Monthly Archives: June 2017

Actually, we all grow up with the option to listen to an engaged tone on the day tickets are released. Then we all love to go on to ticket reseller sites, thirty seconds later, because (magically) all the people who just bought the tickets are now no longer able to go. At a ridiculous mark-up.

How much do we love festivals? We love them so much that it is now the only acceptable medium through which to convey political ideas. First, there were wandering minstrels singing about the plague. Then came Corbyn’s Glastonbury ’17 set where he belted out some of his old favourites as well as things off his difficult new album? Even the Tory Party is going to set up its own Glastonbury (or, Gladstone-bury) to boost their popularity. Imagine the scene: Andrea Leadsom in a weekend hippy frock (claiming that she was once in The Fall), Michael Gove with beads around his neck, and Theresa May running around laying waste to a nearby crop.

It’s because we’ve been conditioned.

During the 1970s, an assortment of bearded horrors and future Yewtree suspects were kicked out from Broadcasting House. If you close your eyes you can picture them being forced with electric cattle prods into crates on the Radio 1 lorry. That’s not what happened, but it might help.

We were conditioned to think that if a job is worth doing then it shouldn’t be done in a small room. It should be done on a makeshift stage, in British weather, in front of a load of cheering people screaming out for free stuff. People who, instead of doing jobs or hobbies, are getting drunk and sunburnt/soaked.

Our current selection of ecigfests are all well and good, but all bar one are inside and none of them are going to reach those people who can benefit from vaping the most: non-smokers. This must be the reasoning behind The Science of Vaping tour; a national myth debunking jolly that kicked off in Milton Keynes. Thing is, nothing has been heard from them since the end of June. One can only but assume that the organisers fell into the comedy Amnesty Shredder or are still stuck in MK’s myriad of roundabouts.

So, as we’ve had the three days of sun that constitutes a good British summer, it’s almost definite that Halfords are now having a sale on camping stuff. We reckon that £30 will kit us out with a tent of marquee proportions, a multihob gas stove and some lilo repair kits. All we need is someone with a van and some pens to customise white T-shirts. Let’s get together and promote vaping with the Stealthvape Summer Festival of Vape Roadshow Extravaganza. Who’s in?

OK, fair enough, as a species we manage to make more than our fair share of idiotic decisions. We’ve created a system of politics that would be better housed in a circus, driving around in a clown car. We value voting for a performing dog over that of intellectual debate. While we’re busy pointing fingers: stand up if you purchased a copy of Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice. All 600,000 of you!

And if you bought the Jedward version, just leave the room now and never come back.

No, if you look at things that way then we don’t appear to be brighter than an old pair of slippers. But we aren’t looking at ourselves that way. We are thinking of higher things: the way that you are regulating your body temperature through feedback loops and evaporating your salty juices. The way your pulse will quicken when you spy Sports Direct is having a sale, and that you don’t think twice about breathing during the course of an average day.

“But hang on,†you say, “you can’t have us all claiming to be bright just for having the ability to not continuing holding a hand onto a red hot oven hob.â€

Well, yes.

Public health people believe smokers are so stupid that they’ll quickly vape too much nicotine if left to their own devices. Although they haven’t stated this publicly, they also worry that once people start buying eliquids they’ll store it all in a bath. And then bathe in it while poking themselves in the eyes with 30ml bottles.

Clearly, the only safe thing to do was to campaign for juice bottles to be made tiny and restricting the volume of nicotine contained therein. We’re all far too stupid to be trusted.

Well, no.

If anybody has read Self-titration by experienced e-cigarette users: blood nicotine delivery and subjective effects, and that’s probably most of us, there’s continuing evidence that (if not us) our bodies are incredible.

“Incomplete self-titration may be due to a ‘saturation’ effect, that is, a limit on the volume of liquid that an individual can comfortably consume within a given time period, or because a given level of compensatory puffing is sufficient to achieve subjective satisfaction and alleviation of craving and withdrawal symptoms.â€

We will vape only up to the point where the desire to do so is sated. Heavy users simply vape longer inhales more frequently to overcome a restricted volume of nicotine. This, in turn, leads to a higher coil temperature – which is the subject of ongoing investigation.

Consequently, it makes sense to reverse the 24mg limit (even if it only impacts on a small group of potential users) because there’s a lack of logic to the ban. Here’s hoping that MPs discover the innate intelligence our bodies possess, as they zoom about in their clown cars.

Time For Action was a harmless call to arms for people to go out at night-time, dress up smartly, and issue the bizarre extra-terrestrial demand “Take me to your leaderâ€. The band showed the world what a call to action looks like, in their video, and it mainly consisted of standing around bored on staircases or in front of shops. It is highly likely that adopting this type of action contributed for the lack momentum in their revival.

When it comes to being a time for action for vapers, a slightly more energetic protest might be called for.

If you’ve been on holiday, living in a box or one of those vapid people on Love Island, you will have missed the news from San Francisco. No, they haven’t renamed it Trumplandia, in honour of the President – no, they’ve done something really stupid.

How stupid?

Banning all vape flavours apart from tobacco stupid. That’s how mind-numbingly stupid they were. Almost all vapers tend to kick off with tobacco juices and some choose to stay on them, only a minority mind you. Our survey last year showed that less than 10% of vapers regularly use tobacco flavours. We love custards, we love sweets and we love fruits.

The reason is obvious: shortly after switching from smoking tobacco cigarettes, our sense of taste begins to return. A world of sweet delights that had been closed off to use blossoms, taste buds explode with delight. And, because some of us are that way inclined, we love to vape juices that taste like Tooty Frooties.

This doesn’t matter to the fervent puritans bent on banning all forms of smoking. It looks like smoking to them and, what they hate even more, vapers appear to enjoy what they do. “Heavens to Betsy! You can’t actually enjoy vaping,†they holler. So, they have come up with a way to make sure you don’t.

“For too many years, the tobacco industry has selectively targeted our young adults with products that are deceptively associated with fruits and mint and candy,†lied the authoress behind the imbecilic legislation.

Will it make a difference?

Obviously not to current vapers, those who know what they’re doing will simply drive across the city limit to somewhere that sells what they used to buy. Others will hop online and order a delivery. What this does do is send a clear message that despite the advances being made in winning the argument in Europe, there is a stronghold of crass irresponsibility in California. There is a cohort of liars and charlatans who won’t stop in their mission to ban vaping in all forms, and they will take any measure necessary to achieve that end. We may be an ocean away but their influence spreads over to the UK.

Maybe you can go stand in a concrete stairwell, maybe you can loiter outside the front of a shop, or maybe you could give some support to the New Nicotine Alliance.

Some people claim the majority of negative vape research comes from just three people: Chapman, Glantz and McKee. This is not true, it conflates opinions being sought or expressed in the public domain with the origin of the research. Chapman is a retired rentamouth, McKee has not authored any study other than the odd paper review-based exercise, and Glantz’ forte is twisting other people’s findings.

Of course, this should surprise nobody seeing as none of them are scientists in any true definition of the term. They are anti-tobacco in the sense that they are puritanically anti tobacco companies, and smokers are simply casualties of the war of words they are waging.

The question that ought to be asked is ‘what is it about their words that they carry a disproportionate weight in the media?’ How come their sound bites take precedent over quality science?

The answer, according to the American Association for Science and Health (ACSH) comes down to snappy, simply headlines. Or rather, scientists conducting proper research looking at aspects of vaping haven’t learnt to write in clear English. The response to that would be, ‘why should they cater to the general public when their papers are aimed at their peers for review?’

ACSH respond: “Whether they like to admit it or not, scientists want to have a broad impact on society. Sure, recognition from other academics is nice, but most scientists would prefer to see their research splashed across the front pages of the New York Times and BBC News.â€

Nicola Di Girolamo, in her paper titled “Healthcare articles with simple and declarative titles were more likely to be in the Altmetric Top 100â€, discovered that, err, simple headlines get better media coverage.

Researchers looking into vaping need to take note: The media adores a good ecig story, especially if it is gifted to them on a plate with a good press release and easy to understand bullet points.

So, the initial statement can be rewritten: “The problem is,†they say, “that there’s not enough information out there [in the mainstream media] – we simply don’t know…†what we don’t know.

Do you know how many ecig-related papers were published just in the last week of June? All of these:

·      “In-person retail marketing claims in tobacco and E-cigarette shops in Southern California†by JS Yang, MM Wood, K Peirce

·      “Nicotine delivery to the aerosol of a heat-not-burn tobacco product: comparison with a tobacco cigarette and e-cigarettes†by KE Farsalinos, N Yannovits, T Sarri, V Voudris

·      “Electronic Cigarettes as an Introductory Tobacco Product Among Eighth and 11th Grade Tobacco Users—Oregon, 2015†by JZ Hines

·      “Why Don’t More Smokers Switch to Using E-Cigarettes: The Views of Confirmed Smokers†by N McKeganey, T Dickson

·      “Behavioral economic substitutability of e-cigarettes, tobacco cigarettes, and nicotine gum†by MW Johnson, PS Johnson, O Rass, LR Pacek

·      “Electronic cigarettes smoking among youth, its trend and factors associated†by S Ali

·      “Tobacco Use Among Middle and High School Students—United States, 2011–2016†by A Jamal

·      “Electronic Cigarettes in Germany: Patterns of Use and Perceived Health Improvement†by K Lehmann, S Kuhn, J Reimer

·      “Advances in Global Health Communication†by CE Beaudoin, T Hong

·      “E-vaping device†by SR Rinehart, BS Smith, C Dendy

·      “Offsetting the Impact of smoking and e-cigarette vaping on the cerebrovascular system and stroke injury: Is Metformin a viable countermeasure?†By MA Kaisar, H Villalba, S Prasad, T Liles, AE Sifat

·      “Recommended core items to assess e-cigarette use in population-based surveys†by JL Pearson, SC Hitchman, LS Brose, L Bauld

·      “Prevalence and correlates of electronic cigarette use among Canadian students: cross-sectional findings from the 2014/15 Canadian Student Tobacco, Alcohol and …†by A Montreuil, M MacDonald, M Asbridge, TC Wild

·      “Electronic cigarette use among US adults in the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study, 2013–2014†by BN Coleman, B Rostron, SE Johnson, BK Ambrose

·      “The electronic cigarette, do we need to worry?†by ML Løchen

·      “Effect of Electronic Cigarette Messages on Young-Adult Behavioral Dispositions Towards Use†by I Ariel

·      “Novel method of nicotine quantification in electronic cigarette liquids and aerosols†by M Ogunwale, Y Chen, W Theis, MH Nantz, D Conklin

·      “PERCEIVED HEALTH RELATED RISKS OF VAPING AMONG UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS IN FACULTY OF MEDICINE AND HEALTH SCIENCES, UNIVERSITI …†by HS Minhat, S Selvanathan, A Wahab

·      “Attitudes Toward Tobacco 21 Among US Youth†by H Dai

·      “Pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic assessment of electronic cigarettes, combustible cigarettes, and nicotine gum: implications for abuse liability†by MF Stiles, LR Campbell, DW Graff, BA Jones, RV Fant

·      “Electronic cigarette use as an aid to quit smoking in the representative Italian population PASSI survey†by G Gorini, G Ferrante, E Quarchioni, V Minardi

·      “Comparison of Periodontal Parameters and Self-Perceived Oral Symptoms among Cigarette-Smokers, Individuals Vaping Electronic-Cigarettes and Never-Smokers: …†by F Javed, T Abduljabbar, F Vohra, H Malmstrom

·      “A study of regulatory policies and relevant issues concerning electronic cigarette use in Taiwan†by TH Jiang, LM Cheng, MA Hawkins

·      “CPDD News and Views†by G Kong, S Krishnan-Sarin

·      “The impact of cancer drug wastage on economic evaluations†by J Truong, MC Cheung, H Mai, J Letargo, A Chambers

·      “Influence of smoking on aneurysm recurrence after endovascular treatment of cerebrovascular aneurysms†by J Futchko, J Starr, D Lau, MR Leach, C Roark

·      “Do neurobiological understandings of smoking influence quitting self-efficacy or treatment intentions?†by K Morphett, A Carter, W Hall, J Lucke, B Partridge

·      “Lower-Risk Cannabis Use Guidelines: A Comprehensive Update of Evidence and Recommendations†by B Fischer, C Russell, P Sabioni, W van den Brink

·      “Legal and health dilemmas challenging India’s eâ€cigarette endorsement†by G Agoramoorthy

·      “Global and targeted serum metabolic profiling of colorectal cancer progression†by Y Long, B Sanchezâ€Espiridion, M Lin, L White