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 ofe-cigarettes arenotwithouthealth risks,neitherforvaperor 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.
Here in Norway we have a few days when it's illegal to air normal commercials on TV. This is Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Pentecost Sunday and Christmast day. On these days, most broadcasters instead offer to air "profilemovies" from non-governmental organisations. This year the Norwegian Union of Vapers (NDS) applied and was offered a spot on Pentecost Sunday (24th of May) and worked hard to create a good informational movie to raise awareness of the organization and vaping in general. Everything seemed to be going the right way... but no. When the final product was submitted to TV2, the broadcaster in question and one of Norways biggest TV channels, the tone had changed. The movie suddenly "doesn't fit in". No reason other than that from what I've understood. Sounds more like they don't want to give us the real reason, which is probably they're afraid that they'll have to answer some questions afterwards since e-cigarettes with nicotine is illegal to sell in Norway, or that they figure that movies from well known organizations (preferably with some poor starving children in them) will be more popular with the viewers.
Anyway, here's the vaping ad that did not happen, cause TV2 aparently found it too controversial. I've translated it below since it's in Norwegian:
Translation:
Are you still smoking?
Hard to quit?
There is and alternative
E-cigarettes/Vaping Is neither tobacco nor smoke
Switch now!
Norsk Dampselskap (Norwegian Union of vapers) The consumers [vapers] own association, get information and help
... and then the logo and url in the end. Controversial stuff right?
Get 15% off with discount code: giraffe15 (log in to use)
Cathrine Skårn demonstrates vaping, live on national tv.
On Tuesday I wrote about the new report published by the Norwegian Institute for Public Health (NIPH) and the media coverage of this. It was news agency NTB that wrote the misleading article focusing on possible harm to bystanders that would inhale nicotine ... and possibly get addicted and start smoking. Yeah right... so eating eggplant would put you in the danger zone as well then I guess?
The report itself, is not that bad in fact. As Dr. Farsalinos pointed out, it does have some serious errors, and those are of course creating problems in the media, but the report also concludes very clearly that e-cigarettes are a lot healthier than cigarettes, and that they could have very positive effect on public health. The issues we're left with is the gateway theory and nicotine exposure from "passive vaping".
I was hoping that SIRUS and Karl Erik Lund would help us explain to the public and the politicians that these issues are in fact nothing to worry about, and of course they did not let me down. The morning after, one of Norway's biggest TV channels, TV2, covered the case in the morning news. Not only did we get Karl Erik Lund in the studio discussing the report with head of NIPH, Camilla Stoltenberg, but we also got a live interview with Cathrine Skårn, board member of the Norwegian Union of Vapers (NDS). She did a fantastic job explaining what NDS is, what they're working for, what vaping is and that vaping is not smoking. As I've said so many times now, this fight will be fought in the media, and getting this kind of coverage on national TV is a huge step forward.
After the interview there is a debate in the studio with Karl Erik Lund and Camilla Stoltenberg. The whole thing is of course in Norwegian. I'm not going to translate the whole thing, just some important bits. It does indeed seem like the NIPH has a much more positive attitude towards vaping than what has been communicated in the newspapers this week. The first question from the host goes to Stoltenberg:
Host: ... our reporter talked to this woman who is very satisfied with her vaping. The question is: When she sits there vaping, is my colleague, Johannes, exposed to a form of passive smoking?
Stoltenberg: First of all I'd like to say that I totally agree with her that vaping is less dangerous than smoking and that it is much better that people that smoke switch to vaping. This is an important part of this picture. But when it comes to passive vaping, the point in the report is that passive vaping exists, and that one exposes the surroundings to levels of nicotine that in some cases might be comparable to those from passive tobacco smoking and quite a few other substances that it is difficult to say anything about the effects of in the long term. And it is in fact difficult to say anything about the effects of vaping in the long term because we don't have many studies on this.
Host: But how dangerous is it?
Stoltenberg: It is not very dangerous, because we are talking about low levels [of these substances], so if you compare it to tobacco smoking and passive tobacco smoking it is less dangerous. Our point is that it is not risk free, and we don't know enough about it.
After this, Karl Erik Lund agrees that vaping is not totally risk free, and says that no one has claimed that either. He then turns to explain the problem with how this was presented in the media the day before.
Lund: It is not the nicotine that is the dangerous substance in passive smoking for the bystanders, it is the nitrosamines, it's the monoxide, it's the metals and we don't have any of these in passive vaping...
Host: ... but there is nicotine?
Lund: There is nicotine, but the levels are so low that they are 10 times lower than what the The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has defined as a health risk, so focusing on that we can compare the nicotine exposure from these two products is a derailment of the debate about how to regulate these products...
After this Stoltenberg admits that even though they have focused on nicotine there are great uncertainties when it comes to how significant this is. The rest of the debate is mainly about how this should be regulated and whether we should use the precautionary principle. Stoltenberg also says that we will probably see different kinds of regulation in different countries and that we should monitor how these work when it comes to how many that quit smoking. She also claims that we don't know enough yet (yawn), but Lund explains that we actually do know a lot and that we need to regulate in a way that encourages smokers to switch to a product that also the NIPH now say exists. Finally, Stoltenberg say that they're mainly worried about the people that haven't started yet and that vaping might become common, even though she doesn't tell us why she thinks this is a problem.
To sum up, I think this TV coverage partly balanced out some of the misinformation from the day before. Karl Erik Lund does a great job as usual, no complaints there... and thank you again for your great efforts. Stoltenberg and the NIPH on the other hand... well they do seem more positive than ever. They do say that e-cigarettes work and that they are reducing harm and they can't really present any big issues. But it seems like they still want to say that they are worried. It almost seem like they need to be concerned, because they want to regulate. Since they haven't really found any big problems, they say they don't know enough yet. But let's not forget that they do very clearly state that e-cigarettes are a lot less harmful than cigarettes now, and that is another step in the right direction.
Before I took a short break from blogging during Christmas I kind of concluded that 2014 had been a year with a lot of ups and downs for vapers. The media published horror stories, claiming that vaping is more harmful than smoking cigarettes or that vaping would cause a new generation of nicotine addicts, and then the next week they published hallelujah-stories claiming that vaping could save millions of lives. Yesterday the Ashtray blog published a pretty amusing post on this topic: E-Cigs Cause (Media) Schizophrenia: A Case Study. As James points at the end of his post the media is of course not really as schizophrenic as they appear at times, they are just doing what they can to get as many readers as possible:
The Daily Mail isn’t really schizophrenic, it simply takes stories from both sides, and twists and manipulates them to ensure they sell the most papers.
I think this is one of the most important facts we, as vapers who want to continue fighting for our case, have to remember this year. Hopefully, we will be able to make some changes in 2015, but I believe some things will be the same... and will never change:
The media will write their stories to get readers and in this way earn more money.
Big Tobacco and Big Pharma will continue their lobbying in 2015 for the same reason, to earn money, or maybe in their case, to avoid loosing money.
Then there is Glantz and his fellow prohibitionists. These guys did not care much about facts and truth in 2014 and I have no hopes that this will change in 2015. As Steve K pointed out recently, New year, same prohibitionists.
Working to stop Big Pharma or Big Tobacco or to trying to turn the prohibitionists around will pretty much be a waste of time and energy. Luckily, these are not the guys that will decide what regulations e-cigarettes will be subject to in the end. The politicians will. And politicians need support from the public to be able to stay in charge. I don't believe that e-cigarette regulations are the most important case for most politicians. Most of them probably knows very little about it, and do not care too much either. There are other, more important cases on their minds. So if the general public has a positive attitude towards vaping, chances are these politicians will have that too, just because it will give them some goodwill.
We have to remember that most people are not smokers or vapers. Most people's knowledge of the subject and their attitude towards vaping is based on what the media writes about it. Actually, from my experience, most people's attitude is based on the headlines alone. I don't have the exact percentage of non-smokers in the world today, but I don't think I'm wrong if I say it's somewhere around 70% and 80%, most of them with little knowledge of vaping other than what they read in the papers or see on their TV-screens.
For these reasons I think vapers and vaping advocates need to focus on getting the truth out in the media this year. This will affect the general public's, and the politician's, attitude towards vaping in a positive way. If we can "win" the media war in 2015, chances are that vaping will be allowed to continue saving millions of lives.
So my advice for 2015 is, if you want to help out and make a difference in this case, don't just educate yourself on vaping, but try to educate the media as well. Write a couple of emails to the local newspaper, give them some tips on the research I'm sure you've read about. Who knows... if they get enough emails, maybe they will write a story about it. And maybe some bigger newspapers or news agencies will pick up on it and the snowball will start rolling, hopefully knocking down some prohibitionists on it's way. Make 2015 they year when vapers won the media war!
As most of you probably are aware of on Thursday last week media all over the world, including Norway, started reporting the 10-times-more-harmful-than-cigarettes-scare. I'm still seeing some of the slower ones running this story, as it's still turning up in my daily google news searches. The story was fed to the media by news agency AFP, and from there it got published uncritically all over the world, doing a lot of harm, and ultimately scared a lot of vapers back to smoking cigarettes. I think this is a good example on how the media of today has turned into nothing but a tool for people with an agenda and a couple of braincells to spread their message all over the world, without anyone questioning whether the information is true or not. The vast majority of so called journalism today apparently consist of just copy-pasting the most shocking news, as fast as you can, so your employer can sell their ads at the highest price possible. It doesn't really matter that much if the information is true or not, since as soon as your horror headline has been clicked, the ads are doing their job; generating income for the website owner.
It was today I saw there first story from a source outside Norway where they actually question this information: http://goo.gl/RZtcSj. Inquisitr finally seems to have found the statement posted by Farsalinos at ecigarette-research.com. About time I would say. It's quite interesting to read the comments below this article. Have a look at the link posted by Norbert Zillatron, connecting the Japanese scientists to the WHO: http://goo.gl/6Co9bw. Now read the first paragraph again and connect the dots.
There might be other media as well that I'm not aware of that are coming forth now, but here in Norway the media started reporting that the horror story from Thursday wasn't all true already on Friday morning. Some actually already on Thursday evening. I've been wondering this weekend why this happened here, and not everywhere else in the world.
I contacted Karl Erik Lund at SIRUS and asked him a bit about what happened as he was doing a great job in the media, explaining the true story. He says that a journalist working for nrk.no that was also about to publish the horror story called him to ask about it and when hearing Lunds points of view on the story decided to publish a whole different story, debunking the horror that other media had published during the day. The race of true journalists may not be totally extinct anyway, at least there is one here in Norway. However it is a bit worrying that she seems to be a bit alone, even in her own organization. The horror story was actually aired on national TV at about the same time as her debunking story was published on nrk.no. The story was aired 19.12 and the article published 19.23. This is the clip where the horror is presented on TV on Thursday evening (thanks Helge Andersen for putting this on youtube):
Translation: "E-cigarettes contain 10 times asmanycarcinogenicsubstancesas regularcigarettes. This is shown bya studyconducted bythe JapaneseNational Institute of Health. The World Health Organizationadvocatesto ban the saleofe-cigarettes to minors,andalso showed thatthe vapor fromthese cigarettesare dangerous tofetusesandyoung children."
The next evening however they aired this "apology": "InDagsrevyen [Newsnight] yesterdaywe said thate-cigarettes contain 10 times asmanycarcinogenicsubstances asregular cigaretteswith reference toa study conducted bythe JapaneseNational Institute of Health. We emphasize thatthis resultwas only detectedin only oneof the casesthatthe Japanesescientistsexamined.Theresults in general showedthat the levelwaslower ine-cigarettesthan intobacco."
Two people made a huge difference here in Norway, I believe ultimately saving lives: Kjersti Strømmen, a true journalist that actually did her job properly and Karl Erik Lund, who always speaks the voice of reason when this kind of madness comes along. Big thanks to both of them. I really really hope Strømmen will continue to dig a bit more around on the topic of e-cigarettes, and I hope (and I really believe he will) Lund will continue his efforts to get the truth about e-cigarettes out, to regulators, politicians and the general public. But Strømmen and Lund was not alone. I've been asking around a bit and a lot of people from the NDS (Norwegian Union of Vapers) Facebook group did a lot of commenting on articles and sending emails to journalists, using whatever contacts and means they had available. I think this combined effort was what made most newspapers publish "clarifying" articles the morning after, linking to Farsalinos and Lunds statements. The work of Lund, Strømmen and Farsalinos, of course, gave all the emails and comments the weight they needed to make the media turn around in this case.
After watching the FBI show I wrote about yesterday on NRK (Norwegian government-owned radio and television public broadcasting company) web-tv I read the article mentioned at the end of the show here: http://www.nrk.no/livsstil/frykter-e-sigarettens-pavirkning-1.11502043. (Sorry about all the Norwegian articles guys, hope the google translation is not too bad).
Again I'm baffled by the fact that the Cancer Society seems to be so opposed to e-cigarettes. I really struggle to see why. And to add to that, they keep throwing irrelevant numbers at us. Again it's this new american study that they claim supports the theory that vaping is a gateway to smoking. Well allow me to explain once again why these numbers are at best irrelevant. This is what the "Facts"-box on the side says (I've changed the order here to make things a bit clearer):
1379 Americans, average age of 24, smokers, non-smokers and former smokers were followed for a year.
7.4% of the ones that hadn't already tried e-cigarettes tried them this year. - What does this really mean? Well, it says nothing about if these were former smokers, smokers or non-smokers. It is hence completely irrelevant and does not support the conclusion at all.
21% of the smokers, 11.9% of former smokers and 2.9% of the non-smokers had tried e-cigarettes during that year.- For the smokers this is great, they are trying to quit, for the former smokers it probably prevented a relapse to smoking and for the non-smokers... well it only says they tried it, not that they kept on doing it. I myself have a lot of friends, non-smokers, that have tried my e-cigarettes once or twice. Actually most of my non-smoking friends have, so they would have had to answer yes on this as well. To be honest I'm surprised the number is that low. But as you can see, it gives us no indication on vaping being a gateway to smoking. It's completely irrelevant.
According to the scientists that did the study, there are indications that the belief that e-cigarettes are less harmful than normal cigarettes can get more young adults to try them.- I actually got to agree with this, but this has nothing to do with the numbers they present. And most of these are probably smokers, former smokers or people who would be tempted to try real cigarettes. This is just common sense. If you believe there is a less harmful alternative to cigarettes you would be pretty stupid not to try it wouldn't you? And IF some of these actually are people who wouldn't have taken up regular smoking, but take up e-cigarettes anyway, WHY on earth would they switch to smoking afterwards. There are certainly NO numbers here supporting that.
So, why do some people use these numbers as proof that vaping is a gateway to smoking? Wouldn't it be better to refer to a study of vapers who have never smoked for a year and count how many of those that take up smoking? Well, of course this study doesn't exist... you'd have a hard enough time finding enough never-smoking vapers. If you did however I think counting to 0 should be pretty easy. Actually, if someone comes up with ONE vaper who has never smoked a cigarette before starting to vape, and then becomes a regular smoker, I'll eat all my hats, smoke my socks and put a pink background on this blog for a month.
Now I do understand why big tobacco and big pharma would try to spread fear and loathing in this matter, and I do have a sneaking suspicion where funding for some of this "research" can be traced back to. But what I don't understand is why the Cancer Society does it. Why do they keep on ignoring the fact that there IS a lot of science that shows e-cigarettes could dramatically reduce the number of new cancer patients? They keep on saying that this research just doesn't exist. But apparently they do search for studies on e-cigarettes, as they seem to find the reports that conclude e-cigarettes are some kind of new devilry that we need to stop before it's to late. Don't they have the same version of Google that I have?
Last night FBI, a Norwegian consumer/science TV show, was all about e-cigarettes. Norwegian readers can see the show here: http://tv.nrk.no/serie/forbrukerinspektoerene/mdhp11000514/29-01-2014 (might work in Sweden and Denmark as well). There were interviews with members of Norsk Dampselskap, a government official, a representative from the Norwegian Cancer society, a chemistry professor and Karl Erik Lund from SIRUS. I think the guys from Norsk Dampselskap (Are Sakarias Grønsund, Ramzy Zaher and Fredrick Skauge) did a fantastic job presenting the e-cigarettes, explaining what it is and telling the viewers about their own experience with them. They even managed to give the interviewer a proper cough attack with a dripper and some coffee-caramel-liquid. Good job :)
The government official and the representative from the Cancer society were sceptical and presented the gateway argument (as usual). They keep referring to some reports from the USA that shows an increasing number of teens experimenting with e-cigarettes. It seems like a lot of sceptics and anti-e-cig-people have picked up this report and keep on referring to it. I assume this is the report in question: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6235a6.htm. Well, while I do believe the data collected in this study is probably real, the conclusion that e-cigarettes are a gateway to smoking is pulled out of thin air. There is nothing in this data that would indicate that. It reports how many have tried e-cigarettes, how many are using them on a regular basis, and how many of these that also smokes traditional cigarettes, but there is no evidence that someone has actually moved from e-cigarettes to normal cigarettes. Actually the fact that only 7.2% of the high school students have experimented (tried at least once) with e-cigarettes, means that 92.8% of these are already smokers, probably looking for a way to quit. Among high school student e-cig users 80.5% are also smoking, which means, even if we assume ALL the 7.2% that had experimented (and never smoked cigarettes) are also current users (the study doesn't say anything about this), there is 12.3% of the smokers that has managed to quit smoking by using e-cigarettes. As current e-cigarette users is 2.8% and current "double users" are 2.2% that means only 0.6% are pure e-cig-users, which is not very high given that 10% have tried them. And finally these 0.6% might even be smokers that has made the switch, the study says nothing about this either. So if you really look into what this data means I'd say they give NO evidence of e-cigarettes being a gateway to smoking, but rather that non-smokers have very little interest in e-cigarettes. The way these data is presented I think is just horrible, it's presented as a bunch of numbers in a quite confusing manner and then only the data that supports whatever they WANT to find is pointed out to support their case. This study shows that more teens are experimenting with e-cigarettes... period. Not really breaking news for a new product like that currently is on the edge of the law. In fact, try legalizing it, I bet you my kidney this number will drop. Guess this is what "scientists" do when they start to suspect they might have been wrong all the time, they have to save their own ass right? I mean, you got to ask yourself, as Karl Erik Lund does as well, WHY would someone choose a product that kills half of it's users when they are already using a product with the same function that has not been the cause of a single death?
The next part of the show was with the chemistry professor, Einar Uggerud. He kind of confirmed that nicotine and the PG was pretty harmless. The same thing with all the other ingredients he read from an e-liquid bottle. BUT, he also says we really don't know what substances are created when we vaporize these ingredients, and that they might cause cancer. So ... kind of mixed feelings about what he says. We do have a lot of science around what's actually in the vapor as well, for instance dr. Farsalinos work (http://ecigarette-research.com), so mr. Uggerud might be a bit uninformed here. But, I agree there might be some less serious manufacturers as well, so we should get some more control in this area. Finally, Karl Erik Lund made some really good points at the end of the show worth mentioning. First of all, and this is a good one, he says it's a paradox that it is legal here in Norway to sell e-liquid without nicotine. It's proven that the nicotine is not the dangerous substance in these liquids, but it's in the flavouring some of the potentially dangerous substances might be. So Lund believes we should regulate the e-liquids in the same way that the Norwegian Food Safety Authority regulates for example cosmetics. They look at whats in it, gets rid of the junk and leaves us with safe and good products on the market. When asked about if the e-cigarette can help people stop smoking he confirms that science supports this, but also makes a point that the really big gain here is that future generations can choose a less dangerous product than the conventional cigarettes, that will give them the same stimuli and the same symbolic effect. He says that the government's wish for a smoke free society, in his opinion, is pure utopia.
In conclusion I think this show will tempt a lot of the smokers who watched to try e-cigarettes. There is no doubt some misinformation from the interviewed sceptics that might scare some, but all in all I think Lund and the members of the Norsk Dampselskap did a great job and sounded much more serious and not driven by fear like the others. Good job guys.
Ramzy Zaher, Fredrick Skauge and Are Sakarias Grønsund explaining how it all works.
