Category Archives for "Vaping"

Vaping

Vaping should be seen for what it is: an alternative, allegedly safer, way of continuing in thrall of nicotine addiction.

The statement from Public Health England that ‘vaping is a least 95 per cent safer than smoking’ – it has almost become a mantra – has been heavily criticised in the medical literature, for example, in the British Medical Journal:

“Due to many methodological problems, severe conflicts of interest, the relatively few and often small studies, the inconsistencies and contradictions in results, and the lack of long-term follow-up no firm conclusions can be drawn on the safety of e-cigarettes. However, they can hardly be considered harmless.”

These blogs, together with those in the category ‘E-cigarettes’, explore the matter further.

Does Vaping Make You Anxious?

Do you know why vaping is such a big problem with school children? Because they are buying vapes, especially the brightly coloured disposable kind with child-friendly names and flavours, and getting hooked on them. And why are they engaging in this idiotic behaviour? Because vapes are easily available for purchase, online and at vape shops, […]

Advocacy, Campaigning, and Pressing

ISH (Inaction on Smoking and Health, formerly known as ASH (Action on Smoking and Health)) is well named. You can see it in their repetitively and badly written policy statement, ‘What we do’: We work by using our dedicated team of tobacco policy experts to work collaboratively: Information, networking and support: working with others to […]

E-Cigarette Summit 2023

Evidence or Common Sense? – Part II Momentous news! Later this month the 2023 iteration of The E-Cigarette Summit UK will take place under the auspices of the Royal College of Physicians, no less. This is what it’s all about: The E-Cigarette Summit has a single aim of facilitating respectful dialogue and thoughtful analysis of […]

Solving the Smoking Problem: Evidence or Common Sense?

Last month the UK Department of Health and Social Care published a paper with the encouraging title: Stopping the start: our new plan to create a smoke-free generation. There are two main strands to this laudable aim: helping current smokers stop poisoning themselves with tobacco fumes by encouraging them to switch to vaping; and stopping […]

Inaction on Smoking and Health

According to the ASH (Action on Smoking and Health) Newsletter of 27 September 2023, ‘The “vapes are 95 per cent safer than cigarettes” message has backfired.’ Indeed it has, as I pointed out in 2017. But first, a digression. ASH is misnamed. ‘Smoking’ and ‘health’ are incompatible. The one action they could take to improve […]

Disease Warnings on Every Cigarette!

Courtesy of that august organ, ASH Daily News, on 5 June 2023 we learn that the UK government is in a bind. On the one hand, ‘Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, this week announced measures to reduce vaping among teenagers’, and on the other hand, ‘Health officials believe that vapes can be a useful tool […]

Free E-Cigarettes – What a Brilliant Idea!

I have written previously about the cock-eyed plan of bribing pregnant smokers to cease poisoning themselves with tobacco fumes. Now Mr Neil O’Brien, MP, the UK Minister for Primary Care and Public Health, has announced the latest wheeze to try and cut smoking rates. On the gov.uk website (11 April 2023) this what, with all […]

Does Vaping Make You Grumpy?

In previous blogs I have dealt with how vaping makes you feel bad, induces vulgarity, and is an activity from which you will get no satisfaction. Now I have to add another downside to this abnormal and potentially harmful behaviour: it can result in vapers being grumpy, as I shall explain. Do you know what […]

Cotton Candy to Blue Raspberry Disposable Vapes

Here we go again. An article on BBC News (14 June 2022) shows everything that’s wrong with the current approach to smoking and vaping. Let’s start with the headline: ‘Vaping – it is a risk-free option?’ An option for what? For a way of taking nicotine into your body? You don’t need options for this […]

Quit Vaping and Reboot Your Mind!

I have just read a book called Allen Carr Easy Way To Quit Vaping. But taking a second glance at the cover one can discern in small print the words ‘with John Dicey’. Did they both write the book? Obviously not, since it was published in 2021 and Allen Carr died in 2006 (ironically, from […]

Vape On!

Vapid thinking about the vaping problem is shown in a seven-author Research Letter in an online publication of the Journal of the American Medical Association called Network Open (2 April 2021). Six of the authors are Doctors of Philosophy and one has a Master of Science degree. (It’s part of the PATH study about which […]

Further up the Garden Path

Since I first wrote about the PATH (Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health) study (https://www.nicotinemonkey.com/up-the-garden-path-to-reduce-tobacco-related-death-and-disease/) how far along have our intrepid researchers got? They now proceed, we are informed, not in steps or stages, but in waves. We’re now at Waves 1 – 3 with a paper released in March 2020 by Saul Shiffman and […]

E-Cigarettes on Prescription!

It has been claimed that ‘The English tobacco control/smoking cessation community is internationally regarded as being utterly, hopelessly smitten with e-cigarettes. It’s become almost cult-like.’ See https://www.nicotinemonkey.com/hopelessly-smitten-with-e-cigarettes/ Now it seems this community is about to take leave of its senses. A certain Martin Dockrell, the Tobacco Control Programme Lead of Public Health England, is quoted […]

Vaping is Magnificent!

Some illuminating insights can be gained into the smoking problem by different people’s comments on my answer to a question posted on Quora (a US based question-and-answer website). The question was: What is your opinion on vaping and e-cigarettes? I answered thus: E-cigarettes should be seen for what they are: drug (nicotine) delivery devices. There’s […]

A New Way To Poison Yourself

Do you know what formaldehyde cyanohydrin is? The answer will be revealed shortly, but first, kind reader, consider the following: A BBC news item (20 September 2018) shows TV presenter Jeremy Kyle sitting at his desk, looking rather serious. He boasts he’s quit smoking twenty cigarettes-a-day after thirty-five years: ‘I am proud to say that […]

How E-Cigarettes Make You Feel Bad

It seems these days everyone is jumping on the e-cigarette bandwagon—the debate is swirling back and forth. Are e-cigarettes harmful or good for smokers? If they’re harmful, how much less so than smoking? Should vaping be permitted/banned everywhere/on public transport/in classrooms/hospitals? Should they be regulated, and if so, how and how much? As an example […]

Does Vaping Induce Vulgarity?

When you think of charities, what usually occurs to you next? That they are, no doubt, deserving, and the fact that they all want money. For example, the Tibet Relief Fund, Yorkshire Cat Rescue, or the National Trust—all worthwhile charities in need of funding from the philanthropic public. Now, let us take the so-called New […]

Wonderful Tar-Free E-Cigarettes

In The Times (2 September 2018) there is an article by the liberal democratic politician, Norman Lamb, MP, (pictured) with a title that it must have given him a chuckle to write, ‘It’s time to stop tarring e-cigarettes and tobacco with the same brush’. Mr Lamb is a solicitor. Nonetheless, he is Chair of the […]

Anti-Nicotine Alliance

You will not have not heard of this organisation because it’s still in the process being set up. When the Board of Trustees is established – Dr Gabriel Symonds has volunteered to be the honorary Chairman – we intend to apply to the UK Charities Commission for registration. The main aim of ANA is to […]

Hopelessly Smitten With E-Cigarettes

How to enjoy poisoning yourself ‘The English tobacco control/smoking cessation community is internationally regarded as utterly, hopelessly smitten with e-cigarettes. It’s become almost cult-like.’ These words were written by Professor Simon Chapman, the well-known Australian public health expert and anti-smoking campaigner, in response to a debate in The British Medical Journal (28 April 2018) on […]

Feeding Nicotine Addiction With E-Cigarettes

Under the guise of protecting public health, the pro-vaping lobby gets into some curious twists and turns. For example, there is an official-looking 2017 paper, Reshaping American Tobacco Policy. It is written by three people, one of whom, Clive Bates, oddly designates himself as ‘Director, Counterfactual’, evidently being unaware of what counterfactual means: pertaining to […]

Juul – the Safer Way to Poison Yourself with Nicotine

Or so the makers of this latest e-cigarette device would have us believe. And what a clever name, suggestive of the jewel in the crown, no doubt. All right, Dr Symonds, that’s enough cynicism. What is Juul all about? Their website describes it as ‘The Satisfying Alternative To Cigarettes’. Do you know what the best […]

Nicotine Addiction and Risks of E-Cigarettes

Professor Colin ‘Nicotine’ Mendelsohn, a self-styled tobacco treatment specialist, is a man with a mission. He has the noble goal of wanting to cure smokers of their dangerous habit of smoking – but he wants to do this by encouraging them to switch to e-cigarettes. I am sure our good Professor would agree that smokers […]

Key Influencers and Decision Makers for E-Cigarettes

Why should you have to do this all day, every day, for years on end? Now here’s something to ponder. A recent article in the online International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health reports a study of vaping with the wordy title of the sort commonly found in scholarly medical articles: […]

A Fun Way to Quit Smoking

Isn’t this fun, or isn’t it? Let’s hear it from a lady called Sarah in a video The Switch. The title reminded me of The Great Switcheroo in Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected—a collection of rather sinister stories for adults.

Why Regulate E-Cigarettes?

Inhale deeply To understand the smoking problem one needs to understand smokers. And the way to do this is to talk to them. Two of the questions I ask all smokers who come to see me for help in quitting are, ‘At what age, and why, did you start?’

Air Rage and Other Nicotine Notes

Is this what smoking does to you? According to The Independent (12 December 2017) a 24 year-old woman was arrested in the US after she smoked in the toilet on a domestic flight. When confronted by the crew she caused a ruckus and ended up being arrested. Later, when asked why she decided to smoke […]

Is Smoking A Mental Illness?

The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP) would seem to think smoking is indeed a mental illness, since it has plunged into the debate about e-cigarettes. It takes a wonderfully fence-sitting position in its July 2017 submission to the ‘Inquiry into the use and marketing of electronic cigarettes and personal vaporisers in […]

Four Professors and a Counterfactual

All the fun of the fumes The long-windedly titled The National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training (NCSCT) recently produced a video called E-cigarettes safety: The facts explained. The trouble is that there are precious few facts available at the moment; but there are plenty of opinions. The film features four Professors who are well […]

Parliamentary Enquiry into E-Cigarettes

A headline in today’s online BBC news (so it must be true) announces ‘E-cigarettes: Cross-party group of MPs launches inquiry’. The main point of this exercise is to try and fill the ‘significant gaps’ in what is known about e-cigarettes including how effective they are as a stop-smoking tool and how they are (or should […]

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