Storm

Storm

Wednesday 15 July 2015

Confessions of a Crap Artist

Something has been annoying me for some time. Yesterday, that came to a head. I woke in the middle of the night with it nagging away so I am going to get it out and Twitter is not good enough.

Yesterday a new research paper was released. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0887233315001228
I am sure most of you have read this by now and am certain that the ANTZ will have done so. How do I know that? Because they have not commented, nor have they run to their pets in the media to twist the results to their agenda.

Now I am not going to write about the paper, no. This is not about one piece of research. This is about ecig research in general or more to the point, the lack of it.

The above research will no doubt be dismissed as it was funded, nay, carried out by BAT. When the ANTZ do comment, as they will have to at some point, they will scream COI and Big Tobacco, not on the actual validity of the research itself.

This is what is really bugging me. Why do we constantly hear “we don't know what's in them” and “there is not enough research” ? In the USA there is a pot of hundreds of millions of taxpayers dollars earmarked for ecig research. Is this money being used on good research such as BAT have just carried out? No it is not. Study after study has been carried out drowning rats in eliquid, asking a few “youths” if they have ever tried an ecig, searching social media for the slightest mention of Vaping and likening ecig advertising to that of 1950's cigarettes. There has been a host of other useless drains on that huge pot of money. One or two almost came close to getting to the truth but with clear intent were twisted to hide the actual results. The Public and lawmakers are being lied to. They see the attention grabbing headlines from “respected” sources and look no further. Science has become a sham. A front for agenda driven groups Worldwide. It is hard to trust any research on any subject now and that is a disgrace.

That huge pot of money could have settled this debate in a matter of weeks with millions left over. Good people are doing good research for a pittance and all they receive for it is dismissal and public shaming.
A message to the ANTZ. Yes Glantz, I mean YOU. BAT have just showed you how to do research. If that does not shame you, nothing will. Read it, replicate it. Find the truth. Otherwise this is for you.

ANTZ “ I want the truth”

Us “You can't handle the truth”


ps. The title is another Phillip K Dick reference. Check the plotline out for relevance.

Tuesday 19 May 2015

FLOW MY TEARS


This is a first for me. I have thought about blogging many times but always felt there are better people out there already doing it. However, today, I had the pleasure of engaging a member of the medical establishment. We have swapped tweets before but today was different. The trouble with twitter though is the ability to write enough in a series of 140 characters. Often quite less as more people join the conversation. So I felt driven to write this. It is not aimed at said person but I hope he reads it and gets a little insight.

I am 59. I have smoked since 14 but dabbled with tobacco since 9. I quit many times with varying degrees of success. No, what am I saying. With ZERO success. Two years ago, my daughter persuaded me to try Vaping. She had been hinting at it for a lot longer and I knew it was working for her. She was advocating, which meant little to me at the time, and had become quite well known. So I relented and let her set me up with some Vaping gear and Juices. It worked. Overnight I quit smoking and have not looked back. I have not had one single urge to light a cigarette since that day. I was an inveterate smoker yet for the 1st time in the longest part of my life I didn't want to smoke. If God had came down and spoken to me I couldn't have been more shocked.

I followed my Daughter on Twitter and tried to get a handle on what it was she was having to fight for. I started meeting a lot of people just like me. Surely, no-one wanted to take away this miracle and cause so many people to inevitably return to smoking burnt tobacco did they? Well actually, they did and the more involved I got the more it became clear that vested interests were at stake. People who held positions of power and respect not only did not understand what it is like to be a smoker and why Vaping works, but were actually dismissing people as shills, anecdotes and astroturf. These were people like me, real people who had found a real answer to a lifelong struggle against tobacoo addiction. People who actually wanted to help other people find that same escape route that we had all discovered. Yet Public health and the Tobacco Control Industries, because make no mistake that is what they are, were prepared to lie, produce biased, flawed studies and then refuse to engage with the people they were damaging.

Now let me make this clear. I KNOW Vaping works. I KNOW it is magnitudes safer than smoking lit tobacco. I don't need to fight to save Vaping for personal reasons. I know enough now to pretty much ensure I can Vape for the rest of my life. NO. I am fighting to give every smoker the chance to find what I found. To be able to help every smoker find the right set up to Vape and never return to cigarettes. To not be limited to ineffective equipment designed by committees that have no clue what is required thus leading to the inevitable relapse and return to smoking. I am fighting for peoples lives.

To members of Public Health. I look inside me and can say without doubt, my conscience is clear. Can you really do the same.