eCigs or Xanax - You Decide

Health groups want to ban eCigs but forget how much anti-depressants have replaced cigarettes.

The truth about cigarettes is that they are a kind of psychic self-medication yet this never comes up in the public health or legislative debate.

This graphic shows that smoking is not a zero-sum game. When people quit they move on to something else. In many cases, is antidepressants.

Isn't it time to discuss...?

(Story in NY Times) http://nyti.ms/1g5yXgc

Why the FDA and Smoking Establishment are Crucifying e-Cigarettes

By Alan Brody

If you had a problem that killed 400,000 people a year and affected the health of 40 million you’d think that anything that improves the situation is worth supporting. When it comes to smoking however, you would be dead wrong.

In 2004 a Chinese company created what is now called the e-Cigarette, a device that emulates a cigarette by delivering a flavored vapor with – or without nicotine. The vapor uses propylene glycol, a liquid that is generally considered safe for consumption by the FDA and appears in many food products.

There are several million users worldwide and while there are no safety studies, there are not reports of any harm either.

The advantage to smokers is they no longer have cancer-causing tars invading their lungs, they stop coughing, no longer smell and since the vapor is harmless, they can stay indoors and vape because there is no second-hand smoke problem.

It also saves smokers in New York enough money to make the payments on a mid-size car.

Amazingly, however, the FDA is against it. They are trying to block the importers of these product and are in Federal Court fighting for their right to ban these products.

It may be easy enough to understand the FDA’s need for territorial protection and ultimately a way to extract tax and regulatory revenue.

But how do you explain Public Health’s near unified opposition to e-Cigarettes?  American Lung, American Cancer as well as Tobacco-Free Kids are opposed to them.

Their arguments range from – “It’s not proven!” [Cigarettes are proven, of course, to kill] to it “attracts children.”

The best part is how small towns in New Jersey and Long Island have banned or limited the sale and use of these products. Suddenly, politicians who can’t fix their budgets have the time and energy to become expert enough on these products to prohibit them.

Is it possible that the anti-smoking establishment has obviously stopped working for the American people to become a symbiotic partner of the tobacco industry in sucking up the lavish tax handouts they generate.

Perversely, this opposition is only going help sell more e-Cigarettes in the long run. The reason is that most smokers hate e-Cigarettes because they leave out so much of what makes puffing pleasurable: the sensuous smoke, the softness of tobacco, the seduction of danger are all gone. Instead, you get this cool, clinical haze that studies have shown, may not even deliver much nicotine at all. Less than 1/40^th of smokers use these products. However, that will change because banning them will only make them more dangerous and by the perverse logic of smoking, more desirable.

Without getting too deep into the motivation for smoking let it be said that the industry discovered as early as 1922 that it had a lot more to do with the mind and spirit than the body. We start smoking in our adult initiation years when we have image and self-esteem issues. We also want to belong. So we do crazy things like get tattooed, body pierced, do extreme sport and party crazy, mange to get through school, get into trouble, fights, illegally drunk, vote, enroll in the military and so on. Smoking used to be our little helper. If you went asleep during the Mad Men years and awoke today like a 21st Century Rip van Winkle, you would find that all the Marlboro Country and Winston ads have gone – only to be replaced by prescription drug ads for exactly the things that bother us: sex, mental happiness, ADD and a few other things as well.

In other words – we need little helpers. It’s a guilty pleasure if you smoke it and a legitimate need if your doctor prescribes but the numbers tell us that millions are going to seek it out regardless. It exists somewhere between folk remedies and faith healing. So is it fair for a few bureaucrats and do-gooders to dictate human behavior – especially when they have their hands in the public purse?

Smoking is a deep and troubling issue. It is the first industry of this country - we probably wouldn’t be here without it since its very addiction probably made pioneers persevere in an unwelcoming colony. We are in denial of its actual role in our lives. The net result is that we have driven its evolution to China, have reinstituted creeping prohibition and are about to create a new black market and political corruption all over again.

It is tie for an honest and open discussion about smoking again - and now, e-Cigarettes.

Alan Brody is the author of Cigarette Seduction www.cigseduction.com and a former columnist with Advertising Age/Creativity and ADWEEK’s Marketing Computers.

Big Win for e-Cigarette Importers

News Flash - the Federal Court turned down the FDA's efforts to ban e-Cigarettes. (See the New York Times article.)

The bigger question is why would Government agencies and anti-tobacco groups be against a product that relieves some of the greatest harms of smoking (second hand smoke, the smell, the hacking cough) and works as an anecdotally acclaimed means of quitting?

3 reasons:

1. Money
2. Power
3. Self-righteousness

Their attitudes are so repugnant that I feel like smoking again. I won't, but I am willing to fume.

Here's why.

1. Money. The government has found a fantastic source of revenue built on the backs of tobacco addicts. Like any addict - in this case, revenue addicts - they are deeply reluctant to give it up. When the time is ripe - we'll discuss a 12 step method for the tobacco taxers.....

The same applies to the major anti-tobacco groups. There are a small handful that get the lion's share of the paltry few million the government doles out from its tobacco revenues. They are just as dependent on this tax income and so they too have every incentive to attack (Tobacco Free Kids being high on his list). The game has become fixed to the point where they actually function as a handmaiden to the tobacco industry - warding off newcomers (competition) and making it seem like the tobacco companies are staying away from kids. They also support big pharma and its plethora of patches, gums, pills and other cessation paraphernalia.

2. Power. Agencies like the FDA derive their power from what they control. First you ban, then you control. Overlaps with money. (Also reminds us of the record companies and downloading - is it any coincidence that Time Warner's Richard Parsons told Napster "first you stop, then we talk." Now he runs Citibank. Guess what - all are in ruins. Note to FDA: the internet has changed all that - dictatorships just don't work like they used to.)

3. Self Righteousness. Everybody loves to point out somebody else's weakness and health groups are notorious in this regard. The fact that people have reasons for smoking - however troubling - is of zero interest to them. Just stop. Have will power blah, blah, blah. Smokers are motivated by deep reasons that rarely disappear just because they quit - they are typically sublimated to other practices. Often medication - both good or bad (e.g. how many smokers were really using tobacco as a crude form of Ridalin, or Prozac, or an upper or a downer).  The worst fears of these zealots emerge when smokers appear to be enjoying themselves. You can't really respond to them - unless there truly is a skeleton in their closets - except to let their own fanaticism do its own discrediting.

Guaranteed - all 3 of these types will have something to say about the children. This makes children smoke blah, blah. I say this makes children distrust politicians. As usual this is just a smokescreen, no one is promoting this for kids just for people who already smoke.....but the tactic always pulls at someone's heartstrings - including smokers'.

Bottom line - for better or worse there are approximately 40 million smokers in the U.S. as they get up from the back of the bus they will realize that fate has given them a reprieve in he form of e-Cigarettes. Once the word truly gets out and they learn to rust these products, and understand the actions of these high-placed malefactors - I predict there will be a huge backlash. Some heads will roll. The argument will change completely.

He fact that this innovation came to us from China will also deliver a lesson about what happens when Government gets too involved - its stifles ideas and protects the insiders who become effectively corrupt. Of course, they never see it that way - hence point 3. self-righteousness. But there it is - another little vignette about why we are on our way to becoming a lost force in the world.