The fight against draconian e-cig regulations just turned into a full scale war!

In my last post I encouraged vapers not to give up and keep on fighting the TPD and FDA deeming regulations with all means available. This is by no means over, and as Steve from the excellent Steve K's Vaping World pointed out yesterday: The Vaping industry isn't dead yet! Neither are the vapers, I might add ... every single one of us is still alive and kicking. Actually that's what this is all about: Staying alive, both figuratively and literately.

The bottom line is you have some time before you won’t be able to buy stuff any more.  So there’s no need to panic or horde just yet.  It’s also very likely that there will be some lawsuits and legal challenges thrown at the FDA which may also stall the process.

We still have some time before the draconian regulations hits us with full force, and as Steve here predicted; there will be legal challenges and this will end up in court before this is over. He was quite right about this ... yesterday the first legal challenge was official: Nicopure Labs Challenges the FDA’s Deeming Rule. I don't think it will be the last legal action we see either. On Guide To Vaping you can read that An army of advocates is rising and the message posted by all the big US vaping organisations on facebook on Monday:

Today, CASAA, SFATA, AEMSA, AVA and NBS have formally announced their coalition to pursue legal and legislative strategies now that the FDA’s final deeming regulations have been released.
 
The coalition will continue working to determine the correct litigation strategy and legislative actions.
 
We will be informing the vapor industry and community of next steps, deadlines, PR objectives, and grassroots efforts.  Organizations interested in participating should contact coalition partners.
 
Please feel free to contact any of the organizations listed above for more details in the coming days.

No doubt the industry will fight back. It is an industry that is fighting for it's right to exist, and when fighting for your life you will fight fiercely.

As vapers and consumers there are also things we can do to help out. Steve has some suggestions:

Consumers, it’s not time to leave this all up to the vendors either.  

While lobbyists and lawsuites do fuel the political engine.  So do voters. Let your lawmakers know you aren’t happy.  But be civil.

I suggest making actual phone calls or writing to every elected official you can vote out of office. Explain what vaping means to you, and how important it is as a political issue. Be polite and sincere. Use your own words, not a form letter.

But writing letters and calling elected officials is not the only thing we as vapers can do. As I've said earlier, spreading information and educating the public is one of the most important tasks in this fight, and lets not forget about recruiting new vapers. More vapers means more stories to be told, more manpower to educate the public and politicians and more voices to tell the truth about vaping and exposing the lies we're being told... and the people behind them.

Speaking of lies... in my previous post I said that it's time to get the heads rolling. I do believe certain people have reason to be quite nervous today, as today it is finally time for the world premiere for Aaron Biebert's documentary, A Billion Lives. Promoting and spreading the news of this film is also a great way for us vapers to help out. The fight against the draconian e-cig regulations that the EU and FDA wants to use as their weapon to kill vaping just turned into a full scale war. As vapers and vaping advocates we're all soldiers, and our weapon... is truth. I for one, have really been looking forward to this, and I can barely wait to watch it:

 

Nicotine addiction: When and why it all started

My post on nicotine addiction last week (Nicotine - a supersheep in wolf's clothing?) ended in a lot of questions. Now of course I wouldn't have done that without intending to give some answers, or at least attempt to do so. It appears that there is some consensus among quite a few scientists today that nicotine by itself is not very addictive. It needs some of the other chemicals in cigarette smoke to create that powerful addiction that keeps people smoking even though they are well aware that it might kill them. As professor Killeen says: the chemical addiction to cigarette smoke is indeed very real and very powerful, and nicotine plays an important role in that equation. But if you take the rest chemicals in cigarette smoke out of the equation, nicotine seems to be pretty harmless and not very addictive at all, so why is it then that nicotine has gotten all the blame?

I got an anonymous comment on one of my previous posts with a couple of links to Danish online newspaper 180grader and the excellent blog by Danish journalist Klaus K. The topic: Anti-smoking experts paid by Big Pharma. The article is written in Danish but the blog-post has been translated by Frank Davis: http://goo.gl/abfpR1.

In July this year a D.C. District Court documented the massive conflicts of interests of three prominent anti-tobacco experts, who, while appointed by the US government to be scientific editors for the official “Surgeon General”-reports on tobacco, received payment from pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKlein. The three experts in question are Neal Benowitz, Jack Henningfield and Jonathan Samet, and the court ordered that the FDA needed to remove them from TPSAC (FDA Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee) and it also barred FDA from using a scientific report on menthol in cigarettes from 2010, that the three "experts" were responsible for. The judge said that the advice of the three experts and their reports would benefit the pharmaceutical companies by giving a huge boost to the NRT market. You can read more about the court order here, here and here.

Benowitz, Henningfield and Samet were also responsible for another report, the "Surgeon General"-report of 2006 on The health consequences of involuntary exposure to tobacco smoke (2nd hand smoking), and Benowitz and Henninfield was also responsible for the "Surgeon General"-report of 1988. And guess what this one was about... Nicotine Addiction (!). It's not difficult to see how these two reports would benefit Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKlein and their nicotine replacement products hugely now is it? Have a look at the cover of the two reports by the way... see any logos you recognize?

The conclusion that Benowitz and Henningfield presented in the 1988 report was this: Nicotine is addictive, and that it is stronger than the addiction of heroin and cocaine. Having this report to back up their newly released nicotine-replacement product, Nicorette, was of course a huge advantage for Pfizer at the time. Klaus K sums this up pretty neatly:

There is no doubt that Benowitz ‘and Henningfield’s report on nicotine addiction was valuable for Nicorette producers. Apart from a few critical sections the report appears unilaterally as a kind of scientific advertising publication for Nicorette and other pharmaceutical nicotine products – endorsed by the US government Surgeon General.

In my previous post I mentioned several scientists saying that nicotine by itself is not very addictive. It requires the "help" of other chemicals in tobacco to cause the chemical addiction. There has been quite a lot of research done on the subject, and the scientist making this claim has new, good scientific reports supporting their claims. But on the other side, according to Israeli nicotine researchers Hanan Frenk and Reuven Dar, the Benowitz and Henningfield report seems to be virtually the only reference used when academics and journalists write about nicotine. Klaus K gives us even more indications that nicotine is not very addictive on by itself:

The addiction theory of nicotine has been laid to rest by virtually every nicotine researcher since it was demonstrated that smokers prefer nicotine-free cigarettes over Nicorette in trials. Mice and rats have never been interested in nicotine, and the researcher who originally had his name linked to the nicotine addiction theory – the Swedish medical researcher Karl Fagerström – today recognizes that nicotine is not an addictive factor in smoking.

The French smoking cessation specialist, Robert Molimard, wrote in the 2013 article, “The Myth of Nicotine Addiction” on the nicotine report that there has never been any proof that one can become addicted to nicotine, and the report therefore does not demonstrate that, contrary to the claim in the title – yet the chapter “Treatment” is dedicated to the companies’ Nicorette gum, which had just come on the market:

“In this huge book with 3,200 references, we would look in vain for a single article showing that man can be dependent on nicotine only. On the other hand, the “Treatment” chapter focuses immediately on the “Nicotine replacement therapy”. But then we did not have any hindsight about the efficiency of this new treatment, because the FDA had just approved the marketing of the 2 mg gum.”

To sum up a bit:

• There is lots of pretty new and convincing research showing that nicotine by itself, is not very addictive.
• The one report that is usually referenced as proof that nicotine is addictive, is written in 1988 by Benowitz and Henningfield who was (and still is, I believe) on the payroll of pharmaceutical giants that had just released a product that would benefit hugely from this.
• The FDA is ordered by a federal court to remove these so-called experts from the TPSAC for writing reports that they and their employers would benefit financially from. Judge Richard Leon had this to say about the matter: 

“The presence of conflicted members on [FDA Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee, TPSAC] irrevocably tainted its very composition and its work product”

“the Committee’s findings and recommendations…are, at a minimum, suspect, and, at worst, untrustworthy.”

It very much looks like nicotine addiction was a lie that Benowitz and Henningfield created back in 1988 on assignment from Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKlein, for their own financial benefit. Smokers were mislead into believing they were addicted to nicotine, and that the solution was Nicorette. Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKlein needed something their new Nicorette could be a solution for, so they ordered it from Benowitz and Henningfield. But surely, these well respected companies could not do such a thing you say? Well, this is what Dr. Peter Rost, former vice CEO and whistleblower from Pfizer, has to say about the matter:

“You give them grants, you establish friendships, you make sure they become beholden to you, you start programs with them, which they can make a profit from. But they are not going to continue to get money, unless they are saying what you want them to say.

Everybody knows that this is how things work. They know it and you know it – it’s only maybe the public that does not know it.

That’s how you influence the medical establishment. Simply, with money.”

Still wondering why so many "medical experts" are part of campaigns against e-cigarettes?

The WHO report: Tearing down the firewall

Two days ago WHO released their dreaded report on E-cigarettes. There is a lot of problems with this report, and although WHOs position is not as bad as it once was there is still a lot of problems like many others have already pointed out:

• The Ashtray Blog has a great article on the topic here: http://goo.gl/mMREwS
• Read Clive Bates' comments here: http://goo.gl/Ztd0JA
• Dr. Farsalinos is as usual spot on in his critisism pointing out that the WHO apparently ignores the health of smokers: http://goo.gl/7hFT1I

The WHO was also active on twitter trying to spread their propaganda after the report was released, something that I think made Dr. Farsalinos (and a lot of others) quite pissed off: http://goo.gl/NJYQ9f.

Notice the snake in WHO's logo?

On Monday I introduced a counterpart to the gateway theory; "the firewall theory". To me it sounds much more plausible that e-cigarettes act as a firewall stopping people who otherwise would have started smoking cigarettes from doing so, rather than a gateway into the deadly habit. Non-tobacco flavours are the bricks of this firewall, innovative technology that distances vaping from smoking is the mortar and it is reinforced by huge health benefits for the users and people around them.

This theory should be like music in the WHOs ears. They are looking at something that not only could be a gateway out of tobacco addiction but could also make a lot less people start smoking. But instead they are doing their best to tear down this wall. They seem completely reluctant to acknowledge that the facts don't fit their precious gateway theory, so they they are now trying to change the facts by banning non-tobacco flavours, banning use in public spaces and trying to convince the public that the health benefits are not there. All of these will make vaping more similar to smoking. Think about it: If kids could only get hold of tobacco flavours, would this make it more or less likely that they switch to cigarettes? If you have to go outside to the smoking areas standing alongside smokers to be able to vape, would more or less vapers switch the wrong way? If all e-cigarettes looks like cigarettes and performs poorly, would that be good or bad for public health?

To me it looks like the WHO report is designed by Big Tobacco and backed up by Big Pharma to make sure e-cigarettes pose a health problem. All of the proposed regulations will make e-cigarettes more dangerous and the gateway theory more plausible. Because the big problem for Big Tobacco and Big Pharma today is that e-cigarettes work, and innovation will make them work even better, building an increasingly higher wall between them and their customers' money. So they've invested in a wrecking ball called WHO to tear down that wall.

Danish Health and Medicines Authority controlled by the pharmaceutical industry

Around half of the Danish Health and Medicines Authority's (Sundhetstyrelsen) funding comes directly, through fees, from global pharmaceutical giants. According to the Danish Medical Association (DMA, where most Danish doctors are members) this is a big problem and they demand new rules that will make the Health and Medicines Authority completely independent of the income from the pharmaceutical industry (http://goo.gl/qB7a3Q). Head of DMA, Mads Koch Hansen, condemns the relationship and says to Danish TV2 (http://goo.gl/a99IKZ): "A very large part of the country's Health and Medicine Authority's financing comes directly from the very industry that the authority is set to control, and who's products it's responsible for approving or discarding. But it is principally wrong that there is money going between the Health and Medicine Authority and the pharmaceutical industry. The Health and Medicine Authority should be economically independent, and the citizens should be able to have blind faith in the authorities' impartiality". From what I understand (anyone who reads Danish better than me, feel free to correct me if I got something wrong), DMA now suggests that the Health and Medicine Authority should be fully financed by the government and the fees that the pharmaceutical industry pays should be paid to a pool controlled by the government. Mads Koch Hansen says "this will ensure the necessary independence, and at the same time the companies (editor: pharmaceutical companies) pay for the work that is necessary to approve their products for use by the patients" (http://goo.gl/qB7a3Q).

LIF, a Danish organization for the pharmaceutical industry, says they do not understand DMA's concerns and that they think the system works fine like it is today. Ida Sofie Jensen, CEO at LIF, says that she has a hard time understanding the purpose of DMA's suggestion and that "this is the same as saying that something covert is going on, that a public authority cannot provide a service, without bribery or something ugly going on. We have definitely not seen indications of such cases". Well, I wouldn't say there has been no indication of big pharma being involved in allegations of corruption. Just an example for you: http://goo.gl/214tEj. A quick google search will give you a lot more. The Danish minister of Health and Protection, Nick Hækkerup, says he agrees with DMA that there should be no doubt that the Health and Medicines Authority should be independent and he is willing to continue the dialogue with DMA. However he sees no reason to question the authority's professional assessments is affected by the way it is financed today. 

Danish commentator and blogger Klaus K (http://www.180grader.dk/profil/Klaus_K) calls this whole relationship a corruption scandal (http://goo.gl/URfAZg), and mentions a lot of documentation showing how the pharmaceutical industry works to influence organizations like the Danish Health and Medicines Authority, by paying the right persons and making sure that whenever a doctor consults medical literature the same solution to every problem always appears: More medicine and more inefficient and expensive treatments. He points to the fact that after the Danish authorities seriously started interfering with peoples lifestyle, around 2007 when their current smoking laws was introduced, Danish people have gotten more and more sick (http://dengulenegl.dk/blog/?p=4412). In other words, the healthier the Danish peoples lifestyle is - the more sick they get. This means we seriously have to question the advice given by the Health and Medicine Authority, cause apparently, whatever their motives are, they are not doing a very good job at improving public health. 

And what does all this have to do with electronic cigarettes? Well, the Danish
Health and Medicines Authority is (of course) working against vaping and electronic cigarettes as well. They keep spreading fear around in the media, with reports of nicotine poisoning (http://goo.gl/bPjA10) and reports of carcinogens in the vapour (http://goo.gl/1AsU3A), backed up by the same junk science (commented by Dr. Farsalinos here: http://goo.gl/rJqAU3) that the pharmaceutical industry is sneaking into the medical literature that doctors are consulting. Hopefully the demand from DMA to get new rules on the financing of the Health and Medicine Authority will bring their poor results (and lies) into the spotlight in Denmark and force the politicians to do something. The Danish media, from what I have seen, has been fed a lot of scaremongering from the Health and Medicines Authority and reported it uncritically, but I hope this will make them investigate more and report more responsibly.

I'm sorry for all the Danish links in this article, hopefully google translate will work reasonably well. I'd also like to note that the statements cited is translated from Danish by a Norwegian (yours truly), so they might not be 100% but their essence should be correct.

TPD split vote WAS allowed by the EU Parlament

MEP Nikki Sinclair

According to MEP Nikki Sinclair a split vote on the TPD was actually allowed by the EU Parliament yesterday, but it was of course then to late. Nikki posted a video on Youtube (http://goo.gl/UDDBSZ) saying that at 10.49 yesterday morning the Parliament had allowed a split vote. But this was just 41 minutes before the vote and on that short notice no lobbying could be done and no information could be given so the vote of course went against us.

This is just another example of the political skullduggery that is going on in the EU Parliament. As Nikki says, the e-cigarettes was put into the TPD "with a spoonful of sugar". The TPD has a lot of useful regulations for example to stop children smoking, which of course is something we all want. So putting the e-cigarette legislation in there is just a way of getting it approved, even though most MEPs (from what I understand) was against it, by piggybacking it to regulations that the most MEPs would vote in favour of. A split vote would have countered this effect. It has been argued for such a split vote for months now, but president Martin Schultz wouldn't listen... until 41 minutes before the vote, way to late for it to become a reality. And Schultz of course knew that, so this is, like I said before just political skullduggery and it shows how the EU Parliament is ignoring the principles of democracy. And the result this time can be that the markets of Big Tobacco and Big Pharma is protected and millions of lives that could have been saved won't be, because the technology that could have ended the Tobacco plague is slowed down substantially. Why they do this, one can only guess... corruption, loss of taxes or just lack of common sense are reasons that comes to mind. We do know that Big Tobacco and Big Pharma is benefiting from this, so it's not very hard to imagine that their shady lobbying tactics have played a great part in this. But one thing is for sure, their reasons are not what they want us all to believe; that they do this to protect public health.

But as I said yesterday: The war is not over. There is no reason for vapers to give up. Remember, most of us don't fight this fight for their own sake, we have already made the switch, and the TPD won't stop us from vaping. But we are fighting for all the smokers that haven't made the switch yet, and for reasonable regulations that will enable them to do this. I believe that if we keep the scientific evidence coming, grow in numbers and continue to work with MEPs and media we will win in the end.