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Sunday 7 October 2012

The Tobacco Control Crusade

Avast, ye!  Batten down the hatches, me hearties!

The Dreadful Arnott has declared that the tobacco control industry is on a crusade. The evidence is from the below slide, taken from a presentation she gave last May at a tobacco harm reduction conference:

OK, I know, this isn't exactly news. We've all known they've been on a crusade to eradicate smokers. But there's the proof. Consider it official.

The Dreadful's presentation video is about 24 minutes long, if you can stand it. The take-home lesson is that nicotine is harmless to everyone, except to pregnant women, only if it's regulated by Big Pharma and government.  Alternative nicotine products, such as e-cigs and vapourisers, are only safe if they are regulated by Big Pharma, too.  She calls it "clean nicotine." Nobody else can be trusted.  And she's angry that Big Pharma missed several opportunities to corner the clean nicotine market.  She also mentions that a government decision on the legality of unregulated e-cigs will come in May 2013, so stand by to stand by.

At that event there was another presentation on harm reduction given by Dr Karl Fagerström.  This slide is particularly interesting:



That last bullet point tells us all we need to know. Smokers are the enemy, too. I do not care what it says on ASH's web site. They are lying to everyone; they are quite happy to attack smokers and condemn smoking. You cannot destroy Big Tobacco without destroying tobacco consumers first.  Tobacco companies would not exist if people didn't want to use tobacco products.

So, jump to 9:40 in the vid to hear Fagerström explain the above slide, where he said this:
"Being against the smokers is a little odd. But that would mean we would stigmatise smoking and we would denormalise smoking and I'm sure that can drive down prevalence a bit."
It's not odd, doctor, it's evil.  You know it is.  Of course, any act is acceptable in the Public Health religion's quest to save us all from ourselves.  Right? 

Make no mistake, me hearties. It's a crusade. And they're coming straight for us! Extermination is their dastardly plan!

Weigh anchor and hoist the mizzen, ye scurvy dogs.  Prepare for battle!

Image via Get a Life Now
H/T:  Dick Puddlecote