flavours that are so important for us, the adults who use them. They have allowed us to create a distance between the deadly habit we had and the far healthier one we have adopted or are moving towards. It is the presence of flavours, be they bubble-gum or vanilla, that makes the possibility of returning to smoking so unlikely for those of us who have completely adopted the product, because for most of us the taste of burnt tobacco has become nauseous.

It is in the interest of public health that smoking be eliminated from society and vapers are the example of how this can be achieved. We are growing in number at a rate no-one predicted. The reason is that the market is vast and exciting, encouraging the development of products that are ever more effective. These more evolved products do not, however, interest the tobacco industry’s subsidiaries. Their interest is almost entirely limited to devices that resemble traditional cigarettes, products that do not appear to deliver nicotine very effectively, that are expensive to use and are not very appealing. Moreover, being essentially disposable, they cause environmental damage by producing tons of electrical waste.

Yet we find ourselves faced with a future where only this part of the market, with its outdated, relatively inefficient and expensive products, would be open to us. It would be akin to asking all current smartphone users to throw away their high tech devices and rely only on landlines. This simile applies just as well to the notion of vapers returning to smoking.

We cannot emphasise enough the importance of this revolution. The impact of what could be proposed at the COP6 meeting in October would see its end. A revolution no-one dreamt of during all the preceding decades of tobacco control. An unexpected revolution that all costs must not be curtailed.

This letter comes to you from smokers, ex-smokers and their families. We are mothers, fathers, sons and daughters. We have children and grandchildren. We have no vested interest, no one is paying us and no one is coercing us. We write to you with our hearts on our sleeves, with nothing to hide. We are the vapers of Europe and we ask you listen to us to recognise that we are the way for you to reach your goal. With little official involvement, we are changing the face of smoking across Europe.

Please allow us to continue doing so. To do so through snatched conversations in bars and cafés. Through quick chats on the street with interested smokers who stop us to ask about our devices. With the support of our families and friends who gratefully welcome the ensuing health benefits and appreciate the absence of passive smoking. Let us and the smokers willing to try e-cigarettes regain control of our lives without unnecessary and costly intervention.

Science will eventually answer the questions that remain, but the only one that matters now is:

Are electronic cigarettes helping millions of smokers to turn to a much less dangerous practice?

The answer can only be;

Yes!

Please do not succumb to unjustified fear, otherwise the WHO, by crushing this magnificent risk reduction opportunity, would condemn millions to an early death.

Yours sincerely,

Hazel Mabe

European Vapers United Network

germany@evun.org

for and on behalf of the Independent Vapers’ Associations and Organisations of Belgium, Netherlands, France, Spain, Denmark, United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Norway, Finland, Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary.