Losing income from sin taxes shouldn't be a problem

I think I'll start with the conclusion of this post right here at the beginning for a change: If it's a problem for a government that they loose income from a so-called sin tax, it's not actually a sin tax. When I say sin tax I mean taxes designed to make people stop doing something that is bad for themselves, the people around them, the environment and so on. In other words... it's supposed to discourage people from doing something we don't want them to. So if you start losing income from a sin tax, you should be happy with that, and not desperate to find something else to tax like some politicians apparently are right now. Because losing income from a sin tax should mean that you are gaining somewhere else. Take tobacco taxes for example: If people stop smoking, whatever you loose in taxes should be more than made up for by the benefits of having a smoke free and thereby a lot healthier population: Health care expenses would be lower, people will be able to work more and generate more income taxes ... and so on. If this is not the case in your country, your government is a bunch of incompetent fools. Simple as that. If it is the case in your country, and the government still wants to cover the losses from a sin tax by taxing, well the e-cigarettes that are in part responsible for their so called losses, then they are equally stupid... or just greedy.

Some countries have made themselves dependent on sin taxes, other have not. I wrote a post on this almost a year ago. Back then I found that the US and Norway (hopefully among others) are not dependent on tobacco taxes, and should in fact, from a pure economic perspective, welcome anything that will stop people from smoking. So California Senator Mark Leno (from the Forbes article I linked to further up) is either stupid enough to not see this, or greedy. In any case he's lying when he proclaims this, cause this is definitely not the real reason he wants to tax e-cigarettes:

“We’re going to see hundreds of thousands of family members and friends die from e-cigarettes use just like we did from traditional tobacco use”

The UK on the other hand... are in deep shit in this matter. They messed up and need to find a way to make up for their losses, but taxing e-cigarettes (or anything else that can get people to stop smoking) will only get them deeper into the shit. It might "solve" their problem in the short term, but it will be like peeing in their pants when freezing...


photo credit: E-Cigarette/Electronic Cigarette/E-Cigs/E-Liquid/Vaping via photopin (license)

Juice review: Love Potion No. 6 by Decadent Vapours

Looks like Decadent Vapours have a plan to release limited edition e-juices for holidays and other special days. They released their "Gold" last Christmas. Now Valentines day is coming up and DV have created a new juice for the occasion: Love Potion No.6.

Love potion No. 6 
Tested on: Kanger Subtank (RDA at 0.4 Ohms, 20-25 watts)

With Love Potion No. 6 Decadent Vapours have tried to duplicate the taste of a some well known sweets: Love Hearts. Well, of course I can't speak for the rest of the world, but these have been around here in Norway for as long as I can remember, and I honestly think I'll have a hard time finding someone who has never tasted them. The juice comes in a red bottle with lots of hearts like you see in the picture. So... I've had to hide the bottle away to avoid the inevitable harassment that would follow if anyone at work saw me filling up my tank from such a bottle :)

Decadent Vapours describes the juice like this: "A lovesome blend of red berries, fizzy sherbet and seductive vanilla with a touch of cherry drop, this is just the vape to set the mood with someone special." I can see that description fit on the sweets as well so the question is then... does the juice really taste like this as well? The answer is quite simply ... yes it does. At least they are not very far off here. It might have a bit more sweetness and a little less berries than the sweets but to me it becomes closer and closer every time. Whether this is my mind playing tricks on me or it has something to do with the flavour actually changing I don't know really. The Kanger is quite a large tank and the juice have been in there for a while and it might actually be some steeping going on. Think I'm going to leave in the dark for a while and see what this does to the flavour. I also noticed that you get more berries if you vape a little cooler. So if I turn down my watts from the usual 25 I use with this tank to around 20 it gets a bit closer to the sweets. DV has also managed to recreate that fizzy feeling of the sweets, but of course not that strong. For me it's a bit on the sweet side to being an all day vape... but then again, I've said that about a lot of juices lately that I've ended up vaping for days.

Anyway, for anyone that have tried the Love Heart sweets, the flavour should be pretty familiar. And if you like the sweets, you definitely should try this juice as well. Simple as that actually.



Disclosure:

• All my reviews are my honest opinion even if I am affiliated with the company manufacturing or selling the product. 
• The juice was sent to me free of charge for the purpose of this review.
• This review does not contains affiliate links.

Authors of e-cig formaldehyde junk science: "We just wanted to get it out"

I'm sure you can find something
dangerous in that glass of 
water, Dr. Pankow. Use your 
imagination!

Last week we saw another formaldehyde scare story hit the news, with a couple of so called scientists proving nothing more than this: If you crank up the voltage of your vaporizer until it starts tasting like shit, and keep on vaping it, you might inhale some formaldehyde as well. In other words, if you intentionally want to inhale formaldehyde, it is perfectly possible to do so using some of the e-cigarettes available today.

The fact that the only vaper in the world that would willingly do that is a robot in Dr. Peyton and Dr. Pankow's lab is not the only problem with this study. In fact, the good doctors themselves goes a long way in saying that their study is shit. Some of their statements are summarized in this great post on reason.com: Does Formaldehyde Make E-Cigarettes Worse Than the Real Thing?

Pankow told NBC "we are not saying e-cigarettes are more hazardous than cigarettes," although that is the impression left by the NEJM letter. He noted that "we are only looking at one chemical" out of the thousands that can be found in tobacco smoke, of which hundreds are toxic or carcinogenic. "The jury is really out on how safe these drugs are," he said. According to Reuters, "Pankow conceded that the study could have contained more context about overall relative risk, but said the authors 'just wanted to get it out.'"

Wow, hang on there... so "just wanting to get it out" is now an excuse to publish science that is so bad that even Dr. Neal Benowitz, one of the scientist thrown off FDA's TPSAC (FDA Tobacco ProductsScientific Advisory Committee) because of... well corruption, questiones the legitimacy of some of it's conclusions (have a look at Reuters article mentioned in the quote above):

But he questioned the legitimacy of comparing the effect of formaldehyde delivered in a cigarette to that delivered via hemiacetal, in droplet form, in an e-cigarette. The effect on organs could be entirely different, he said. 

And, one of our dear doctors even agrees with this:

"There has never been a cancer study with hemiacetals," Pankow said in an interview.

In other words: We don't really have any proof of anything, so we just made up a conclusion "to get it out". Dr. Farsalinos was also quick to point out this error in his initial reaction to the study.

I'm seriously having problems deciding who I think is the biggest idiots here. The "scientists" deciding to publish this because they "just wanted to get it out" (how the hell did they get their PhDs anyway?), or the media? Like NBC that decided to go with this headline based on something that a couple of junk scientist just wanted to get out:

Before You Vape: High levels of Formaldehyde Hidden in E-Cigs

For now I think I'm just going to count them as equally useless. The saddest part is that neither has said or done anything to make this right yet as far as I know.

New study by Dr. Farsalinos: Dual users more worried about E-cigarette risks

In a study published by Dr. Farsalinos and his team have examined the factors associated with dual use of tobacco and electronic cigarettes. In other words, why the dual users don't stop smoking tobacco cigarettes completely. In a comment published today Dr. Farsalinos says that their most important finding was that the strongest predictor of dual use was high risk perception for e-cigarettes. This shows how the misinformation and lies published about e-cigarettes actually keep people smoking, most probably shortening their lives by years. To add to that, Farsalinos suspects we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg here:

Although expected, this is a very important finding because it shows that misinformation and exaggeration about e-cigarette risks is discouraging smokers from making a complete switch. Considering that the survey was performed in dedicated users, I expect that this factor will be even more important for the general population. Moreover, I think that it is not only associated with dual use but also with failure to reduce smoking or with relapse to smoking.

Again, we come back to the fact that it's very important to get proper, true information out to the public, and the media will be the key to doing this. I'd like to shout out a big thanks to Dr. Farsalinos and his team for their work and efforts to spread the truth about e-cigarettes to the public. Thank you!

Another flawed study on Formaldehyde in E-Cigarette Aerosols

Yesterday another vaping horror story, based on this junk science, hit the media (for example here). I guess it was just a matter of time before it happened again. This time Dr. Peyton and Dr. Pankow at Portland State University in Oregon have used a puffing machine of some kind and found that you'll detect a lot of formaldehyde if you run a CE4 top-coil atomizer at 5 Volts (generating like 12W) and do 5 second puffs. This means, you do ONLY dry-puffs! Of course no-one in real life would do this so the study is totally irrelevant on only serves to show the incompetence of it's authors. If you run it at 3.3 Volts, like anyone with taste-buds would do, not surprisingly no formaldehyde was detected. Our dear doctors then came to the conclusion that vaping is 5-15 times as dangerous as smoking. I'm baffled that someone is able to publish such crap, and I'm just sad that the media once again takes the bait. This is like testing the safety of seat-belts in cars by strangling people with them.

AVA, Clive Bates, Dr. Siegel and Dr. Farsalinos already wrote great comments on the case explaining how bad this so called research is, and Dr. Farsalinos also wrote another comment verifying the equipment used in the "study". I suggest everyone bookmarks these comments and send them to anyone confronting you with this non-sense. And my God I look forward to the day Dr. Farsalinos' study on temperature of evaporation, liquid consumption and vapor analysis in realistic conditions is published so we can put an end to this formaldehyde scaremongering.


photo credit: tbecreview via photopin cc