The Norwegian Heart and Lung Patient Organization (LHL) wants to ban smoking

 According to an article on vg.no (http://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/artikkel.php?artid=10120943 ), one of Norway's largest newspapers, LHL - The Norwegian Heart and Lung Patient Organization wants to ban the import and sales of smoking tobacco and cigarettes. "Smoking kills, now we have to face the consequences" says Frode Jahren, General Secretary of LHL. He calls for tougher and more effective measures in the fight against smoking. He asks the current government to come up with a policy on this, saying that they do not have that right now. In that I kind of agree, I don't think the government really has a clear policy on how to handle the smoking problem, and they are kind of vague when it comes to e-cigarettes. This is not that strange at the moment to be honest... they have different organizations funded by the government saying totally different things, even talking each other down. On one side have SIRUS, that I've written a lot about earlier, that urges a repeal of the ban, and on the other side you have The Cancer registry of Norway, also government funded (but also has some fishy ties to Big Pharma in my opinion) that are sceptical. They wants to get rid of nicotine all together and urges people to look into who's funding the research done on the matter, and listen to the medical, chemical and biological expertise rather than the behavioural scientists at SIRUS. To me that sounds a bit like grabbing a shotgun and shoot one-self in both legs, when it comes from an organization that has been under the loop for corruption some years ago when making a huge deal with Pharma giant Merck for the cervical cancer vaccine (that in it self is debated). Well, I do hope the politicians look into where the information comes from when they finally decide. But anyway... back to LHL :)

In December last year, one of the more active members (good work Thomas) of Norsk Dampselskap (the Norwegian union of vapers) presented one of Karl Erik Lunds article to LHL on Facebook, urging them to recommend e-cigarettes. This was their answer: "As of now it is not legal to import new tobacco- and nicotine-products. Because it's uncertain to what degree e-cigarettes causes intake of other toxins, we will not recommend the use at the present time". However, they say they will do a thorough evaluation of this some time after Christmas. I've written an email asking what their position on the matter is now. I don't expect them to have come to a conclusion yet, but I hope that if more people ask about this they might come up with something soon.