E-cignorance

Stupid people saying stupid things about vaping

YouGov put out a poll yesterday which showed an appalling lack of public understanding about the relative risks of vaping and smoking. Only 24 per cent of respondents knew that smoking is much worse for your health than vaping. 52 per cent reckoned vaping is as bad or worse than smoking. Surveys from the USA show that public ignorance among Americans is even worse, with a mere 2.6 per cent of them able to give the correct answer.

It beggars belief that most people can’t guess, even intuitively, that e-cigarettes are at least a bit less hazardous than combustible tobacco, but this is what happens when ‘public health’ quacks lie to people via the sensationalist media year after year. There is no self-correcting mechanism and so people just keep getting dumber.

Politicians need to be aware of this context. If a survey shows a majority of people supporting tougher regulation of vaping, they need to remember that only a quarter of them have a basic understanding of the relative risks and more than half of them are totally misinformed.

Meanwhile, a new Cochrane Review, published on Monday, concluded that there is ‘high-certainty evidence’ that e-cigarettes work better than nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) in smoking cessation.

Cochrane Reviews are based on randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and are generally considered to be the highest standard of evidence in medicine. For various reasons, RCTs may not be the best way to see how effective vaping is in the real world and they probably understate the benefits. Nevertheless, the Cochrane Review found that vaping is 50% more effective than NRT and twice as effective as behavioural support. This evidence cannot be ignored.

Except that it can. In Australia, it is ignored. Australia is in the peculiar position of having its politicians and most of its ‘public health’ industry insisting that there is no evidence that vaping helps smokers quit and that e-cigarettes are terribly dangerous, and yet e-cigarettes are available on a doctor’s prescription.

Confused? They certainly are. As of this month, e-cigarettes are only available on a doctor’s prescription because the government has doubled down on its long-standing prohibition of nicotine vapes by banning the sale and importation of nicotine-free vapes. Vapers can ask their doctor for a prescription but given how hostile the medical establishment is to vaping in Australia, it would be easier for them to buy an e-cigarette on the black market which, as the Sunday Times recently reported, is very easy indeed:

Those gathered in the Perth shop did not appear to heeding this advice. “I didn’t know about any ban,” a member of staff said after selling a A$25 (£13) pineapple ice vape to a customer.

Down the road, the manager of another general store selling vapes, as well as an array of bongs, said he was not worried. “Maybe, maybe not,” he shrugged, when asked whether he intended to obey the new law.

... The Australian Border Force (ABF) believes organised crime groups are behind three quarters of the illicit vapes and tobacco imported. Rohan Pike, a police officer for 25 years who established the ABF’s tobacco strike team to target smuggling, believes the prescription-only model for vaping will drive sales further underground. “The laws introduced in 2021 were a complete farce and these latest ones are also largely unenforceable,” he said. “It’s naive to think we’ll be able to stop vapes flooding in across the border.”

Despite overwhelming evidence that a massive black market for e-cigarettes already exists and that a tobacco turf war has led to dozens of arson attacks in Victoria, ‘public health’ academic Becky Freeman told the Sunday Times that she was sanguine about the threat of further criminality.

Freeman said she had heard all these arguments before. “We always see these black market claims when we take something off the market that’s highly addictive and incredibly profitable. Is cocaine sold at [supermarkets] to 13-year-olds? No. Nor is it in sparkly packages and fruit flavours.”

This idiotic non sequitur was beaten a few days later when Freeman’s mentor, the low IQ, say-anything, do-anything prohibitionist Simon Chapman was quoted in the Daily Mail. The Mail’s correspondent in Sydney had found that the new law is not working quite as intended:

Along King Street in the trendy Sydney suburb of Newtown, Daily Mail Australia journalist Olivia Day spotted at least 20 independent and chain stores selling illegal nicotine vapes, illicit cigarettes and other smoking devices.

Surprisingly, the transaction for this forbidden vice was as smooth as buying everyday legal goods.

No ID checks to confirm age, no secretive whispers – just a straightforward exchange of my credit card for the contraband.

Just four simple words were required: ‘Do you sell vapes?’

To which Chapman responded with a spot of gas-lighting….

Professor Simon Chapman of Public Health at the University of Sydney said vapes needed to be strictly regulated, and objected to calling the reforms a ‘ban’.

‘Vapes are not being banned but strictly regulated like they always should have been. Anyone who says they are banned probably also believes that every prescribed drug in Australia is by the same argument also banned,’ Professor Chapman told media. 

Prohibition can’t fail if there’s no prohibition! Checkmate libertarians!

Needless to say, alcohol was available on prescription during Prohibition in the USA and yet no one was in any doubt that alcohol was, er, prohibited. Laughing gas was banned in the UK last year, but is still available for medical use. Opiates are banned but can be obtained on prescription. So, yes, it is reasonable to describe any substance that is only available under medical supervision as being ‘banned’.

Dearie me. Australian ‘public health’ academics - they’re not sending their best, are they?