Monday 2 January 2017

Bullshit Bingo With The Cult Of Tobacco Control

I've often accused the tobacco control industry of being packed full of self-enriching plankton who variously lie, produce junk science, pretend rules of physics and economics don't exist, and who do so because they are not even remotely interested in improving public health. We see examples of the aforementioned character flaws almost on a daily basis, but it's very rare we find an item which includes every single one of them.

Behold, then, exactly such a thing with this study just released courtesy of four unrepentant moonhowlers from the University of North Carolina. It's a true classic of the genre.

The experiment contacted smokers in a phone survey, and measured how many of them were interested in using e-cigs under a variety of different scenarios. Unsurprisingly, the more the researchers stated that e-cigs contained fewer harmful chemicals, the more interest their subjects showed in using them. In other words, the less risky something is, the more people will be willing to try it, this is hardly rocket science.

But here's where the junk science part comes in, as the NNA explains here.
What isn't immediately obvious from the publicly available abstract, but is noted in the limitations section of the full paper hidden behind a paywall, is the fact that the study concentrated on those smokers who said they would start or increase their use of e-cigarettes without stopping smoking. So smokers who indicated that they would completely switch to the safer product were excluded.
This small adjustment enables the North Carolina maggots in human form to then fraudulently portray all users of e-cigs as 'dual users' who smoke as well as vape. Vital if you have pre-committed to coming up with something negative about reduced risk products (which was probably a condition of the grant they received, to be fair).

We then see the blithe dismissal of long-accepted scientific consensus on dose and toxicity (from here).
"[E-cigarettes] may not be able to be approved as a modified risk tobacco product on the basis of reduced chemical exposure alone because the public views information about lower chemical amounts as inherently related to reduced health harms"
Yes, the public views it that way because it has been known since the 16th century that the dose makes the poison, and if you are ingesting fewer harmful chemicals that is quite obviously a good thing if you are interested in reducing harm.

Not if you're in the cult of 'public health' and especially its subset of tobacco control though. Because, you see, tobacco controllers will always insist that just smoking one cigarette exposes you to the same harm as smoking 40; they have spent so much time concocting utter bullshit to 'prove' this that now researchers such as those in North Carolina actually believe it. Their swivel-eyed obsession is so important to them that they are willing to produce junk that actually pretends the rules of physics and biology don't exist.

The result of all this is a conclusion which advocates lying to the public as a policy suggestion, based on their own corrupt and mendacious reality-bending lunacy!
FDA is required to publicly display information about the quantities of chemicals in cigarettes and cigarette smoke in a way that is not misleading. This information, if paired with information from advertising or FDA disclosures indicating that e-cigarette aerosol contains lower amounts of those same chemicals, could have the unfortunate effect of encouraging smokers to become dual users or increase their existing dual use under the mistaken impression that they are significantly reducing their health risks
There is no "mistaken impression", because it is scientific fact.

They know that misleading information is likely to deter people from switching to e-cigs, and I'm sure they know that their junk science and perversion of the truth is likely to have that effect too. But they really don't care, because they're not remotely interested in improving public health, instead more having an eye on the lucre they can gain in the future by continuing to torment and loot smokers. Fewer packets sold mean less tax dollar for 'public health' and therefore fewer grants, and that just won't do, will it?

So there you have the tobacco control full house. Every piece of truth-torturing bullshit all wrapped up in one neat but astounding package. They're not trying to improve public health, they're just playing 3D chess.

What a great start to 2017, playing bullshit bingo with the 'experts' of the anti-smoking scam. Yet again e-cigs have exposed the tobacco control industry as a collection of crooked, manipulative, rust-hearted shitsacks who are prepared to lie at all costs to keep their harmful but lucrative bandwagon going. 



No comments: