The demon tobacco

I, personally, smoked for fifty years. I am one of the 50% of smokers that managed to escape the harms of the demon. The other group of smokers that can escape the harms of tobacco, are those that stop smoking before the age of 35. Like my husband, for instance.

Strangely, except for my father in-law, I have no experience of people in my orbit, that have developed any debilitating harm from smoking. My father in-law was a heavy drinker and smoker. He suddenly developed pains in his chest at the age of 75, and was admitted to hospital where he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He was dead in a week.

But not before he'd pinched the nurses bottoms and eaten loads of jelly and ice cream. He seemed to snuff it quite quickly, with no struggle for breath, and certainly no long drawn out suffering. But I suspect his lung cancer, being completely untreated from the time it started, had spread everywhere and he fell apart pretty quickly.

I DO know people, old people, who have escaped the harm that smoking does to some people.

But I completely accept that SOME people cannot smoke. It is their destructive demon.

Why can some people smoke and escape debilitating harms, and others are so badly affected? Suggestions are, that some people have a susceptible genetic make-up.

I have always thought of "our family" - I had five children, as being free from the allergy syndrome. Despite growing up in a smoking house, in the days when everyone smoked everywhere, none of them smoke and they seem to be strong and healthy. But our second to last granddaughter, had a terrible time with allergies from six months into her little life. I don't know where that came from - it just genetically appeared! Poor thing has had a dreadful time, and is one of the millions of people who are cursed with extra sensitivity to chemicals in our environment.

The first report put out by The World Health Organisation on Second Hand Smoke, found that children brought up in environments where there was SHS, were less allergy prone and less prone to asthma. And there are suggestions nowadays that too much cleanliness is one of the causes of the rise in allergies, or the greater use of chemicals in every product we use - chemical pollution in our homes.

I don't know the answer, but our daughter has got the situation more under control by huge effort on her part. And without drugs.

So back to the smokers who are felled by the habit of smoking. It is no good believing, like I did, that our family had anti-allergy genes, that if no one in your family has developed debilitating illness, or death,  from smoking, it will not happen to you. Science does not really know what genes you need to not be affected by demon tobacco, or what makes some succumb, while others don't.

Smoking IS like playing Russian Roulette because we cannot tell if there is a bullet in the chamber or not.

Yet smoking is such a pleasurable activity it is very hard to stop. Smoking can be celebratory, comforting, calming or stimulating. People use smoking for all sorts of life improving reasons. It's a life enhancer to smokers. Giving it up can induce grief for something lost. No nicotine patch or gum can give that back to anyone. I know of people who have fallen into depression, and even become ill, after giving up smoking.

It's like the death of a loved one.

As the ideas of the anti-smoking brigade using abuse against smokers, like name calling, segregation, banning and prohibition, moved into MY life, I decided I would fight it. It seems to me that education is the key to all the world's ills. Education is the key. Education ONLY is the key. Smokers armed with knowledge are empowered to make their own minds up about whether they wished to play Russian Roulette or not.  I do not believe that smokers are a mindless bunch of zombies lining up for their nicotine fix. I do not believe that smokers are only poor people, mentally ill, ignorant or uneducated people and so need to be forced to stop the filthy habit that enhances their lives. Or taxed criminally for doing so.

I view Tobacco Control and it's puppet, Public Health, and all their activities as being a truly evil thing. Its propaganda has been offensive to say the least. It has twisted science, bribed science, hidden science, spread untruth and lies and re-sculpted society to it's own ends. It muzzles any discussion on smoking or any protest by smokers. It has made them powerless.

Smokers, except for one or two voices crying in the wilderness, have been completely silenced. Even the media have been got at. It's shameful.

The deepness of Tobacco Control and Public Health's deviousness, has been exposed by the new kid on the block - vaping. How they have manipulated information about vaping and twisted the science has been an eye-opener to many people, who once viewed Tobacco Control and Public Health as truthful and righteous. The scales fall from your eyes as you realise how they have done the same about smoking, with no regard for smokers.

The United Kingdom has to accept the new Tobacco Control Directive constructed by the European Union, but favouring vaping, they might try to mitigate it's impact on vaping. Nothing like that, that I know of is happening in other EU countries. But in the UK, Parliament seems quite content with the Tobacco Control Directive as it stands about smoking and smokers. It really is a disgusting, totalitarian document which is simply accepted as somehow being "good".  It's a truly evil thing in reality.

I wish smokers would rebel! I wish smokers were as activist as us vapers are! But how CAN they be? They have been silenced, muzzled, disembowelled!

Vaping, being "new", has an advantage. We are passionate about it. We meet in large groups, we psyche ourselves up for battle with demon Tobacco Control, that dared to include Article 20 into The Tobacco Control Directive, even though vaping is not smoking.

In other countries vaping has been banned - completely - in the USA, vaping might get worse treatment and be more severely restricted than Article 20 will do to us here in the UK.

Smokers have been silenced through no fault of their own, but by design. That hasn't happened to Vapers yet. We are not throwing smokers under the bus - they have already been thrown there. The righteousness that vapers have got, is that vaping is a REALLY GOOD substitute for smoking. And no one can deny that if people vaped rather than smoked, no one has to play Russian Roulette.

The Global Nicotine Forum - an inconvenient truth

Here is the Programme  being discussed at The Global Nicotine Forum that is happening in Warsaw in June 2016

The only talk that would interest ME is on the last day. "Are vaping advocates throwing smokers under the bus by making alliances with public health? Luc Van Daele (EVUN, Belgium)"

In my cynical way, I would assume that after a whole conference of all sorts of academics and public health employees offering their nuggets to a crowd of like minded people, the answer will be "no".

I note that the whole conference is REALLY about stopping people smoking,

Surely a The Global Nicotine Forum, should have some representative from smokers? A smoker's representative with an armoury of evidence could have much to say about how NICOTINE now has to have a Global Nicotine Forum because nicotine was the ingredient demonised by The Tobacco Control Industry as being THE thing that caused all of a smoker's ills, including their addiction. More or less the whole world repeats the myth, like parrots in a zoo.

So The Global Nicotine Forum is discussing how to get nicotine to the world, without a smoker attached!

The quickest way to use nicotine as a recreational "drug", is to smoke.

Tobacco Control and Public Health did a really poor job of making smoking safer for smokers. Instead of wasting their money on the science of safer smoking, (like using proper natural tobacco for instance or inventing an electronic device) they have used billions to construct a society that believes nicotine causes cancer, that smoker's lungs are black with tar, and that Second Hand Smoke will strike people down at a whiff. And that smokers are disgusting prey that can be hunted down, with taxes, bans, and eventually, extinction.

The Global Nicotine Forum is about ways to hunt and kill smokers. Most - or all - of the speakers are experts in that.

Yesterday I felt really cross that vapers might have "frightened" delegates last year, with "fog banks" of vapour. This is the time we should be really well mannered EVERYWHERE, I felt, because we are being judged.

It's judgement time for vapers.

Smokers have already been judged.

Last year, delegates didn't like "the fog banks" they had to endure, especially in smaller sessions, But, it turns out that reliable witnesses who were AT The Global Nicotine Forum last year, say there was NO "fog bank" last year.

But this year The Global Nicotine Forum is setting rules for vaping.

So, my cynical self, thinks that due to the mind-set of most - if not all - the delegates of the conference, being that of Tobacco Control - the group that intends to extinguish smokers completely, worldwide, by any means possible, it doesn't seem so surprising that vapers are being given tokens of permissions to practise their habit of vaping.

I am sure that vaping is becoming an inconvenient truth.

" You are free to vape in the networking and public areas, but please be discreet and considerate.

Use low powered devices as it helps to keep the amount of vapour created to a minimum.

If you want to blow clouds there will be a terrace available on the same floor as the conference takes place, or please go outside the venue."

And us vapers will say "Yes Sir" just like smokers did before us.

I can't help feeling cross about clouding - its sad

Why are people in general so hell-bent on being brainless?

It seems to me, those who push boundaries spoil things for other people.

Take TG - gender alteration. Why do some HAVE to look like Barbie dolls, with massive boobs, pouting lips, wasp waists, or have jaw reconstruction and six pack implants and all the sexual trappings that are only available if you have a lot of money. The outer image, is not what ordinary men and women look like. The outer image is a manufactured fake - an illusion of something that makes gender "choice" look like some cartoon thing that ordinary people cannot easily accept. And ordinary people can't afford. Gender alteration for a real, ordinary person who requires it, gets a bad reputation because of those who have become clowns.

Take drones. Recreational drones are being used by brainless, selfish people to fly in places that makes them dangerous. They are not dangerous unless the people driving them are fools. If everyone flying drones or quad copters did it responsibly, the flurry of new legislation that recreational drone hobbyists are going to have constricting them, wouldn't be required. But it will come because of the fools.

Take vaping. Most vapers exhale very little vapour. Smokers switching to vaping, for instance, are the ones who are particularly cautious about exhaling vapour. Its "surprising" in the beginning. It is satisfying to see it. With more confidence, comes more vapour. But on ordinary devices that ordinary vapours use, the total amount released in a breath is hardly enough to fog up a room. It's the clowns of vaping - the clouders - that are making vaping as absurd as big boobs, wasp waists, collagen six-packs. The outer image, is not how ordinary men and women vape. The outer image of clouding is a manufactured fake - an illusion of something that looks like a cartoon thing that ordinary people cannot easily accept. Clouders are like irresponsible recreational quad copters, flying in dangerous spaces.

I feel really cross with them. THEY are not representative of vapers. They are the ones who could topple vaping, the silly ones, pushing boundaries and messing up the reputation of ordinary vapers, who are using ordinary devices.

Vaper-friendly conference restricts and even prohibits vaping to appease "non-vaping delegates"

 - that some non-vaping delegates last year felt that they were 'trapped' with the vapour, which they found unpleasant and distracting, particularly in the plenary and parallel sessions where there are a lot of people packed into a relatively small space;

- that the Polish government are pushing for indoor usage restrictions - there may be regulators present and we would like them to leave with a positive view of vaping and vapers, and indeed of the conference;

- that since last year the majority of experienced vapers have switched to high powered devices and sub-ohming, which is fine for vape meets but not so good in the conference venue where it tends to create a rather disconcerting fog bank for those who are not used to it.

This year, vaping during the Global Forum on Nicotine in Warsaw next month. is banned because of the "fog bank" of last year. I'd like to know WHO made a "fog bank" last year? It's not funny. It's not necessary. It should never have happened. It's truly sad.