They quit smoking using flavored vapor: great pictures that say it all

The Californian vaping advocacy group Not Blowing Smoke has collected a bunch of pictures of vapers for its campaign "We quit smoking using flavored vapor". Even if the pictures are self-explanatory, why they did it deserves to be quoted in full:
Millions of Americans have successfully quit the deadly habit of smoking by switching to electronic cigarettes and vapor products, which have been scientifically proven to be at least 95% less harmful. Tobacco control ideology and its activists will have you believe millions of people are merely “anecdotal evidence”. These former smokers are your parents, grandparents, teachers, neighbors, even your adult offspring. Yet government officials, ranging from the Senate and Congress all the way down to your local city council members and county supervisors along with extremely well big pharma funded tobacco control organizations are working around the clock to deny access to this life saving technology. Do they even realize that they are condemning all these people back into a deadly habit?

Lately, I have been brainstorming about the type of images that should be created to illustrate and support Tobacco Harm Reduction: I think those self-portraits would be a great way to start.

Is the notion of "current use" relevant?

Let us have a look at the way the results of the 2017 Youth Tobacco Survey in Connecticut are presented. First the article in the Hartford Business Journal of October 17:

"Under the latest survey, about 10 percent of freshmen and 20 percent of seniors said they currently use vapes. More than half of respondents said they used their devices for substances other than nicotine, including marijuana, hash oil, THC or THC wax."

Here is the table that aggregates the results under the notion of "current use":  "Note: Current use is defined as having used a product on 1 or more of the past 30 days."

This means putting together (as if it was the same behavior) having tried once or doing it several times everyday. Does that make sense? Why present the data that way when the questionnaire is much more detailed  (see here in pdf) 

Best sources of information

A work in progress

Latest news from Vapers.Org.UK you can subscribe to regularly (not always daily) receive a selection of news directly into your email box.  Produced by the New Nicotine Alliance.

Nicotine Science and Policy, Daily News Digest, by Harry Shapiro,

In French (you can use a translating tool)

Vapolitique, excellent blog by Philippe Poirson, based in Switzerland. Often reports about countries not covered in the English speaking news

Journalisme et santé publique, blog of Jean-Yves Nau where he often writes about e-cigs

What is The Truth?

I have just seen this message  (below) from The truth :(

that refers to this 'study" about initiation of traditional cigarette smoking after e-cig use... 

The first impression I get is that young people who used to be non-smokers but started vaping become regular smokers later. BUT the study is in fact about "initiation", did those 'initiated' smokers become regular smokers? It also looks like this study concerned "young adults" ie above 18 years old but the text used by Truth (fact 399!) does not refer to the age. The distortion/manipulation is subtle in that I think the unsuspecting reader will think any young user will become a life long smoker as I guess (maybe I am wrong) that  'start smoking cigarettes' expands to 'smoking regularly' (at least for me). I think the notion of 'initiation' or experimentation is blurry or unknown for many/most non specialists, for me it translates into they become life long smokers. But it does not seem the study corroborates that. I feel a bit upset by this type of messaging and there are many more proudly disseminated by The Truth. I wonder if there are regulations in the US about 'wrongful/lying advertising" (there used to be in France) and if some of those messages fall into that category?  Visiting their twitter account is quite depressing. 

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IF YOU VAPE YOU'RE 4X MORE LIKELY TO START SMOKING CIGARETTES

Testimonies of ex-smokers who switched to e-cigs dismissed in favor of prohibition

The Hong Kong government announced the prohibition of e-cigs. This ex-smoker explains how e-cigs helped him quit combustibles. His testimony and I guess many in the same vein were ignored or dismissed by the government. The arguments in favor of prohibition to 'protect the kids", advanced by "public health officials" won the day. How to reverse this?

When the New York Times reports about COP8

Sheila Kaplan wrote for the New York Times a long article about what happened at COP8. She mentions "many delegates interviewed at the convention' but she omits to say that the press (including herself) was evicted from the said convention at the very beginning when a proposal by the Canadian delegation to have the sessions open to the press and interested observers was voted down in favor of a complete closed doors policy, except for two press conferences. Apparently, she took no offense at being evicted that way and did not consider it important enough to be shared with the readers of the NYT. The unintended consequence of this lack of access seems to be that she reported a lot about the events organized by big tobacco companies outside of the conference center. I found regrettable that she did not devote more than a few lines (and no link) to the long document No fire, no smoke, the global state of tobacco harm reduction, to sort of dismiss it right away as some sort of PR production paid by Philip Morris:
"A group of people stood outside the convention hall handing out a glossy report titled “No Fire, No Smoke: Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction.” It was written by Knowledge-Action-Change, an organization that receives funding from the Philip Morris Foundation for a Smoke-Free World. Its message: There is “a third way beyond quit or die.”
I suggest that you watch on YouTube the report given by the vaper advocates of INNCO who were also prevented to attend. They take very seriously the possibility to access e-cigs and other alternate nicotine delivery tools because they do believe, from personal experience, they can improve their health and maybe save their lives by providing them with a way to quit smoking combustibles. 
I have asked Health Canada for the text of the proposal by the Canadian delegation to have the sessions open to the media and the public and the arguments presented to refuse it.
My kudos to them for being the only ones to stand up for transparency and freedom of information, freedom of the press, guaranteed by the article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (see the interpretation by UNESCO). The World Health Organization seems to have a very different conception of the right to free information.

A selection of documentaries and videos about e-cigarettes/vaping

I have collected below links to a few of the videos  and films I found the most instructive (still a work in progress)
Last updated January 9, 2019
Thank you for sharing links of videos you think are worth watching

January 9, 2019: Addictions au tabac et à l'alcool, rapport du CESE (4.51 minutes)

January 8, 2019: "Make the switch"  3 videos (60 seconds) for the new ad campaign by Juul

December 28, 2018 Smoking v Vaping (2.41 minutes) video by Public Health England comparing residues from one-month smoking and vaping

October 8, CBS News (10 minutes) Clearing the air: controversy and cautious hope about vaping
link to the text

October 4, 2018, INNCO members discuss COP8 (4 segments on YouTube)
3 are 11 minutes long, the last one is 3 minutes.
INNCO = International Network of Nicotine Consumers Organisations

October 3, 2018  NBC News, THINK program about Juul with Andrew Stern
includes interview of David Abrams

September 23, 2018  Seduction of smoking Are e-cigarettes less harmful  52 minutes, documentary by Peter Taylor who was the reporter in the 1976 classic Death in the West (Link for watching Death in the West).

In the Seduction of smoking, see at 15min25 the interview of Dr John Ashcroft MD who opened a vapeshop
Another link  

CNN September 18, 2018
E-cigarette warnings to arrive in high school bathrooms nationwide   (2.34 minutes)
(same school, no interview of students)

August 21, 2018  Video clip from the Health Ministry of Mexico (in spanish)  (30 seconds)
The video claims that “e-cigarettes harm and kill”, that the vapor releases nicotine which affects those surrounding us and causes cancer, strokes and "kills at an early age” just as tobacco.  This video is broadcast in the radio every 15 or 30 minutes, also in national TV. Millions of ordinary Mexicans are watching this

PBS Newshour, July 17, 2018 Educators worry
Jonathan Law High School in CT
(no real interview of students)

July 7, 2018 Mayo Clinic Radio (regular program of 9 minutes) segment about Dangers of e-cigarettes posted on YouTube (see also the one minute format on March 12, 2018)

May 6, 2018, Inspiring inspiring of Dr Mark Tyndall in Vancouver (BC Center for disease control), here (look at 2.30 and then 3.35 where he says people with HIV die from their smoking and 5.25 and 6.15 where he says he congratulates people he sees vaping in the street!) by Brent Stafford of Regulator Watch.com  (here the link to vimeo) producer of Reg Watch

March 12, 2018, Mayo Clinic Minute, Is vaping a gateway to smoking? (An interesting format but bad content)

December 7, 2017 Heart surgeon says vaping is safer, Gopal Bhatnagar is interviewed (20 minutes) by Brent Stafford of Regulator Watch
April 21, 2017 Testimony of Bill Godshall in Hartland WI about FDA regulation of e-cigs
On YouTube (41 minutes)

May 8, 2017 Short (5 minutes) animated video What's wrong with e-cigarettes? narrated by Caroline Kitchens (of R Street) for Prager U. The most viewed (I think) on YouTube. Very well done.

October 21, 2016. E-cigarettes, Welcome Back Big Tobacco (40 minutes), produced by The Fifth Estate, CBC program

September 28, 2016  Beyond the cloud
A documentary about vaping (65 minutes)  (Mostly in French but with English subtitles)

May 11, 2016  A billion lives,
Documentary by Aaron Biebert, $3,49 for rent  (95 minutes)

FCA bulletins from COP8

Find below the links to the daily bulletins produced by FCA during COP8 (pdf format) with a few comments from my part. Thanks a lot to FCA for communicating about what happened.

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Day 1 - October 1st
I am shocked by the decision to prevent the media to 'observe' the sessions because their presence could relay the influence of the tobacco industry (see page 3 with a headline about... transparency!  ). How could just being present constitute an undue influence? Isn't that Orwellian that sessions closed to the public and the media are qualified as 'open' in the COP vocabulary?
Day 2 - October 2nd
See page 5 a short analysis of tobacco control programs in Africa. I'll keep point 3: "Secure sustainable domestic financing for tobacco control". I remember when the European Bureau of the WHO had suggested that 1% of tobacco taxes be affected to tobacco control. Can you look up what the budgets are? Are those data even collected?
Laurent Huber on page 6 writes about a human right to health. How does he reconcile this position with prohibiting smokers who want to switch from combustibles to electronic cigarettes, the right to do so?
On page 8, a report about how BAT opposes tobacco control legislation in Kenya in court and also by inviting legislators in luxurious hotels although apparently, this was not enough to prevent a majority of them to pass a new law. The article also reminds us that received an award as 'best employer' in Kenya.
Day 3 - October 3rd
This issue starts with the question 'Have you seen this delegate?" It implies that some delegates, in fact, represent the interest of the tobacco industry. Unfortunately, the article does not provide any name of any delegate or any country. Maybe if the media were allowed to report about what is happening they would be able to be a bit more precise? They are a bit on page 8 of the Day 4 Bulletin where the dirty ashtray is awarded to Guatemala and Honduras for attempting to derail the implementation of the FCTC.
On page 4, Mark Hurley of CTFK, presents the creation of the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World as 'Big Tobacco latest Trick". In the end, he gives a link to the CTFK's page devoted to the Foundation after having criticized the report Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction. If you have questions about the Foundation or suggestions, why don't you send them to be discussed at the stakeholders meeting planned in London on November 13?
Day 4 - October 4
On page 1, Cassandra Morris presents the debate about Electronic cigarettes as 'inconclusive'. Her recommandation is to stop spending time on this issue. Is that realistic?
"Given that Parties — along with researchers, civil society, and policy makers — have staunchly held but divergent views, we recommend that Parties should refrain from engaging in lengthy and inconclusive discussion."
On page 5, an article about the importance of taking into account gender in tobacco control in Africa (in French). and on page 6, thoughts about how to help tobacco farmers switch to other crops.
Day 5 - October 5
On page 2 a piece about article 14 and offering help to quit. I think it's the only time I see cessation mentioned. Unfortunately "new" alternative to combustibles to deliver nicotine are not mentioned.

On page 8, an article about Africa and tobacco taxes.

Doctors voices: Is vaping dangerous or very useful to help smokers quit and much safer?

Linda Girgis MD wrote a very critical review of e-cigarettes on September 26 in the Physician's Weekly. She concludes: "While it is clear from these studies that much more research needs to be done, there is enough science to be concerned that ecigarettes are not safe like many claim. In fact, they appear to have many hazards that are still being discovered. Are they safer than cigarettes? That remains to be determined. No one can make that claim without more large-scale clinical trials. Until that time, hedge your bets where you will." 
On the opposite side I listened to Dr John Ascroft, who practices in Central England where in 2014 he opened a vaping shop: Dr.Smokeless Electronic Cigarettes! He is interviewed more recently in Peter Taylor's documentary (look on YouTube at 15.33 minutes for this segment). After saying e-cigs are the greatest invention seen in modern times, he concludes they are safe. Whom to believe?