E-Cigarette Politics: Difference between revisions

This is an online resource for materials related to ecigarette politics, legal issues, regulatory issues and health-related topics.We aim to provide reference materials for EV (electric/electronic vaporiser or 'ecig') and THR advocates, and for those involved in the regulation and health debates. There are useful information resources here including a reference list, quotes, politics-related terminology, vaping-related terms and in-depth explanations of various issues. The current state of knowledge of nicotine, nutrition and health is a main feature.'''What's it all about - and why all the fuss?'''<br  />The answer to that question is simple:"If all the smokers in Britain stopped smoking cigarettes and started [using] e-cigarettes we would save five million deaths in people who are alive today. It’s a massive potential public health prize."<br  />''- Prof. J Britton, Royal College of Physicians''It's as simple as that. Britton's statement doesn't really need much in the way of explanation: it is clear and concise, and the benefits he outlines are self-evident. There are no ifs, buts, maybes, caveats, or dramatic unintended consequences: it<span></span>''really is''<span></span>as simple as that.''No one has ever questioned his statement in print, in debate, or in reported comment''.'''Location'''<br  />This is a UK-centric resource, and the facts and figures discussed are usually those relevant to UK or European issues. Although most of the issues are global, some financial issues do not transfer since countries can be grouped according to factors such as tax arranagements, the degree of social support provided by the state, the relative wealth of the population, and the size of the money supply; as a result, the various factors and their effects tend to differ by country. One of the clearest differences is that between the UK and USA: the US money supply is so enormous by comparison with the UK that there are few similarities in the practical financial aspects; and, unlike the UK, the US has a very substantial oral tobacco userbase (8 million, according to Prof Rodu's analysis of raw CDC data), which has an interesting effect on some of the numbers.

It is now very clear that placing artificial restrictions on access to ecigarettes has no relation to health, since there is an overwhelming weight of evidence that tells us there are no issues requiring action in any country where consumer products are effectively regulated. Moves to block access to electronic cigarettes in such countries are based firmly on economic pressures and ideology. Policy-making is a trade-off between saving lives and maintaining current income streams, and the simple fact is that where you stand on life versus profits determines where you stand on the ecig issue.'''The immense revenues created by smoking'''<br  />Smokers who cannot or will not quit deserve safer alternatives. The basic problem here is that smoking generates fabulous wealth for government and giant transnational industries, and there is intense pressure to protect that revenue stream. For example, the UK government currently benefits by around £26 billion per year before costs, and therefore clears around £20bn a year from cigarette sales and the subsequent revenues and cost savings. It can immediately be seen that regulators must be under great pressure to remove any threats to this giant revenue generator - which in practice is the world's biggest gravy train - since vaping will shut much of it down. In a nutshell, that's the problem.Something that causes no measurable amount of disease and by comparison with smoking is harmless cannot be supertaxed and cannot create any gigantic cost savings by killing millions of users on average 8 years early, thus creating massive cost savings on pensions, healthcare and social support for the elderly at the most expensive time in their lives for the state.Add to this, the enormous revenues created by disease for the pharmaceutical industry, who probably earn double the revenues of the tobacco industry from smoking in the UK, together with their very strong influence on health policy (if not outright control), and perhaps the core problem can now be seen: the money that smoking generates is so vast, and so vulnerable to removal by THR approaches, that the prospect of ecigs being allowed to destroy those revenues unhindered is unlikely.For every 10,000 smokers who switch to vaping, 9,999 of them will be removed from the government's supertax generator; from the government's pensions and elderly healthcare early death savings bonanza; from the pharmaceutical industry's disease and drug sales gravy train; and from the cigarette trade's addiction model and cash machine (which, by the way, is by far the smallest of all these revenue channels). And therein lies the problem: there is obviously a very powerful machine in place to protect those revenues. We call it the Smoking Economy.<br  />'''The Smoking Economy'''<br  />Smoking has created one of the world's biggest money machines - a machine that benefits innumerable people in multiple industries, organisations, and government departments. The smoking economy is worth more than one trillion dollars a year globally; it is immensely powerful and well able to protect itself. Its power is obvious from the way that, now a way to finally remove smoking has been invented, that solution is being blocked at every turn. It is the ultimate gravy train and in essence a licence to print money: a 25% section of the population can be oppressed and killed for profit, entirely legally, and with the full consent of the other 75%, enabled by the world's largest propaganda campaign.'''A major public health crime'''<br  />There is no possible excuse for preventing access to low-risk consumer products, and the political processes whereby government and the pharmaceutical and cigarette industries protect their incomes to the detriment of public health should be exposed.We believe that, in time, and given the opportunity, more than half of smokers will switch (since this has already happened in Sweden with an alternative product). Artificial restrictions on this process purely for the benefit of those who earn vast incomes from the smoking money machine are essentially criminal because they are hugely detrimental to public health.If someone argues against THR then you can be assured that their employment depends, ultimately, upon smoking. Otherwise, no one would be arguing against something that will destroy smoking and obviously save millions of lives when nothing else can do so: once the 20% Prevalence Rule operates, the usual methods for reducing smoking no longer work."We have such a massive opportunity here. It would be a shame to let it slip away by being overly cautious. E-cigarettes are about as safe as you can get."<br  />''- R West'''''The effect of a technology change point'''<br  />Technology advances, though, and life changes inexorably as a result. Progress can be slowed by those whose employment depends on smoking - but it cannot be stopped. There are massive public health gains here for the taking; our job is to help sweep aside those who are deliberately slowing progress.The smoking economy is far too powerful to be easily defeated. However, we are at a technology change point: at such a break point the world changes, and no other factor can override that change. It means that nothing can stop electronic vaporisers now the technology is in use - only the timescale to full implementation can be affected by external factors, no matter how powerful they are. We know that this must happen within thirty years as it is always so; for maximum benefit to public health we should aim for a 20-year conversion period. Industries that benefit from smoking will fight hard to protect their domain from destruction by vaping; but we already know the outcome. Nothing stops a new technology: it eventually replaces the old system and nothing can stop it doing so.

The focus of this resource is to provide access to truthful information about THR, and specifically the EV (electric/electronic vaporiser or 'e-cigarette'). The volume of propaganda generated by commercial rivals and their dependents is unprecedented, and clearly designed to obscure the facts. THR advocates who support free and unhindered access to the full range of e-cigarette products will help to enable the single most important advance in public health since the discovery of antibiotics: in one small country alone, full support for this approach has the potential to save millions of lives just among those alive today [1]. There is a sharp contrast here with the current approach to the reduction of smoking morbidity and mortality, which has stopped being effective and cannot produce further significant gains in countries such as the UK due to the 20% Prevalence Rule [2][3].Although smoking prevalence fell dramatically during the final decades of the 20th century, it slowed, and all progress stopped around 2008. There has been no progress at all in recent years. In many countries such as the UK, smoking prevalence has remained static at around 20% of the adult population for many years.''"The rate of smoking in Great Britain has remained largely unchanged over the last five years."''<br  />- ONS, UK official statistics, 2014 (referring to the period 2008-2013) - see References page, Smoking.Despite the huge sums spent on reducing smoking in the UK,<span></span>'''''the number of smokers increased between 2008 and 2013'''.<span></span>''A rough calculation - since such statistics are very well hidden indeed - is that, at the start of 2013, there were approximately half a million more UK smokers than five years before (because smoking prevalence stayed the same at around 20% and population size increased significantly). By early 2014, smoking prevalence had started to fall again, due to the 'ecig effect': the fall in smoking prevalence equals the number who switched to vaping.We can expect smoking prevalence to continue to fall: through 19%, 18%, and possibly 17% in the foreseeable future - as long as no hindrance is placed on smokers switching to vaping.Just as technology has radically changed many aspects of our lives, it has now changed tobacco use, and this advance cannot be stopped. It can be slowed, perhaps considerably, by regulations designed to protect existing industries and government revenues; our focus is to assist the removal of such artificial impediments designed to slow the process of change and that are so massively detrimental to public health. The ultimate outcome is immutable but the timescale could be considerably prolonged by delaying tactics.The prospect of stopping death and disease from smoking is now a reality for the first time, because we now have the tools to reduce morbidity to insignificant proportions. The THR approach is supported in Sweden, where male smoking prevalence will soon be just 5%, with the number of smokers falling by 1% per year, and consequently with the lowest smoking-related mortality of any developed country by a wide margin. We should be able to achieve the same or better with ecigarettes, since these are more popular with smokers than Snus, and because ecigs have the same or less risk than Snus.Do smokers have rights? We think they do:<span></span>[http://www.ecigarette-politics.com/smokers-do-they-have-any-rights.html smokers' rights]. Perhaps even more important are ex-smokers' rights: the rights of those who are ex-smokers not to be forced back into smoking. This right is completely ignored by current legislative proposals; many ex-smokers only manage to avoid smoking by use of an EV, and removing their free choice in this area will inevitably cause many to revert to smoking.''Does the law have the right to compel people to smoke?'''''Smoking Harm Reduction'''<br  />It should probably be pointed out that we are talking about reducing the harm from smoking here; tobacco is not really the problem, smoking it is [7]. For that reason a more accurate term would be 'Smoking Harm Reduction' or 'SHR', and not Tobacco Harm Reduction / THR, which is now the accepted term for this area of public health improvement and is probably too well established to change."Three months of additional smoking poses a greater risk to someone’s health, on average, than a lifetime of using a low-risk alternative."<br  />''- CV Phillips''