Send back the clowns

Two Australian wowsers try to drag Scotland down with them

Don’t ever try to tell me that modern ‘public health’ is evidence-based.

From the Scottish Sun...

Scottish ministers are being urged to copy Australia and make e-cigarettes prescription only in a bid to tackle a new “epidemic of vaping” among young people.

Health campaigners at Ash Scotland made the plea amid growing concern over youngsters vaping.

It has now urged the Scottish Government to “strongly consider following Australia’s precautionary approach to e-cigarettes” by making products containing nicotine available with a prescription only.

What is precautionary about banning the single most effective way of quitting smoking, a product so effective that many smokers who try it end up quitting smoking without ever intending to? That’s not precautionary. It’s irresponsible and reckless.

Professor Emily Banks, a public health specialist at the Australian National University, and Emeritus Professor Mike Daube from the faculty of health sciences at Curtin University in Western Australia, spoke about their experiences at events organised by Ash Scotland in Edinburgh.

Why are these two clowns being flown over to spout their nonsense? Emily Banks is a ‘public health’ drone who produced an evidence review for the Aussie government that real experts laugh at. Daube is a say-anything, do-anything wowser of all trades who got a production of the opera Carmen cancelled because it’s set in a tobacco factory. The man is a lunatic.

Prof Banks said while it is up to each country to develop its own tobacco control strategies, a review she led showed that between two-thirds and three-quarters of smokers who quit managed to do so unaided.

This is the logic of a truly stunted mind, like saying most people who die of COVID-19 have been vaccinated. Firstly, her review is garbage. Secondly, those figures would be lower if Australia legalised vaping and stopped telling people that e-cigarettes are worse than smoking. Thirdly, there aren’t many people quitting in Australia these days, especially when you compare it to countries which take a sane approach to vaping.

Here’s Australia…

Here’s the UK…

And here’s New Zealand (where vaping was legalised in late 2020)…

Now, I never took the course to call myself a ‘public health professional’ but you’d think it would be best practice to copy the countries where smoking is going down and underage smoking is going down rapidly rather than the country where smoking is not going down and underage smoking is going up. But what do I know?

She added: “Our review shows that e-cigarettes are harmful overall to non-smokers, especially young people.

“E-cigarettes are not an approved smoking cessation aid but, for some people, can be useful in attempts to give up tobacco - as long as they don’t use both e-cigarettes and cigarettes, which is the most common pattern.”

If they’re not an approved smoking cessation aid, why are they on prescription in Australia? By the way, using both e-cigarettes and cigarettes is the first step towards quitting cigarettes altogether.

Prof Daube said: “The Australian approach is based on evidence about what works…”

Damn it, now I have coffee all over my keyboard.

“…and concern that marketing and promotion of e-cigarettes and similar products is threatening our successes in reducing smoking.”

All advertising for e-cigarettes that contain nicotine is banned in Australia. Moreover, ‘advertising of all types of e-cigarette products and devices, nonnicotine included, is regulated at the state level, with most states prohibiting any form of advertising or promotion’. So is the advertising ban yet another law that is being widely flouted Down Under or is it just an excuse for the widespread sale of unregulated vapes to people of all ages under a black market that the government created?

“We are facing a new epidemic of vaping among young people, and a resurgent tobacco industry seeking to promote its novel products while doing everything it can to distract attention from the harms of cigarettes, and to prevent the measures we know will reduce smoking.”

Show me some examples of the tobacco industry advertising e-cigarettes in Australia, Mike.

“That isn’t new - it has been a tobacco industry strategy for decades. That is why we need action to curb marketing of vaping products…”

You already have. Didn’t work, did it?

“…and, along with a precautionary approach on e-cigarettes, the Australian Government has announced a major new programme to reduce smoking, including new, stronger warnings - including on individual cigarettes; standardising the size of tobacco packs and products; as well as prohibiting flavours and additives.”

Individual warnings on cigarettes, FFS. These people have long since finished scraping the barrel. They’ve scraped through the barrel and if they scrape much more they’ll dig their way back in Australia and can save the British taxpayer the price of a flight.

Sheila Duffy, chief executive of Ash Scotland, said: “We welcome the perspectives shared by Professor Banks and Professor Daube and urge the Scottish Government to strongly consider following Australia’s precautionary approach to e-cigarettes by ensuring that, in the event of any vaping products being licensed by the MHRA in the future, they would only be made available on prescription to adults who have first tried methods to give up smoking that are known to be safe and effective.”

So you want e-cigarettes to be only available on prescription but there are no e-cigarettes approved for that, so you are effectively saying you want prohibition. And your model is Australia, the only developed country in the world where rates of both underage smoking and underage vaping are going up and where the Australian Border Force is so busy trying to keep vapes out of the country that it is struggling to control drugs and guns?

No thanks. Go back to Australia, Mike and Emily, and take Sheila with you.