The War with the Fnools pt 1

So, I was debating on how to go about this blog, after all,  there is rather a lot to say. So it is a two parter.

Oh, and no, it is not a typo, 'Fnools' will be explained in part 2.

Let me start by saying a Thank you to Public Health England. Whatever we might think or have thought about them, they did not have to to invite us into their space. Yes of course they should do, there are lots of things that should have happened, but that does not mean they have or will. I am genuinely grateful that we were given a seat and a voice. The agenda for the day, including speakers can be found here. Probably worth a quick look before starting this.

The best summary of the Public Health England Symposium, from our perspective, is this video here. Dave Dorn and myself were both present for the entire day, Oliver Kershaw was a guest panelist in the afternoon session. The link will take you to the VTtalk show we did together with Sav, on Sunday 18th May. I highly suggest you watch it if you have not already.

All in all, this was positive stuff. Very positive. Given the similarities between the pro-ecig, pro-harm reduction people speaking, I will give an overview.

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Tobacco control have made NO effort to utilise Harm Reduction. They are failing smokers; specifically smokers in manual professions and those suffering with mental illness.

Slide from Anne McNeill presentation.

The reduction in smoking rates are just not reflected in these groups, they remain largely unaffected by all that TC has done.

However, the impact that e-cigs are having are unprecedented. In 30 years, Anne McNeill had seen nothing like this happen. This year we have seen a leveling out of e-cigarette use in ALL socioeconomic groups.

This might be stuff that we realise, but from a PH perspective, this is dreams coming true! Slide from McNeill presentation.

Allowing NRT to be sold Over The Counter without the behavioural support offered by cessation services was a mistake. A mistake that cost lives.

Disallowing Europeans the option of Snus as Harm Reduction was a mistake. A mistake that cost lives. The success of snus in Sweden comes from the easy availability. Smokers are making a choice at the point of sale.

Snus in action. From John Britton presentation.

Tobacco Control and Public Health are being misinformed and misled by poor peer review and Press releases of studies that do not reflect the data contained within the study itself.

E-cigs are being subjected to unjustified panic led scrutiny. If this same scrutiny were to be applied to Plain Packaging, it would not be going ahead!

If the entire population used Nicotine the health impacts would be negligible. The health implications of nicotine use in pregnant women is of 'no significant concern'. NRT has had NO impact in this area (Most recently shown here).

'These things need to be available anywhere tobacco is', in fact, they need to be everywhere. Marketing needs to be clever, aimed at adults and promoting vaping. 'Social media marketing is essential'. It is entirely possible that Public Health have scored an own goal by allowing advertising to be solely from a lifestyle product perspective.

The media coverage has been hysterical and disproportionate. 'Diabetics and suffers of Heart Disease are now too frightened to use e-cigs'.

'Peoples lives are at stake.'

'No renormalisation of smoking, only normalisation of vaping.'

'The evidence is going the opposite way to what PH and TC are saying.'

'E-cigs are already having the desired effect.'

And finally, this point was made by Martin Dockrell, with passion and very pointedly at every individual present in the room. It was an instruction.

'Talk to vapers!'

All of the above may look like common sense to us. This is what we have been shouting about for all this time. We know all this. But, NONE of this was said by us. This came from Robert West, Anne McNeill, Martin Dockrell and John Britton. The frustration was palpable. The irritation at the risk aversion coming from within their own field. The above might not look all that significant, or unusual, because it's what we already know. But it is! Yes, they have safety concerns. Yes, they want to understand what is causing toxins; is it the fluid or the heating? Yes, they are concerned about poor nicotine delivery from substandard devices putting people off.

Aren't we concerned about these things too?

Are these concerns enough to stop this in it's tracks?

Our answer? No!
Their answer? No!

But, my favourite picture from the entire day. The moment that made me say 'Shit - they've got it! They've finally got it!' and grab Dave Dorn's arm, was this from John Britton, and the caption is his, not mine.

NRT does not do this.

A happy smiling smoker. An attractive, normal woman. Smoking. They admitted that NRT just is not going to cut it. It has an image problem. He looks at us with our vibrant and strong community and then states 'There is no NRT community' to the room - and the room laughed!

Now this is all very positive, and a mere shapshot of the great bits from the day. There is more, of course there is more, but I am going to put it into part 2. It is a bit more...uh...ranty...

I will close this part with this...WE were a part of this change. Our persistence, our knowledge and our passion. We have not shut up and it looks like it is finally working. If for even a single second you think that it has all been for nothing, you are wrong. It has taken a long time, we are exhausted and the battle is still not over, but I think we all deserve a MASSIVE pat on the back. A year ago we were staring defeat in the face. The obliteration of all of this. I have lost count of the amount of times I have found somewhere quiet in my house to sit and cry where my children can't hear me. The sheer overwhelming frustration that They are just not getting it, they are not listening and are ignoring the impact of what they are trying to do.

Well that might be changing and we have played a huge part in that. Now the data is showing that we were right and they want to listen.

Congratulations :)

Part two coming shortly - and it is cross.

The Invisible Smoker

Earlier on this year, I tweeted about a conversation I had been coerced into in the pub. My poor suffering husband is bored crapless of my endless witterings about this whole situation, but when out in the wider world, people are hugely interested. Try as I might to just enjoy sitting with my friends and have a pint, it is inevitable that at some point, someone will crack a joke about my Sonic Screwdriver then mention some nonsense about something they have heard on the radio or read in the news from a trusted source (Yes BBC, I am looking at you!). My heart has a little sink and the shoulders slump a bit when this happens and what I want to say is 'Do you REALLY want to get into this now? I mean, I will, but...really? Now?'

Do not get me wrong, I spend most of my waking hours thinking about all of this, but I have three kids, I do not get to the pub very often!! There is SO MUCH now - so very very much to try and explain to the uninitiated. Where do you start? How do you not sound like a tin hat wearing loon? Really, people need to know what the bottom line is. Why this matters.

Here is the bottom line.

This happened in January with a group of friends, all never smokers but for one current smoker, Greyburn. Greyburn is in his 60's. A funny, intelligent, recovered alcoholic. He is vibrant, bursting with character and a joy to be around (also has a penchant for red corduroy trousers). His remaining vice is smoking. After quite a lengthy debate about the current ecig situation, with no disagreement on the absurdity of it all, Greyburn pops outside for a ciggy with his non smoking wife. I follow to have a vape (the pub overlooks the sea and the waves were massive that night, so it was an excuse to go look). After a minute or so of wave watching, Greyburn leans over to me, almost conspiratorially, and says,

 'I think you might have converted me!'

'Really??' I stuttered and explained that I wasn't trying to. It is a golden rule for me - never try to convert.

'No' he says 'I really am interested'.

I offer to write down a few links and pertinent terms for him to talk to Google about, then wander back into the pub, a little shell shocked. A moment later, his wife catches up with me, grabs my arm, pulls me down to her level and whispers in my ear that in all the time she had known him, he had never once even mentioned the 'Q' word and she could not believe what she had overheard outside.

Two days later, I had a phone call from Greyburn. His kit had arrived and would one of us mind popping over to see him to help him figure it all out.

I saw him for the first time since, this Saturday, 3 months or so later. I had no intention of bringing up ecigs, whether it had worked for him or otherwise. I didn't need to, it was the first thing he mentioned. After his purchase, he finished off the baccy he had, and has not picked up any since. In fact, and here is the interesting bit, he loses his ecig for days at a time 'cos it looks like a pen and gets lost in my desk'. And guess what - it does not bother him a bit. Not a single bit.

This man had NO motivation to stop smoking. None at all. This man had never visited a cessation clinic. Never picked up a patch, popped a pill or puffed on a plastic period plug.

Greyburn is the Invisible Smoker.

Yes yes, you might well point out that there is no such thing anymore as thanks to hysterical and aggressive demonisation and denormalisation, smokers have never been MORE visible than they are now. Elements of our wonderous, well paid, highly influential Tobacco Control community, have successfully segregated an entire section of society. I feel sure this has been done before....

So why is Greyburn, and millions like him, invisible?

Let's jump ahead, past the implentation of the TPD, past public bans, flying right over the WHO and their precious FCTC and the shoehorning of ecigs into it. Let  us settle in a pub. Let us assume that the WHO and its minions out in the world have succeeded in all their aims. A group of friends, one of whom is a smoker. How different could this conversation be then? How cemented into the public psyche could it be that ecigs are as 'dangerous as tobacco'. How likely is it even, that someone will be using a 2nd or 3rd generation device? Will there still be advocates or will we have all been beaten into submission, great swathes of rules and laws smothering our ability to talk freely, use our mods. We could so easily be back outside, huddled with the smokers, being sneered at. Derided. Lied about. Propagandised against.

Demonised!

The conversation I had this year, may not be possible in this version of the future. 

Greyburn is Invisible because Tobacco Control will never be able to touch him. They will never talk to him. They will never understand him.There will be no contact, no cessation clinic for him. For them, he does not exist, he is collateral damage. No amount of banning, tax increases, being put in stocks and having rotten vegetables thrown at him in the town square, will make a damned bit of difference to Greyburn.

The conversation, over a pint, in a pub is what made the difference.

The insane, dribble flecked rantings of the out of touch, control freak zealotry of what looks more and more like a cultish religion in the aloof elements of Public Health did this. The castrating and devaluing those who do not subscribe to their teachings and dogma made him interested. Those whose gods should be seen only in the sterile cardboard boxes adorned with the names of their Makers printed clearly upon their sides. But we embrace false idols and for this we must be punished. The likeness of our habit comparable only to the devil itself - tobacco. We must be cast from society - branded and humiliated. The modern day heretic, punished with death to warn others of the danger we present to The Clean. The innocent. The children. The Believers. Our clouds of bubblegum scented vapour the tool to strike fear into the very hearts of those around us.

Greyburn looked upon you with the contempt you deserve. Your pathetic behaviour had no effect on him. You may think that 63% of smokers want to quit because they told you they did, but all that really tells you, is that 37% were brave enough to say they don't! And let me tell you this, there are many more in that 63% who do not want to either, but they are the abused of the society you created. Too scared to speak out, but they are not stopping either.

There are a growing number among you who realise this, that there will always be smokers who want help but there are a great many who do not. More importantly, NONE of them deserve what you have done and are continuing to do. There is great respect out there for those that understand that smokers need to be given their dignity back. The bullying must stop and society at large needs to understand that if they then choose to consume nicotine in a safer manner, there is nothing to be scared of. Nicotine is not Beelzebub come to drag The Children to an eternity of damnation, presided over by the evil barons of tobacco companies. Your restrictive vision is far closer to theirs than you care to admit. As are the distasteful practices for which they are so well known. The lines are being blurred and historians will look back at this point in time and wonder where theirs end and yours start.

There are around 9 millions smokers in the UK alone. How many are you prepared to spite for not subscribing to your mantras?

How many of them are invisible, just like Greyburn?

Everything in life is only for a while - PKD

My name is Lorien. And I am a nicotine addict.

I feel that is how I should start this, as though I am sat in some kind of self-help meeting of similarly addicted and addled adults. Tangling my fingers in my hair and staring at the floor hopelessly. Battling to get through my daily life, carrying my burden around with me like the proverbial monkey.  Flailing about helplessly beneath its weight, sobbing into my pillow at night wondering when the pain and misery is going to end.  Drowning in self-pity at all the friends I have lost along the way, the determination to maintain my habit having driven them all from me. Oh woe and horror is me. BEGONE DEVIL BEGONE!

So let us start again, and properly.

My name is Lorien. I am a vaper.

I do not battle with anything. I am not miserable and I do not mourn the decisions I have made or the habit I maintain. I smoked for 23 years and I loved it (mostly) and I have vaped for 14 months and actually love it even more. And so what? There is something people need to understand. I was not ill as a smoker and I am not ill as a vaper. I CHOSE to smoke and equally I choose to vape. Like any smoker I spent years and years being bullied and cajoled by those in public health. Then feeling they alone were not having enough of an impact they widened their net and ensnared others to expand their crusade;  family were encouraged to join in. A little more stretching saw friends get drawn into the routine of harassment.  Then the final blow, random people in the street, or customers at my workplace feeling, they too, could comment on my lifestyle.  If they did not feel brave enough to comment, they would sigh, tut or sneer.  Welcome to the world of the smoker. State sanctioned bullying that creeps into every aspect of your life.

Here is the thing; most smokers hear all this on an almost daily basis, and do you know what the smoker is doing in their head? Giving the health bully a big fat heartfelt and impassioned finger! And well they might.

I made the switch to an electronic cigarette in November 2012 as, very briefly, it came to light that my 12yr olds best friend thought that smoking was the coolest thing in the world. Now, I will defend an adults right to smoke, but I could not bear the idea of a 12 year old thinking that at his age, it was cool. So I bought an e-cig; what we call a 2nd generation device. It looks something like a fountain pen and I could chop and change the flavours of the refill liquid as I pleased. As it happens, my first flavour was caramel apple pie and I loved it thank you very much. From that first moment in my garden, it worked for me. I preferred the taste, the experience on the inhale and exhale was not so dissimilar that I would not be able to adjust.

That was the day of my last ciggy. Did I wave it goodbye? Did I build a pyre and send it off down the river with ceremonial chanting ‘I am not a smoker I am not a smoker’, dancing and general merriment? Balloons and streamers, an announcement on the local radio station? Hire an airplane to write across the sky?  No. I just chucked my baccy in the bin and was done with it. No pressure, no panic and no dreaded ‘Q’ word. (NB to public health; seriously, stop using that word! It does more harm than good now.)

So if I was so committed a smoker of tobacco, a failed multiple trier of patches and gums, a reader of smoking self-help books, why did it work so well? After all, I did not really expect it to and it was something of a surprise. It is because I realised that I could continue the habit that I enjoyed so much, but this time, it came with a world of delightful and tasty flavours. I could choose how strong I wanted my nicotine, I could customise my experience with different devices, fiddle with the settings so I could have more or less vapour. Tinker with the heat to suit the flavour I was using. Above all, I could do all of these things and be doing significantly less damage to myself and none to those around me.

What is not to like? 

Well, a lot if you are a member of some parts of Public health, or an ex-smoker with the 'I managed to *insert Q word* cold turkey so I, in my superiority, deem you dirty and pathetic and forever beholden to your addiction’ attitude. Or never smoker politician or the kind of ‘well I don't like it so ALL MUST CEASE AND DESIST’ person who feels the need to stand in judgement of everyone else.  That is all another matter though and not the purpose of this letter. Though for the record, there are more than 90 studies into the safety of e-cigs and no evidence anywhere on this entire planet that shows our darling teenagers are turning to tobacco after standing within a mile of someone vaping. In fact, why those publicly funded health groups continue to peddle the line ‘but we just don’t know’ is quite beyond me. So, those people can sit in their ivory towers proclaiming to all and sundry what we must and must not be doing and how we should be doing it, safe in the knowledge that we all stopped listening a long time ago.

If I had a regret, it was not standing up for myself as a smoker, so I am doing it doubly so now as a vaper. There is nothing wrong with me. I do not need medicating. I am not ill. I am not a scourge on society. We vapers (and smokers) have jobs, families, children and even pets; all the same things that you non-smoking/vaping types do. Can you believe it, pets indeed! 

Nicotine is not the devil incarnate. It does not impair my judgment, make me violent, create a dangerous driver. It has no more a detrimental effect on society than the caffeine in your coffee and significantly less than the alcohol in your glass of red wine. I am not harming anyone at all and if I have to hide away how will any smoker get the chance to ask me‘What on earth is that? A Sonic Screwdriver?’ or ‘You smoked for 23 years? But you don't look old enough!’ (Ok, I might have made that last one up).

So,

 Dear Public Health. I tried your patches. I chewed your gum. I sucked on your pathetic tampon inhaler and I watched someone I love suffer at the hands of your smoking pills. Your expensive and well marketed lies did not work and in the end I found something that did. I did it myself, I have paid for it myself with not a drop of tax payer money spent! I do not need your help and I do not think I ever did. Stop acting like a petulant child just because you did not ‘cure’ me. You have turned into a caricature, the bully in the playground trying to turn all the other kids against me because I did not want to join your bland, boring, joyless, insipid, fat free, sugar free, nicotine free, alcohol free party.

Lots of love, hugs and kisses, someone who already has a Nan.

To everyone else, think of me when you boil the kettle in the morning for that tea or coffee you 'need' to start the day, or settle down in the evening with a glass of your favourite tipple after your hectic day at work or with the kids. Please stop throwing around the word addiction and consider what it really means to those that genuinely suffer with it, whose daily lives are ruled by it. Do not ask me when I am going to give this up, because I might just ask when you are going to give up your caffeine or your glass of wine.

Then, just ponder for a moment how you will feel when the health police are banging on YOUR door.

Well here it is. I finally gave in and on the sage advice of a Mr Bates, made my very own blog. 'It's cathartic' he told me.

Well we shall see about that, but I suspect he is right. You are unlikely to find fisking here, Jo does that. Nor are you going to find reviews and sleuthdom, Matt does that. Christopher Snowden and Dick Puddlecote have intensely well researched libertarian observation covered, and no one can break down the absurdities of regulation like Clive Bates can.

Me? You are just going to get what I think and tomorrow morning I will put up my first proper entry. A letter I wrote to the wider world a while ago which niggles at me each time I turn on my laptop.

"What was the point in writing me if no one is going to read me?"

Well, I assume it is the letter I can hear in my head and not just 'some other voices'.

Guess we will find out in the morning when I put it up.