Introducing the Vaping Giraffe Facebook page

Today I'm launching the new Vaping Giraffe facebook page. Why haven't I done this before you say? I have no idea to be honest, but it's here now :) I'll be linking to all my post on this page from now on and in time maybe there will be more as well.

I'll also shut down the opportunity to post anonymous comments directly on the blog from now on, since mostly there is only spam getting posted anyway. I'll leave the logged in options open for now, but I encourage people to use the Facebook page for comments and discussions. Oh... almost forgot: There will be Vaping Giraffe t-shirts available as well :)

Hope you guys like the new page and feel free to leave a message in there.

The war against the TPD is a war for democracy

Queen Medical Centre - one of the hospitals
where the ban is now lifted

A couple of days ago, in my last post, I sent a big thanks across the North Sea to Matt Ridley and the UK House of Lords for joining the pro-vaping forces in the war against the EU and their TPD. Today, I want to send another thank you to the UK, this time to Nottingham. To the bosses of Nottingham University Hospitals NHS trust to be more precise, for giving vaping the green light lifting the ban on e-cigarettes outside their buildings. Dr Stephen Fowlie gave the following reason for lifting the ban:

We have a duty to help our patients and staff make healthy life choices, and can't ignore the potential benefits of electronic cigarettes as a nicotine replacement therapy. We're now allowing e-cigarettes on our grounds to give our patients, staff and visitors more choice in how they quit smoking.

This war is about more than just e-cigarettes and vaping. As the debate in the House of Lords revealed, and what a lot of vapers have suspected and pointed out for quite some time, the TPD "were scripted in Brussels by pharmaceutical companies desperately trying to protect the sales of their widely unloved nicotine replacement therapies" (Matt Ridley). This was confirmed by Martin Callanan and he should know this better than most... he was there when it happened. This makes it a war against a system that allows big wealthy companies or industries to rule Europe, using the European Commision as their sock puppets to regulate markets in a way that will make them even more wealthy at the cost of European lives. In the case of the TPD it is Big Pharma pulling the strings but if we allow this to happen I can see other industries and companies scripting regulations that will effectively leave their markets in the hands of a few big players.

The way I see it, allowing the TPD to happen is a step towards making the EU a toolbox for the already wealthy that they can use to customize their markets for their own benefit. It's a step towards weakening the European democracy, handing the power over to the money. Obviously, for most of us, this is not a step forward but rather a giant gleap backwards.

This is also one of the reasons that not only vapers and smokers should care about this, everyone should open their eyes to what is happening cause eventually we will all be affected by it in one way or another. Allowing the TPD to happen will not only prolong the tobacco epidemic, leaving several generations of our children with the unnecessary risks of tobacco smoking, but it will also open some doors in Brussels allowing those with a lot of money to write the laws as they see fit. I could have written the same things about the FDA and their deeming regulations. Even if you're not a vaper, and never smoked a cigarette in your life, the outcome of this war will affect you. Amber Whalley wrote a post on Steve K's vaping world explaining several reasons why non-vapers should join the fight, and I've mentioned even more reasons above.

Today my big thanks goes to the Nottingham hospital bosses not only because they have saved a lot of lives in Nottingham. It's also because they are showing Big Pharma the finger by lifting this ban, and in this case the fact that they are medical professionals running hospitals makes it a particularly important finger. By lifting the ban they send a message that they will not let Big Pharma and corrupt politicians dictate their policies. It's an example that I hope many medical professionals will follow. As Dr. Fowlie says: It is their duty to help staff and patients to make healthier choices. Thereby it is every medical professionals duty to stand up and tell the public the truth about vaping and add weight to the statements of politicians doing the same.

Medical professionals have great power in this case, maybe even more than they realise. Without their support Big Pharma and the ANTZ are seriously weakened and we're one step closer to winning real democracy back. Thank you!

Featured post: Clearing the Fog for Women in Vaping

It’s no secret that the number of people vaping in the UK has grown exponentially over recent years. The use of e-cigarettes and thus e-liquids has tripled since 2014 so that now over 2 million people in the UK are puffing on these electronically fuelled digital cigarettes rather than the analogue tobacco filled, cancer inducing cigs.

Earlier this year, The Telegraph reported that e-cigarette sales have increased by 75% and global sales surpassed the $6bn for the first time ever, suggesting that more people are attracted to the vaping lifestyle than ever before. Despite the inevitable fast approaching hindrance that the Tobacco Products Directive will inexorably impact on the sales and production of e-cigarettes, the number of people switching to e-cigarettes is not falling.

For many of those who made the big leap from the smokey cylinders to vapour producing mod boxes, it has become a way of life rather than just a habit. A lot of ex smokers have thrown themselves full heartedly into the vaping lifestyle culture leaving no room for nostalgic thoughts about their love affair with traditional cigs. This culture born out of the need to get rid of a bad habit whilst still getting the kick of nicotine, keep a shared identity and continue with a hobby, is a strong and fully established one.

As with any culture, there are niches, ways of doing things, shared ideas, competitiveness and partiality. Traditionally, (well, since 2007) the vaping industry has proved to be very male heavy. Why? There are several theories as to why, but it would seem that it mainly boils down to the fact the the products are very techy; involving modifications and building which appeals to a typically masculine love of gadgetry. Similarly, the popular notion of cloud-chasing taps into testosterone fuelled competitiveness which is difficult for women to break into. As a result, men have taken the limelight and the lead role on the vaping stage – an industry originally designed to save lives that has been transformed into an edgy and somewhat skilled lifestyle as well.

Surprisingly, despite this glaringly obvious male dominance, now, over 50% of vapers are female. Whilst in the past, women have partaken in mostly being the face (and other body parts) of the vaping industry, the gender imbalance is being felt less and less in the industry with woman making up a large portion of those attending expos and not just there as a pretty face but selling and giving information on products. Also, more female friendly products are being sold in shops and online such as pink mods and other small devices. Whilst this isn’t to everyone’s taste, it’s definitely a step in the right direction. Although, some women do still claim to feel out of place in vaping shops due to the heavily male marketed products and hefty male presence.

One important aspect of the vaping industry that is really helping to endorse women is reviewers; there are hundreds of fantastic female e-cigarette reviewers globally. This means that not only can women share their opinions and relate to one another online, but also, when a woman new to vaping researches vaping, they’ll come across a plethora of women already stuck into the vaping world and making an impact.

There are some incredibly influential women in the vaping industry all with unique stories, exciting journeys and fantastic insights into the world of vaping. One of these women is Jess-Marie Cornell, the owner and designer of Double Helix Design Accessories. She says that she vapes to “help keep a healthier lifestyle and stay off of cancer sticks” and has been tobacco free for 4 years. She says that she was inspired to get involved in the vaping industry through the customisation of e-cigs. As a result of this, Jess-Marie was able to turn this passion into a business so now makes charms to hang off tanks and drip tips. She isn’t alone in this journey – hundreds of talented women have been able to make a lifestyle out of the money they earn from being involved in the industry from photography, modelling, reviewing, and owning businesses.

The notion that the vaping game is a man’s domain is fast becoming outdated. With the rise of female vapers, simultaneously comes the rise of women entering into the fast paced culture and lifestyle of vaping. It’s important that the vaping industry makes entering into the culture as easy and welcoming as possible for women by continuing to produce more female friendly products and dismiss any prejudices about women’s ability to build and understand the technical aspects of e-cigarettes.

It’s undeniable that change is happening and that it’s happening for the better - and much like the rest of Western society, equality is fighting its way through one industry at a time.

This article was written by Grey Haze, a UK vape store stocking e-cigs and e-liquids. I haven’t published many posts from vendors before, but Grey Haze is not only a vendor, but they’ve also got a great blog, with some reports from big vaping expos featuring a number of vaping celebs. You can visit their website here: http://www.greyhaze.co.uk/

 
Disclosure:

• Opinions and ideas expressed in guest posts are entirely the authors and may or may not reflect my own. 
• I will always make sure that it is obvious to the reader that a guest post is a guest post.
• I do not pay or get paid for guest posts.
• If a guest post is written by someone working for a company that I am affiliated with, it may contain affiliate links. This post does not contain affiliate links.

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:

 

Royal College of Physicians back vaping big time!

Woke up this morning to some great news. The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) have released a 200-page report called "Nicotine without smoke: Tobacco Harm Reduction", that rips several of the ANTZ favourite arguments and theories apart concluding that we should "Promote e-cigarettes widely as substitute for smoking". From the press release:

• E-cigarettes are not a gateway to smoking – in the UK, use of e-cigarettes is limited almost entirely to those who are already using, or have used, tobacco.
• E-cigarettes do not result in normalisation of smoking – there is no evidence that either nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) or e-cigarette use has resulted in renormalisation of smoking. None of these products has to date attracted significant use among adult never-smokers, or demonstrated evidence of significant gateway progression into smoking among young people.
• E-cigarettes and quitting smoking - among smokers, e-cigarette use is likely to lead to quit attempts that would not otherwise have happened, and in a proportion of these to successful cessation. In this way, e-cigarettes can act as a gateway from smoking.
• E-cigarettes and long-term harm - the possibility of some harm from long-term e-cigarette use cannot be dismissed due to inhalation of the ingredients other than nicotine, but is likely to be very small, and substantially smaller than that arising from tobacco smoking. With appropriate product standards to minimise exposure to the other ingredients, it should be possible to reduce risks of physical health still further. Although it is not possible to estimate the long-term health risks associated with e-cigarettes precisely, the available data suggest that they are unlikely to exceed 5% of those associated with smoked tobacco products, and may well be substantially lower than this figure. 

The report acknowledges the need for proportionate regulation, but suggests that regulation should not be allowed significantly to inhibit the development and use of harm-reduction products by smokers. A regulatory strategy should take a balanced approach in seeking to ensure product safety, enable and encourage smokers to use the product instead of tobacco, and detect and prevent effects that counter the overall goals of tobacco control policy.

These are all the things a lot of vapers have been trying to get across to regulators and politicians, and to get the media to report, for a long time now. But not many have listened, and many of those who have listened have dismissed it and told us we don't know what we're talking about. Having this report to back it up will hopefully add quite a lot of weight to our arguments, and the hopefully the report will have as much influence as their report on cigarettes from 1962 which was among the first to show the harmful effects of smoking.

I'm also very happy to see that this has gotten the attention of the media already: Smokers Urged to Switch to E-Cigarettes by British Medical Group (NY Times), U.K. Report Advocates Substituting E-Cigarettes for Tobacco (Wall Street Journal), Doctors: Give E-Cigarettes To Smokers (Sky News). Actually... just google "royal college of physicians e-cigarettes" and see for yourself. Now I'm just waiting for Norwegian media to catch up.

I haven't had the time to read the whole report but they've put up a pretty good summary in the summary of the report that I have to say is bloody great and I recommend reading it... and then bookmark it so you can link it to anyone trying to tell you vaping isn't the best thing for public health since soap.

The Gateway theory vs. the Firewall theory

... this is one of my
favourites today.

The one on the right looks pretty much like my
vaping gear a year ago...

This Wednesday I read this article published in Dagbladet's opinions section (in Norwegian but I'll give you some highlights below). Tone Bergli Joner, who entitles herself "textbook author", presents her arguments against vaping, which is honestly one of the weirdest, most misleading pieces of crap I've read in a long time. Actually, having a look at the very first words, under the image, reveals that this woman has absolutely no clue what she's talking about: "E-cigarettes look more and more like regular cigarettes". Oh do they? You might argue that these words should have stopped me from reading on... but I guess I couldn't help wondering what on earth came next.

She goes on to talk about cancer and that it's a lot cheaper to prevent it than to treat it (doh!) and praises the tobacco act for saving thousands of lives, making sure to mention the success of plain packaging in Australia while she is at it. Then she moves on to telling us why she thinks the Norwegian government should not repeal the ban on e-cigarettes. A couple of highlights:

Nicotine. Another legally sold product that leads to nicotine addiction.

Are you sure about that? I've tried, God knows I've tried, to find any hint of evidence that nicotine without tobacco is addictive. I've discussed this with Sanner and Grimsrud, our most beloved anti-vaping advocates, claiming to be the leading experts on tobacco and nicotine addiction in this country. I could not, no matter how hard I tried, get them to come up with some evidence.

Not effective to stop smoking. A large study published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine in January, shows that the chances of successfully stop smoking drops 28 percent when going through e-cigarettes. It is curious that Karl Erik Lund, now research director at the Institute of Public Health, mistrust the very reputable scientists behind the study as "controversial." It's Lund who is controversial because for many years he has been an activist for snuff as a means of smoking cessation, contrary to advice from the WHO, the EU and the five Nordic health directors.

Yeah, Glantz again. I'm not going to go into his reputation... again. Norway and Sweden has a lot less lung cancer than the rest of the world. You may call Lund "controversial", but that doesn't mean he's not right. It means he has the guts to tell the truth when he sees that his government and probably his boss gets it all wrong. There's also accidents with e-liquid, cancer from vapor and of course using e-cigs to do drugs. Well, to get to the point I'd just say this about those: We have other far more dangerous household products, you're doing it wrong if you manage to get cancer from e-liquid vapor and you can use a coke bottle to do drugs. Moving on to the one I want to talk about:

Tempting young people. Elegant design, new flavors, rumors that they are less harmful than regular cigarettes, can make them very tempting for young people, who otherwise would not smoked. We can get the same development as with snus.

Now why is getting the same development as snus a bad thing? This development is responsible for very low cancer rates in Norway and Sweden compared to the rest of the world. In other words, it has prevented cancer, just like Joner wants. I see this argument presented all around as a bad thing. Think about the children!

In another article in Dagbladet's opinions section, one that was very positive to vaping actually, they did some calculations on the effect of vaping from a public health perspective. These are all figures made just to prove a point, but what the author says is that if in some years 40000 smokers have switched to vaping, we also have to estimate 5000 non-smokers starting, and 1000 of them move on to smoking. Now I don't believe that will happen, but lets just say his numbers are about right. He then says 15 % of the 40000 will avoid dying from smoking related diseases, meaning 6000 lives saved. Then among the 5000 previously non-smoking vapers 1% will die from nicotine damage (again, I think the numbers are off, but lets move on), and among the 1000 who moved on to smoking 15% will die from it. A total of 200 lost lives. So, even with these numbers, which I'd say is very pessimistic, that's 5800 lives saved. Or is it?

There is one little thing that "everyone" seems to leave out here: What if vaping did not exist? Would these 5000 people still be non-smokers? I highly doubt it. The way I see it, most of them would start smoking, especially if we're talking about teenagers. I think that teenagers experimenting with vaping are also the ones that would experiment with smoking (and possibly a lot of other things). So the way I see it, those 5000 never smoking vapers do not contribute to more deaths, but rather the opposite. I'd say among the 4000 vapers who did not move on to smoking, there is a substantial number that were stopped from starting to smoke cigarettes. Using the 15%, estimating that say 75% of the 4000 would have started smoking, that's another 450 lives saved.

I know, I know, these numbers are not exactly scientifically proven, but that's not my point either. The point is that everywhere I turn I see people worried about non-smokers starting to vape, and it is always presented as a bad thing. I don't see it that way. If a non-smoker, especially a young one, starts vaping, I believe there is a good chance that vaping has a actually prevented this person from becoming a smoker, and possibly prevented a death by lung cancer. I will never be able to prove this, as there is just no way of knowing what would have happened to this teenager if vaping did not exist. But still, to me it makes much more sense this way. In the same way the gateway theory can never be proven, since there is really no way that one could know if a vaper that moves on to smoking would have gone straight to smoking if vaping did not exist. However, turning the whole thing upside down, we can have a look at some real-life numbers and get some indications on which theory that seems more plausible, the gateway theory... or the firewall theory: We are still waiting for the first never-smoking vaper that moves on to smoking to emerge... and then there is this: Electronic Cigarette Age Restrictions May Drive Teens to Traditional Cigarettes. Being a computer geek, working with network elements on a daily basis, I'd say it looks like vaping acts kind of like the CPE equipment I work a lot with. They're called gateways, but they also act as firewalls, giving the people on the inside (smokers) a gateway to get to the outside, while keeping unwanted people out.

If our goal is to prevent cancer from smoking, like Joner wants, would it be better to remove our brand new firewall leaving the real gateways to smoking wide open? Should we allow the TPD to weaken a wall that is currently strengthened every day by innovation? Or should we let vaping innovation continue the ongoing work to tighten security and close as many holes in the wall as possible? What do you think?

Worth reading this weekend (Feb. 27th 2016)

I promised I'd tried to post some good weekend reading whenever I had the time to do it. So here it goes :)

• Earlier this week Karl Erik Lund made me aware of the new guidelines on Electronic Cigarettes released by NCSCT. There is a lot of goodies in there and both Clive Bates and Dick Puddlecote have published some good posts on the subject. Actually, if you start following the links in there you'll have a great deal to read this weekend.

• I also enjoyed reading Dick Puddlecotes post on what a great success plain packaging had been in Australia. Politicians...gotta love them right?

• "Public health" would like everyone to believe that e-cigarettes and vaping is a conspiracy put together by Big Tobacco to ... uhm ... put themselves out of business? Christopher Snowdon writes about a great example of this madness here: Mad versus Madder. Well worth reading.

Have a nice weekend!

The art of ignoring evidence

Trying to get back on track a bit after being kind of away from blogging for a while now. I can't really promise anything, as I still have limited time to blog... but whenever time allows it I'll try to give you guys some updates :)

This week, or actually the last couple of weeks, I've had to count to 10 several times to avoid bursting out in a tirade of swearing and name-calling that would probably have ended with some of my colleagues making some phone calls and me in a mental institution. Luckily I was able to count all the numbers from 0 to 10 (I'm a computer geek, we always start at 0), not ignoring any one of them. So I was fine ... after a while. The reason for all this counting was an article in Norwegian newspaper VG's "Opinions"-section, written by medical doctor and epidemiologist Preben Aavitsland, titled "But, E-cigarettes don't work". He had of course been reading some of Stanton Glantz' work, more on that below. In addition to ignoring the fact that millions of people have quit using e-cigarettes, he talks about never smoking youth taking up smoking in large numbers calling e-cigs an epidemic, and of course "we don't know enough yet". This guy is actually against implementing the TPD here in Norway ... he wants a full ban. But... we have Karl Erik Lund over here and of course he answered the day after explaining that Glantz is full of shit, e-cigs work even for the heaviest smokers and there is evidence that not many never smokers take up vaping. So far so good.

But then, some days later, Aavitsland "strikes back", according to VG, and this time he wants to wait for more evidence. He links to a bunch of debunked "studies" and finishes of with this:

Incidentally, Lund, the new study I quoted, is funded by the US Medicines Agency, Health Research and Cancer Research Institute and the lead author is a professor at the University of California.

Oh my ... a professor! My God, I guess he knows what he's talking about then? Well ... there are some who would disagree, and they're also professors. Listen to this from the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06zcg4v. It turns out, even one of the peer reviewers recommended that Professor Glantz work should never have been published. Seems to me we have a classic case of one professor versus... a bunch of them.

Aavitsland keeps saying that there is no evidence that e-cigarettes work and he even says it would be easy to prove it if they did work. Can you believe this guy?

It will be fairly easy to detect any effect on smoking cessation of the latest e-cigarettes. Distribute a number of smokers randomly for quit attempts using e-cigarettes with nicotine, electronic cigarettes without nicotine, nicotine gum or no aid. Count up after half a year the percentage of each group that has managed to quit smoking for good. If the study shows that e-cigarettes are significantly more effective than the other methods, I'll be happy to reconsider the matter.

Well guess what, there is a lot of evidence that e-cigs work, including studies similar to what Aavitsland suggests (of course in addition to the millions of users who have quit already). Have a look at this. Now, all who thinks Aavitsland will reconsider the matter, raise their hands.... what no-one?

I didn't raise my hand either. Some people have just perfected the art of ignoring the evidence they don't like, and Aavitsland has shown in his articles that he's somewhat of an expert. Top of his class, together with Sanner and Grimsrud. Actually we have quite a few of them speaking up here in Norway at the moment, guess it has something to do with the proposed regulations. In late January we had Camilla Stoltenberg and Knut-Inge Klepp from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) publishing this in Aftenposten (another big newspaper in Norway): E-Cigarettes: A admission of failure if we replace a harmful product with another. I mean, why are we still talking about the gateway theory? They're also concerned that e-cigarettes will be the "new Snus"... which have to be a real problem since snus is the main reason Sweden and Norway has a lot less cases of lung cancer than the rest of the world. There is quite a lot of evidence available on this, but hey... let's just ignore that shall we? They keep on talking like this evidence just don't exist, even if it's presented to them again and again. No comments on it, no efforts to debunk it ... nothing ... they just pretend it simply does not exist.

Trying to reason with these people is quite impossible to be honest. It would, as one of my colleagues would say, be like talking to sheep (or any other farm animal for that matter). I bet if they decided that the sky is green, you could have a billion people testifying it's blue and they would still go: "You know the sky.... it's green". Luckily most people are not that way, and hopefully most politicians are like most people. The sad part is that these people have titles, which the media thinks means something, so their scaremongering bullshit gets published. This means we have to fight even harder to educate politicians, decision makers and the general public if we're going to win this battle. Cause the only way we're going to win is to make sure that the people who are going to make the important decisions actually get the important evidence ... and then hope they don't ignore it. And we WILL fight, they're not going to get away with this!
 

E-cig regulation in Norway: A short status update

This Christmas I was sure I was going to be able to do more writing and keep you guys up to date on the situation in Norway. I turned out quite the opposite from what I expected, and for reasons I'm not going to talk about here, I haven't been able to do much writing at all. Neither do I think there will be much time in the months to come either, but I'll try to write some updates (and some reviews) when I can. Hopefully things will change in time and I hope I can get this blog up and running full speed again some time in the future.

Anyway, as many of you might be aware of already, the Norwegian government, or actually the Ministry of Health and care services, have proposed to legalize the sale of e-cigarettes in Norway... TPD style (follow the links in that post for more background info). I find this quite important so I've tried to squeeze in a little time to give you an update now.

The Norwegian parliament

The Ministry of Health and care services have requested comments on the proposal and the deadline for replying to this was January 18th. They received quite a few interesting comments, which can all be found here for those who read Norwegian or are skilled in the use of google translate. A lot of vapers took their time to comment and express their concern, and The Norwegian Institute for Alcohol and Drug Research (SIRUS) both wrote excellent answers, clearing up misunderstandings, explaining consequences and attempted to educate the politicians in the best way possible. They've done an excellent job and hopefully some politicians will take notice and understand some of what they're going to regulate. However, for some of them, like Cecilie Brein-Karlsen I have no hope. Sadly some of our politicians (quite a few actually) believe that we do not have a choice in this at all, and that we just have to do whatever the EU tells us to do. Actually, I do think most of them are in fact aware that we have an option to use our reservation right, not being a full member of the EU, but they just don't have the balls to go against the EU in this case... or any other case for that matter. I guess they simply lack balls.


There were also quite a few others who commented on the proposal.Some like the proposal as it is, saying that they think e-cigarettes are a great idea, which shows they have no idea what this proposal will do to vaping. Others want to keep e-cigarettes with nicotine illegal and even want stricter rules. All of these seem to be pretty convinced by the gateway theory. This again shows the devastating effects of copy-paste scaremongering journalism. The only time all the evidence against the gateway theory mentioned in Norwegian media is when Karl Erik Lund from SRUS is in some way involved. He has done a great job at this, and it is also included in SIRUS' comments to the proposal. However this does not get much attention and protecting the children, avoiding a vaping boom among never smokers and even worse... 2nd hand vaping making more people smoke cigarettes seem to be the main arguments used by those who support the proposal (and those who want even stricter regulations). Some even claim that a lot of never smoking youth have already picked up vaping on a regular basis (!). They should know better than to lie about these things to be honest. And all of this despite the fact that we've seen that smoking prevalence in Norway is dropping faster than ever after snus and vaping gained popularity. When it comes to certain politicians I also suspect other motives that has nothing to do with wanting a public health gain.

Sadly I haven't really had the time to read all the answers, I've barely scratched the surface of some of them, so the above is just based on my first impressions. However I found one answer that looked quite interesting as well, from British American Tobacco Norway. They argue against a lot of the suggestions in the proposal, like advertising bans, ban in public areas etc. and use SIRUS' answer for support as well. Have a look at this for example:

BAT endorses the views set out in SIRUS' consultation response that e-cigarettes should be regulated as ordinary consumer products, and the Ministry should, as a minimum, examine this alternative.

So that is about where we stand today. There are some very good arguments in some of the comments submitted, and there are some very bad ones, and there are quite a few lies in there as well. We can only hope that the politicians are doing their job and actually try to educate themselves, but I'm not overly optimistic when it comes to this. It's not easy to find any dates or what happens next. Still I guess this will follow regular procedure which would be the that the parliament committee will recommend an amendment to the Norwegian Tobacco Act and the parliament will the vote. Exactly when this will happen I don't know, but I guess some time before May.

Worth Watching this Weekend (November 20th)

Clive Bates in "A Billion Lives"

Right now I'm on a train on my way home from a meeting in Oslo, which is around 500 kilometres from where I live. Train takes quite a while, I was bored but happy to see that they had free Wi-Fi on board, so I could log on and do some reading. But actually I ended up watching some videos instead, hence the slightly different title this Friday.

• I got an email newsletter earlier this week from the guys behind the upcoming documentary "A Billion Lives", saying that this Friday they would release their first teaser. And so they did: You Are Being Lied To - A Billion Lives. Really worth watching, and I have to say I can't wait to see the whole movie. Also worth mentioning is that they're now selling T-shirts if you want to show your support and help giving this movie the attention it deserves.

• Also worth watching is this short documentary by Amanda Plunkett: The REAL Truth About Vaping!  

• Finally, I also recommend this one by regulatorwatch.com about e-cig regulations in Canada. Good stuff, well balanced and very well presented.

Have a nice weekend!

Norwegian government pretends to care... but wants implement TPD

Earlier today I wrote that Norwegian government parties Høyre and FRP wants to allow e-cigarettes containing nicotine. With big words FRP proudly announces they want to allow this and facilitate product availability to give smokers a healthier alternative, one that will not kill them. A bit later the consultative document was released on the government webpage. This is in Norwegian of course, don't know how good google's translation will be, but I'm sure many of you recognise this: 2014/40/EF (or 2014/40/EU). Yes.... it is the EU TPD.

I said earlier today that I felt weird to see a representative from FRP make so much sense. Once I wrote that I had a gut feeling this all sounded a bit too good to be true. My gut was right. This is nothing more than the Norwegian government preparing to implement the draconian and deadly TPD. Høyre and FRP is merely trying to score some points among vapers, trying to make it look like they actually care about public health, when in fact they're jumping when they EU say they should and effectively try to eradicate vaping as we know it. The result is that they are sacrificing lives to avoid the wrath of their EU gods. There are two possible explanations to why: Either they're to weak and cowardly to stand up to the EU, or they're to lazy to do their job and actually read a word or two about what vaping is all about. I'm not sure what I think is more scary.

This morning I felt a bit optimistic. I should have known better. Norwegian vapers now face the same deadly regulations as the rest of Europe. Still, not all hope is lost. There are still people fighting the TPD, both in Norway and the rest of Europe. It's pretty clear from what we saw today that the Norwegian government intends to implement the TPD, so I urge Norwegian vapers to engage in this fight as well as working to educate the Norwegian politicians, making them understand that the EU is on the wrong path here. It's not very surprising, but still disappointing, that our government intends to implement the TPD. There's a lot of good work going on in the vaping community ... we'll just have to keep it up and hope for the best.

Worth Reading this Weekend (October 23rd)

It's Friday again and time for some new links to keep you busy reading this weekend.... just to make sure you're not bored :)

• Last week I mentioned I've been discussing regulations with Sanner and Grimsrud. One of the main points we've been discussing is nicotine. Sanner and Grimsrud claims that nicotine, by itself with no tobacco present, is highly addictive and can cause cancer. No documentation have been provided. I've written a bit about this before and I also found a couple of quite interesting articles on the subject this week here and here. 

• Dick Puddlecote has written a great post on "The Inconvenience Of Proving Harm":

So, it would appear that 'public health' has set its sights on convincing governments to ban e-cig use in public not by proving harm actually exists, but by "continued monitoring of public perception" to "guide clean air policy decisions" in favour of prohibition.

• NHS have updated the E-cig advice on their website to reflect the PHE-report: NHS Updates Ecig Advice.

• Many of you might have seen the story about a guy claiming his e-cig burned a hole in his lungs that was published here (among other places). Snopes.com was also pretty quick to cover the case... from a slightly different angle :) Dr. Farsalinos also commented on the case on Facebook: 

A case of spontaneous pneumothorax, for which SMOKING (current or past) is a risk factor, is presented as "burning hole in the lung" (a term which sounds like a joke) caused by e-cigarettes.
It is never too late to stop the misinformation.
I feel sorry for the patient, not only about his episode of pneumothorax but mostly because he is probably convinced to quit e-cigarette use and relapse to smoking!!!

• Christopher Snowdon have some words on cheese: Action on Cheese 

• And finally, a video that will make you happy: Former health committee chair Kevin Barron MP backs E-cigs

Have a nice weekend!

Worth Reading this Weekend (October 16th)

WHO Director General Margaret Chan 

This week I've spent some time discussing e-cigarette regulation with my friends Sanner and Grimsrud in  the comment section of an article on tidsskriftet.no, which is kind of the official journal for the Norwegian Medical Association. I couldn't really get google to translate the comments in any other way than copying it and paste the whole thing into the text-field on google translate, but if anyone have a better idea please let me know. Anyway, the discussion has been going on for quite a while now, and I've been pointing out errors in their article, their documentation and their ability to draw logical conclusions. The last two answers I've gotten from them has been more or less attacks on my sources (which have basically been the same as theirs) or me personally. They don't even try to go into the topic any more, just blabbering about conflicts of interest, how little I know about toxicology and in their latest post they strongly suggest I'm stupid. I won't sink to their level but they'll get an answer, that's for sure.

Anyway, in this discussion there has been quite a lot of talk about conflict of interest, which leads me to some of the posts and articles I wanted to share with you today:

• James at the Ashtray blog has written an excellent article on who you can trust in the vape debate. A lot of interesting stuff in there, exposing where some of the most famous anti-vaping advocates get their funding from. (Actually the Ashtray blog also had an interesting article this week on E-cigs, Water vapour and The Lungs that's worth reading as well)

• Although Clive Bates don't mention conflicts of interest in his article on WHO’s Director General Margaret Chan’s casual irresponsibility, one can certainly start questioning how the WHO is funded.

• David Sweanor has been speaking on a C3 Breakfast Seminar this week, and Richard Smith writes about it on thebmjblogs. Some really interesting angles here as well, that might come in handy when discussing with the ANTZ.

• Dick Puddlecote writes about Simon Chapman (or Simple Simon if you'd like): Aussie Tobacco Control Worse Than North Korea. Always amusing to read Dick's well targeted posts.

• Finally, I'd like to ask everyone to have a look at this. Apparently, Facebook is censoring Aaron Biebert and his upcoming movie, and Aaron wrote this letter to Mark Zuckerberg & the Facebook team. Please take a moment to help share this info.

Worth Reading this Weekend

It's not every week I have the time to write very much myself, but I usually manage to squeeze in quite a bit of reading. So I thought I'd try to make a habit of sharing some of my favourites every weekend, starting... well now:

• Dick Puddlecote comments on this Forbes article where Sally Satchel introduces an interesting concept of vapers signing up to be sponsors helping smokers quite. It's a great idea, but will it work in the real world?

• James of the Ashtray blog said the just had to write about the Welsh government destroying their own gateway theories using their own evidence. But they still not quite ready to let their beloved theory go. This one left me trying to decide whether I should laugh or cry...

• I think Dr. Glantz have reached an all time stupidity high again. Well, I can't really be sure that this is the stupidest things he have uttered yet, there is so much to pick from, but it's definitely up there. I'll leave it up to Michael Siegel to explain: Cutting Down on the Amount You Smoke Has Benefits if You Cut Down Using Low-Nicotine Cigarettes, But Not if You Use E-Cigarettes. I also recommend reading his post from the day before on kind of the same topic.

Read up on the TPD!

May 2016 is getting closer every day, and EU member states are preparing to implement the catastrophic TPD, a directive that will have huge impact on vaping as we know it and in will results in lives lost that could have been saved. There is still hope though, cause vapers and vaping advocates around the world are not ready to give up just yet. The first battle is pretty close, with Totally Wickeds legal challenge scheduled to be heard on 1st October 2015 at the Court of Justice of the EU.

So what can we vapers do then? Today I've come across a couple of great posts on the subject from 2 of the hardest fighting (and hardest hitting) vaping advocates we have, Clive Bates and Cristopher Snowdon. I highly recommend reading them both, and follow Christophers Snowdons request to share the information widely. So here you go:

• E-cigarettes and the EU: a user's guide - by Christopher Snowdon
• Tobacco Products Directive – what next and what can be done? - by Clive Bates

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The wicked world of McKee and Capewell

Martin McKee

You're probably already aware that Martin McKee and Simon Capewell have expressed their concerns about where PHE got their 95% safer than cigarettes estimate from:

In fact, it comes from a single meeting of 12 people convened to develop a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) model to synthesise their opinions on the harms associated with different nicotine containing products; the results of the meeting were summarised in a research paper.

To make things even worse, they've managed to link one of the sponsors of this research paper to British American Tobacco. Conflict of interest they scream. Well, their argumentation is pretty much ripped apart in the "rapid responses" to the BMJ article, so I'm not going to do what others have done so well already. I also recommend reading the Joint statement on e-cigarettes by Public Health England and other UK public health organisations.

What baffles me is that the "other side", the anti-ecig side, are the ones making these claims... that research shining a positive light on vaping is probably paid for by Big Tobacco or Big Pharma. I was recently accused of this myself in a debate (in Norwegian, sorry) taking place in the comments field in a medical journal here in Norway. After some back and forth where I looked into their sources and explained why I don't think these sources support their own conclusions, my good friends Sanner and Grimsrud started making claims that I was only reading research written by people sponsored by big tobacco or big pharma. Therefore they also wanted to end the discussion. I couldn't resist going through their sources pointing out the Pfizer and GSK logos I found, and I told them that I agreed the discussion should be ended. The point is... why the hell would Big Tobacco and Big Pharma pay for research that would support products that are competing with their own products? It makes no sense. Big Pharmas NRTs are competing directly with e-cigarettes, and Big Tobaccos own e-cigarettes are already customized to fit into a strict regulation scheme that would wipe out their competition. If big tobacco and big pharma are paying for research, they are certainly not paying for anything that would slightly suggest vaping is great... unless they've realized that their markets are lost anyway and they just want to speed up the process. Do you think this is the case? I don't for sure. If Big Tobacco and Big Pharma were really trying to influence this research, like McKee and Capewell are claiming, they should be the ones complaining: Eyh... Objection! We can prove that these guys are paid by organizations more interested in improving public health than making us more money!

On the PHE report in Norwegian media ... and extreme stubborness

Around a week or so has passed now since I first read about the PHE report that concludes e-cigarettes are 95% safer than cigarettes, among other conclusions. I have to say that 95% seems like a huge understatement to me, but all in all I think the report will be good for the case, but I'm not going to go into the details of the report here. Others have done that in a great way for example here. Thanks to the Ashtray blog for a great post.

As you probably already know the report is very positive towards e-cigs and vaping, and it's coming from Public Health England. I've got some google news searches set up, searching for articles on e-cigarettes in Norwegian, and I kind of expected that now I'd be getting quite a few hits in my mailbox... but no. I've only got 2 ... and one of them was even from kind of a local newspaper. So only one of the big newspapers here in Norway found this report interesting enough to write about it. Well, actually I got 2 more that kind of mention the report but I don't count them. I'm sad to see that Norwegian media don't seem very interested in covering e-cigarettes unless there is death and harm and very alarming findings involved. And it's not because they're not aware of the report, cause members of NDS (Norwegian Union of Vapers) have tried their best to get the big papers to write about it.

The little coverage we got also reveals that we're facing some extremely stubborn organizations in this debate. The Norwegian Institute of Public health still claims that "use of e-cigarettes are not without health risks, neither for vaper or bystanders" and LHL, the national organization for people with heart or lung disease, are still not convinced that e-cigarettes help people quit smoking. Ugh!

I've written earlier that we have to win the media to win this fight. As you can see, we have a pretty hard fight in front of us. I'd like to urge all Norwegian vapers (and anyone else out there that wants to help us) to fight even harder. There is a lot of good work being done already, and even though we're fighting extreme stubborness we can win. We just have to be as stubborn as they are right? And maybe a bit smarter... so please don't give up if you're already working on it, and come join us if you're not! Apparently we need a lot of voices to get heard.
 

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Great news from Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids

Yesterday Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids published a press release claiming that a new study published Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) provides evidence that e-cigarettes are a gateway to smoking. Well of course the study proves no such thing, and there is (almost, I'll get back to that) no good news coming from Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids here. I'll leave it up to Dr. Farsalinos and Professor Michael Siegel to explain why.

Now you might say that my headline for this blog-post is highly misleading. Well, I agree, I did that on purpose, to kind of underline the fact that not only is the headline in Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids' press release highly misleading, but the whole thing is just a big fat pile of lies. For a bunch of reasons, as explained in detail by Farsalinos and Siegel, the study doesn't prove the gateway theory at all. In fact it doesn't really prove anything new, even the authors of the study acknowledge that. Professor Siegel explains this:

Ultimately, what this research demonstrates is that youth who experiment with electronic cigarettes represent a sub-population of youth which is at increased risk of tobacco product use. This is a natural finding that we expected to be true and which has been documented in other studies. The study does not show that e-cigarette use leads kids to start smoking or to become regular smokers. It does not demonstrate a gateway effect.
The study authors readily acknowledge this, with the lead author making it clear that: "we cannot conclude that e-cigarette use directly leads to smoking."

As you can see, nothing really new. The gateway theory has in no way been proven, and we're still waiting patiently for the first ex-vaper, current smoker to emerge from the shadows. Kind of strange that we haven't seen a single case in so many years, and with millions of people using e-cigarettes don't you think? Also, if a gateway effect existed... isn't it a bit strange that cigarette use keeps going down when e-cigarette use goes up? Actually it seems to start going down even faster when e-cigarette use really started going up, according to Tobacco Free Kids' own numbers:

Anyway, even if I gave this post a misleading headline on purpose, it's not actually as misleading as Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids' press release. Because there is actually some good news in there: Current e-cigarette use now exceeds current use of regular cigarettes. Of course the way they present this fact is also misleading, as they deliberately fail to mention how much current use of cigarettes have gone down. If you can't see that this is good news, not bad news as these guys claim, you can't be truly concerned with peoples health. There must be something else that's more important to you...

EDIT: Just saw Clive Bates also commenting on this. Recommended reading indeed.

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The REAL gateway to smoking

Last week I was reading this article about the Norwegian minister of Health and his criticism of AmCham. The background was the AmCham has responded to the governments proposed introduction of plain packaging. The Cancer Society also comments on the matter:

- It is no wonder that they are lobbying against this, because we know that this measure actually works. Tobacco packages with cool design appeals for example to young people, and if you get fewer young people to start smoking, the total tobacco use goes down.

This post is not going to be about whether plain packaging works or not, but there are indications that it might not work as well as they thought it would: http://goo.gl/yMViME. They argue that "Tobacco packages with cool design appeals for example to young people". So they're actually saying that people start smoking because the package looks so damn cool? Really? To me that sounds pretty far fetched. I've done some googling trying to find some statistics on why people start smoking, and I've never come across this reason. I mean, I can see that cool packaging might appeal to young, hip people, in the way that they might be tempted to try a brand with a cooler package, but I find it really hard to believe that the cool packaging is what made them start smoking. To me this whole plain packaging idea seems like something they came up due to lack of other good ideas to make sure a lot of people have a lot of work to do, without really making any difference. The only real effect I find plausible is that it would make it easier to operate in the black market since it will take less effort to make the packages for fake or smuggled cigarettes. 

Anyway, this statement from the Cancer Society made me start thinking a bit about why people start smoking, especially young people and kids. If you google the matter you'll find several "top-lists" with somewhat different reasons. You'll see reasons like parents smoking, friends smoking, peer pressure, people smoking in movies, their idols smoking, to look more adult, self-medication, stress releaf, experimenting and rebellion. Trying to sum up a bit it seems to me like the biggest reason why young people start smoking is other people smoking. Not really surprising to be honest. Young people wants to act older and wants to fit in. In other words: Smokers are the REAL gateway to smoking. I believe that you can regulate, ban, restrict advertising, make manufacturers print all kinds of ugly pictures or warnings on the packages, plain packaging, campaigns warning young people of the dangers of smoking and so on to stop young people from smoking. Some of these measures might be somewhat effective as well, but I think none of them will ever come even close to the effect of getting current smokers quit smoking. If less adults smoke, less young people and kids will start smoking. E-cigarettes and vaping has proven to be one of the most effective ways of making this happen. Regulators and politicians should welcome this opportunity rather than using all their time and effort to find harder, less effective means or even fight against what could ultimately be the end of the tobacco epidemic.

Smokers are the REAL gateway to smoking, vapers are the REAL gateway to quitting. 

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