Caught in a state of perpetual motion, the War on Vaping powers on this week with yet another alarming television news report from Canada’s public broadcaster, the CBC.
Featured on the flagship newscast “The National,” the CBC report sites new data provided by University of Waterloo professor Dr. David Hammond that purportedly shows teen vaping in Canada has returned to pre-pandemic levels.
True to form, the CBC leaves no room for doubt regarding its position on vaping as the report is tagged on-screen throughout the entire piece with the graphic “Teen Vaping Calls to Action” and in the lead, the CBC states Health Canada is not acting quick enough to protect a new generation of youth from becoming addicted to nicotine.
These are shocking developments no matter which way you view them. And for some, it must feel a bit like Déjà Vu.
Joining us to talk through the CBC report and to discuss Dr. Hammond’s new data is national vaping activist Maria Papaioannoy-Duic from Rights4Vapers.
Only on RegWatch by RegulatorWatch.com
Live Streamed: October 21, 2021
Produced by Brent Stafford
Part of our ‘Last Stand’ coverage
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Hi Brent, please transmit this comment to Maria
We all vapers share the emotions you expressed, we all share your frustration. The reply by Hammond and statements by Dr Schwarz read as if they are cool and 100% objective, running cold unquestionable data, thus dismissing our emotions as reactions of “small people” treated as vassals. However, academics (including tobacco controllers) are also deeply emotional, with different type of emotions: smugness, hubris, sense of absolute entitlement because they are “saving the world”. Lack of scrutiny over decades (even when combating smoking) has made them like this. Every human being has emotions, with most tobacco controllers are reacting in a way that simply shows how upside down they feel emotionally with the disruption that vaping represents to a professional modus operandi they have carried for decades (successfully in their opinion, but this is questionable when global smoking has increased in less developed countries).
However, when you have scientific training you realize that most tobacco controllers are quite sloppy with data (Hammond’s “mistake”, the usage of the useless past 30 days indicator to classify youth vaping, failure to distinguish with vaping cannabis). Also concepts, sometimes even falling into pseudo-science: the youth brain damage theory. How else but “acting emotionally in a visceral way” can describe the disproportionate response to flavors they recommend when the problem could be handled without general bans.
Unfortunately, in tobacco/nicotine issues powerful global politics and mountains of money are running things, science is secondary (it has become a fig leaf to provide “science dressing” to a predetermined policy). Debate and controversy are essential features of science, they happen all the time in my field (physics), even in medical science, but all this is absent in tobacco/nicotine issues. Hammond or Schwarz would never agree to an academic debate with (say) Abrams or Niaura. The publication system is also rotten to the core. I can speak of my own experience, I can tell you horror stories with editors and referees rejecting attempts to publish criticism of flawed papers on “second hand” vapor which falls in one of my areas of expertise (physics of aerosols). It is also the fault of governments (save the UK and NZ) that only listen to that majority of tobacco control experts with “credentials” reacting “emotionally” to a technological disruption (vaping) and dismiss people like Dave Abrams, Ray Niaura and Ken Warner, as well as the UK experts, all of whom take a more pragmatic view.
The only answer I can find is resilience. We must continue vaping, we must see how to prepare flavors on a community basis, we must keep spreading the THR message, make alliances with other groups, leave our are of comfort, we must continue insisting and disobeying when possible, we must continue being a stone in the shoe of orthodox tobacco control. Things can change when we least expect them to change.
Roberto, as always excellent comments which I am sure will be of some comfort to our viewers. It’s time we get you back on the show. Hopefully soon after I am back from London for GSTHR! Big thanks! b…