The Big Lie (Vaping, children, flavors)

All this was inspired by the principle—which is quite true within itself—that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.

It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

— Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. X

We have all seen the headlines about how the vaping industry is targeting kids.

 “E-Cigarette Ads Target Millions of Kids, CDC Says“

E-cigarette makers are pouring tens of millions of dollars into advertising their wares — and teenagers are getting the message loud and clear, federal health officials reported Tuesday.

As advertising skyrockets, so do the number of teens seeing it. They’re vaping by the millions now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. The CDC says that trend threatens to derail decades of progress in helping prevent kids from taking up smoking.

“Kid-friendly e-cigarette ads appear to work“

 In the United States, cartoon characters are a no-no in cigarette ads, and candy- or fruit-flavored cigarettes can’t be sold. But that’s not the case for e-cigarettes, and these youth-appealing tactics are luring teens who have never used tobacco products to give e-cigs and even cigarettes a try, a new study suggests.

“‘Peanut Butter Cup’ vape? E-cig ads targeting teens create 224,000 new smokers a year, study says“

Advertising for traditional cigarettes is strictly regulated: No cowboys looking cool, no cartoons and no bright colors that play up candy-flavored cigarettes that might appeal to kids.

Yet these bans don’t apply to e-cigarettes or vapes — increasingly a choice for experimentation by adolescents and young adults. These smoking products use chemical solutions with nicotine flavored with “juices” that have names like “Bubble Pop,” “Strawberry Cotton Candy” and “Peanut Butter Cup.” People inhale these as if they were smoking a traditional cigarette.

So I decided to do a google search for flavored e juice ads to see just how “kid friendly” they were, you know how many I found? NONE! I found plenty of places that sold ejuice, but no print ads, no TV ads and no radio ads. oh wait, I found some.

I even found this cute little radio ad.

So it appears that the news media and tobacco control are doing a much better job of selling these products to kids. Also notice how they try to tie the vaping industry to “Big Tobacco”

There are very few of these products being sold by the tobacco companies and you will find ads for them with very limited flavors, oh and those products are grandfathered in to the FDA deeming regulations.

So now look at the other blatant lies from the conclusion of the Surgeon Generals report

“Flavored e-cigarette use among young adult current

users (18–24 years of age) exceeds that of older adult

current users (25 years of age and older). Moreover,

among youth who have ever tried an e-cigarette, a

majority used a flavored product the first time they

tried an e-cigarette.”

One has to ask how can they get away with such blatant lies. To find the answer to this you have to go back to the beginnings of the tobacco control movement. A group of activist (which included Stanton Glantz and Jonathan Samet) were hired by the EPA to study the effects of radon indoors. Instead these activist faked a report on the effects of second hand smoke. That’s right I said faked. the vast majority of the studies included 1 in the CI meaning no significant chance.

Confidence interval (CI)

The confidence interval indicates the level of uncertainty around the measure of effect (precision of the effect estimate) which in this case is expressed as an OR.  Confidence intervals are used because a study recruits only a small sample of the overall population so by having an upper and lower confidence limit we can infer that  the true population effect lies between these two points. Most studies report the 95% confidence interval (95%CI).

If the confidence interval crosses 1 e.g. 95%CI 0.9-1.1 this implies there is no difference between arms of the study.

to get around this they employed meta-analysis to get around this, they still couldn’t get it done so they dropped the CI from 95% to 90% doubling the margin of error.

The tobacco companies sued and won. The science was pure junk. The EPA appealed, not on the merits of the so called science but on the fact that it was just a report not an action taken by the agency and therefore not reviewable by the courts. Yet this report is still touted as fact. The subsequent Surgeon Generals report used the same methodology.(which is not surprising since the above mentioned Jonathan Samet was the lead author.  How do we know this?  They admit it! From page 21 of the report.

Judge William
L. Osteen, Sr., in the North Carolina Federal District
Court criticized the approach EPA had used to select
studies for its meta-analysis and criticized the use of 90
percent rather than 95 percent confidence intervals for
the summary estimates (Flue-Cured Tobacco Cooperative
Stabilization Corp. v. United States Environmental Protection
Agency, 857 F. Supp. 1137 [M.D.N.C. 1993]). In
December 2002, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
threw out the lawsuit on the basis that tobacco companies
cannot sue the EPA over its secondhand smoke
report because the report was not a final agency action
and therefore not subject to court review (Flue-Cured
Tobacco Cooperative Stabilization Corp. v. The United
States Environmental Protection Agency, No. 98-2407
[4th Cir., December 11, 2002], cited in 17.7 TPLR 2.472
[2003]).
Recognizing that there is still an active discussion
around the use of meta-analysis to pool data
from observational studies (versus clinical trials),
the authors of this Surgeon General’s report used
this methodology to summarize the available data
when deemed appropriate and useful, even while
recognizing that the uncertainty around the metaanalytic
estimates may exceed the uncertainty indicated
by conventional statistical indices, because of
biases either within the observational studies or produced
by the manner of their selection.

What??? Epidemic???

I vape and I notice other vapers and I’ve only seen two adults using the juul and only seen one minor vaping and his dad bought it for him to get him off of cigarettes. Maybe in certain parts of the country where tobacco control is doing a bang up job of advertising these products but not where I live.

So there you have it. Regulatory agencies can lie through their teeth and industry can do nothing but bend over and take it. Not to mention that these same regulators forbid and I MEAN FORBID you from saying that electronic cigarettes are 95+% safer then cigarettes and have helped millions to quit?

But why would they do this?

Because many are willing to give up some of their rights in the name of children and more so if it has no effect on them. It use to be products like people were innocent until proven guilty, not anymore. Now your guilty by association. EVEN IF THERE IS NO ASSOCIATION! Everyone knows that the tobacco companies lied, that is a proven fact. So tobacco control and especially Stanton Glantz engages in these ad homenim attacks to cast doubt on all who would oppose them. Don’t believe me? Using taxpayer money Stanton cooked up one of his studies declaring The TEA party of being a big tobacco front because of their limited government stance.

Climate change doubt is a key belief in the TEA Party, sparked by the Koch-related Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks. Big Tobacco was heavily involved from the 1980s onward, and by 1992 the “Tea Party” was already in play. Extensive new research has unearthed the real history. 

“‘To quarterback behind the scenes, third-party efforts’: the tobacco industry and the Tea Party” by Amanda Fallin, Rachel Grana and Stanton A Glantz, was published online last week in BMJ Tobacco Control, a high-impact peer-reviewed journal. They write:

“Rather than being a purely grassroots movement that spontaneously developed in 2009, the Tea Party has developed over time, in part through decades of work by the tobacco industry and other corporate interests.”

“Starting in the 1980s, tobacco companies worked to create the appearance of broad opposition to tobacco control policies by attempting to create a grassroots smokers’ rights movement. Simultaneously, they funded and worked through third-party groups, such as Citizens for a Sound Economy, the predecessor of AFP and FreedomWorks, to accomplish their economic and political agenda. There has been continuity of some key players, strategies and messages from these groups to Tea Party organisations. As of 2012, the Tea Party was beginning to spread internationally.”

Still don’t believe me? They expel people from the movement for refusing to engage in such tactics.

Rest of the Story Author Expelled from Smokefree Air List-Serve for Criticizing Unfounded and Inflammatory Smear Campaign Against Smoking Ban Opponent

The Rest of the Story

Of course I was thrown off off the list-serve. Any comments that are not supportive of the established anti-smoking cause and its aggressive agenda – which includes attacking individual citizens with no affiliation with Big Tobacco – are automatically viewed as non-constructive and non-productive and therefore, the dissenter must be immediately silenced. There is truly no room for dissent in the tobacco control movement. Dissent is met swiftly and firmly with censorship. The movement will not allow dissenting views to be heard, lest advocates consider those views and decide to challenge the prevailing wisdom and tactics of the movement.

If you ask any honest smoker why they started and if honest will tell you that it was the rebellion anti establishment factor, we all coughed up our left lung and it tasted like shit regardless of flavor. But we pushed through because we wanted that rebel image. How many of you baby boomers fired up a fat boy laughing at PSA’s like this?

This is true of any generation. It is no surprise that in our grand or great grand parents generation alcohol consumption went up as a result of prohibition, in my generation drug use went up as a result. To you nanny statist, look in the mirror. You are the problem.

In closing I leave you with these words from the Declaration of Independence.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

And ask yourself, in a so called free society is it the role of government to tell consenting adults what products they can have?

 

PS