Project unthinkable, a book by Derek Yach is now available

Derek Yach is the guy who made a deal with the devil (aka Philip Morris International): they would fund his Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, $80 million per year for 12 years, to promote safer nicotine delivery products than the traditional combustible cigarettes. Of course, any type of deal involving Philip Morris is unthinkable and unacceptable for the people and main organizations devoted to tobacco control. Read the book for details. Never mind that millions of ex-smokers say they have been able to quit thanks to e-cigarettes. They are only "anecdotal evidence", no proof at all there is anything interesting for public health in vaping. Better demonize those nicotine addicts and eventually prohibit everything e-cig but for the good old cigarettes. Derek admits he did not show much empathy for smokers in the first phase of his career as a tobacco control advocate: neither did I. But at the time there was very little available to help smokers to quit and we did demonize nicotine. The nicotine patches, gums, sprays did not help much while e-cigs (and snus) have convinced many, I have not yet figured why there is so much resistance and anger from people who should rejoice that smokers switch to a less dangerous habit. They immediately decided to ostracize the new Foundation instead of joining its board and being able that way to check what is done and influence how the millions PMI made from the smokers are used to help smokers quit. Is there a chance they'll have a change of heart before hell freezes? Meanwhile, I am definitely on the side of the ex-smokers who vape.

Kids read propaganda against flavors in vaping products

It is in Marin county (California) as recorded and posted on twitter by Stefan Didak. The kids belong to the group Children for change. From the speech:
"Vaping can lead to other drugs or alcohol addictions such as cigarette smoking, heroine and more. Vaping can lead to poor decisions such as going homeless, dropping out of school, child abuse, going broke, and more."
What is the adequate response?

A TC podcast with Stanford's Robert Jackler about/against Juul and a pro-nicotine video

A TC podcast from BMJ Talk medicine
In this 15 minute podcast Becky Freeman, new media editor for Tobacco Control journal, talks to Robert K. Jackler, MD, from Stanford Research into the Impact of Tobacco Advertising at Stanford University. They discuss his recently published paper "JUUL and Other Stealth Vaporizers: Hiding the Habit from Parents and Teachers".

Read the full article on the Tobacco Control website:
tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early…l-2018-054455

See the pro-nicotine video by Brent Stafford of RegulatorWatch and Helen Redmond 

Cancer warning on every cigarette? Canada is considering it.

Click here for details.

Should Juul comment when contacted by a Bloomberg's journalist?

In this article published by Boomberg on November 1, the journalist reports that Juul's founders 'declined to comment". Is this the right strategy? Someone thought it could be they want to keep a low profile while the FDA investigation is underway. But they did take part not long ago in a TV segment aired October 3 on NBC News. True on October 29, the editorial board of Bloomberg published an opinion titled The FDA wakes up to the danger of e-cigarettes that was extremely negative, very much in tune with Mike Bloomberg's personal position. What about the adults who sue Juul products? Shouldn't they have a say? I don't recall that they were asked for comments.

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)