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.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Brand Profile of a Parliament Light Smoker
Here is a recent brand profile of Parliament Light smoker. Anyone who buys a copy of Cigarette Seduction either in print or digital form, gets a Free e-Cigarette and a personalized Brand Profile. This Brand Profile is the secret to your smoking obsession.
Male
Age First Smoked : 16
Current Age : 37
Father's Brand : Parliament Lights
Brand/s First Tried : Marlboro Lights
First Committed Brand : Parliament Lights
Taboo Brands (Brands You Will NOT Smoke) : Newport Lights
Current Brand : Parliament Lights
Profile
Parliament is one of those brands that doesn’t have a clear-cut image just because we don’t have a Parliament in this country. But it does suggest a few things: people are less likely to connect it to Congress than they are to something European and kind of important but of their own imagining and so we try to find clues about which aspect they are plugging into. In general, however, it stands for someone who wants another, classier life but for one reason or another cannot really go there. But they think they are living a cut above the people surrounding them anyway – at least in their own minds. (The brand often reflects mild forms of depression and mood swings.)
If you are close to any kind of official building or headquarters it might suggest government work or some type of higher level status yearning.
In any case, this profile shows an interesting arc because you began life by smoking a brand that suggested you wanted to be tougher than your Dad (Marlboro Light vs. Parliament Light) but you quickly found that not to be the case and switched to his brand. 18 years later and you’re still in the same boat. In addition, you are averse to Newports - typically the brand of the upwardly mobile striver and often from the “other side of town.”
Quitting to you is probably tied up with your relationship to your father and your sense of not getting ahead of him. You don’t have to get ahead of him but in order to quit, but you do have to resolve these issues or at least find another way to deal with them.
We recommend you use e-Cigarettes, snus, pouch tobacco, the patch or other smoking alternatives that deliver the support you need while you deal with this process.
Male
Age First Smoked : 16
Current Age : 37
Father's Brand : Parliament Lights
Brand/s First Tried : Marlboro Lights
First Committed Brand : Parliament Lights
Taboo Brands (Brands You Will NOT Smoke) : Newport Lights
Current Brand : Parliament Lights
Profile
Parliament is one of those brands that doesn’t have a clear-cut image just because we don’t have a Parliament in this country. But it does suggest a few things: people are less likely to connect it to Congress than they are to something European and kind of important but of their own imagining and so we try to find clues about which aspect they are plugging into. In general, however, it stands for someone who wants another, classier life but for one reason or another cannot really go there. But they think they are living a cut above the people surrounding them anyway – at least in their own minds. (The brand often reflects mild forms of depression and mood swings.)
If you are close to any kind of official building or headquarters it might suggest government work or some type of higher level status yearning.
In any case, this profile shows an interesting arc because you began life by smoking a brand that suggested you wanted to be tougher than your Dad (Marlboro Light vs. Parliament Light) but you quickly found that not to be the case and switched to his brand. 18 years later and you’re still in the same boat. In addition, you are averse to Newports - typically the brand of the upwardly mobile striver and often from the “other side of town.”
Quitting to you is probably tied up with your relationship to your father and your sense of not getting ahead of him. You don’t have to get ahead of him but in order to quit, but you do have to resolve these issues or at least find another way to deal with them.
We recommend you use e-Cigarettes, snus, pouch tobacco, the patch or other smoking alternatives that deliver the support you need while you deal with this process.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
What's Selling e-Cigarettes? Are they being UNsold by supporters and SOLD by Opponents?
Here’s a proposition for smokers – we’ll make cigarettes safe, we’ll take you out of the cold and we’ll save you 70% to boot.
You’d think Americans would drop their Marlboros and head for these products in a heartbeat!
You’d think Americans would drop their Marlboros and head for these products in a heartbeat!
But they're not – at least not anywhere in the volume you’d expect.
This is despite the fact that some e-Cig Co’s are practically giving away the devices so you only have to pay as you go - the nicotine version of giving away the razor to sell the blades.
If you’d done your homework on how the tobacco companies understood their customers’ motivation and then spoke to your average smoker, you’d quickly understand why.
Smokers don’t necessarily want a safer cigarette. They say they do but they are much more neurotic about their habit than that – and self-flagellation is part of the deal. Paying too much and being forced out into the cold to smoke has become a misery-loves-camaraderie ritual. Then there is the familiarity of the always-available soft little tube of reassurance – something that can’t be found with an electronic tube.
The amazing irony is that the people whom you might think would support eCigarettes, health groups and government officials are not. We get the revenue issues – both are dependent on the fabulous tax bounty of smoking. But this where it gets sticky – they also claim these products are not safe. Or at least, not proven safe – unlike cigarettes, which are proven deadly. In other words, once they’re proved deadly then they can take a position on eCigarettes.
That’s the irony – once they’re proven deadly, they become appealing to smokers again! So the eCigarette people (sometimes referred to as vapers) are effectively un-selling eCigarettes while the anti-eCigarette people, by claiming these are not safe are actually selling these products.
Welcome to the looking-glass world of marketing!
Smokers don’t necessarily want a safer cigarette. They say they do but they are much more neurotic about their habit than that – and self-flagellation is part of the deal. Paying too much and being forced out into the cold to smoke has become a misery-loves-camaraderie ritual. Then there is the familiarity of the always-available soft little tube of reassurance – something that can’t be found with an electronic tube.
The amazing irony is that the people whom you might think would support eCigarettes, health groups and government officials are not. We get the revenue issues – both are dependent on the fabulous tax bounty of smoking. But this where it gets sticky – they also claim these products are not safe. Or at least, not proven safe – unlike cigarettes, which are proven deadly. In other words, once they’re proved deadly then they can take a position on eCigarettes.
That’s the irony – once they’re proven deadly, they become appealing to smokers again! So the eCigarette people (sometimes referred to as vapers) are effectively un-selling eCigarettes while the anti-eCigarette people, by claiming these are not safe are actually selling these products.
Welcome to the looking-glass world of marketing!
© 2009 Alan Brody
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
eCigarettes and Cigarette Seduction
It is hard to read this New York Times article with a straight face because the line-up of interests are so nakedly obvious: the FDA watching its turf, the drug co.s, the state taxes, the health groups with their self-righteousness and mysterious funding.
Nevertheless, the promises and challenges of a reconstructed, artificial cigarette are immense.
The bottom line – at least from the perspective of quitting the Cigarette Seduction way - is that when you take away the brand magic, and smoking is reduced to a nicotine delivery system, people find it easy to quit. Or at least cut down significantly.
There is very little magic in nicotine addiction. As drugs go, this one doesn’t do much for you. If you’re addicted you need it, and that's about it. Without the magic of a real cigarette and its brand power – you'll find that you don’t need all that much nicotine. And it will be easier to control. For the rest on how to jump the last chasm, I’m afraid you’ll have to read the book.
But since there are other issues raised by eCigarettes, I’ll answer them.
Yes, of course it is silly to argue that a product which tells you on the pack that it is deadly – cannot be replaced by something that may only be merely dangerous. But its a turf war – the FDA is only acting the way a government agency typically does while the lobbyists obviously represent drug companies that not only want to stave off competition but also possibly own this idea. Health groups – which should want the ameliorative possibilities of these cigarettes explored - just want cigarettes to go away. There is no place for discussion.
Like so much of the old economy, we have become boxed in by our usual thinking. Some version of the eCigarette was developed here about 10 years ago - Philip Morris' Accord and R.J. Reynolds' Eclipse (both had the idea but not the LED technology) and were quickly dropped, thanks to all the forces above plus the fact that no one really liked these devices.
So the eCigarettes were developed in Asia and at the same time, society changed: smokers became segregated and th eprice of cigarettes rose dramatically.
From the perspective of society however, the bigger issue is: do we want to sell a drug delivery system?
There are 2 answers. Wake up, we already do in – in many different ways from Ritalin to kids to Viagra and estrogen to adults.
We may also have a way to ensure that dangerous people who must take meds – do so: you addict them to the delivery system. Think of the mass killers who somehow went off their anti-depression medications…..if they were addicted to their meds, we wouldn’t have that problem……
The bottom line is:
1. Thanks to the internet, the people who want this product will easily beat the bureaucrats who don’t.
2. A cigarette without marketing magic is a product you can easily quit.
Nevertheless, the promises and challenges of a reconstructed, artificial cigarette are immense.
The bottom line – at least from the perspective of quitting the Cigarette Seduction way - is that when you take away the brand magic, and smoking is reduced to a nicotine delivery system, people find it easy to quit. Or at least cut down significantly.
There is very little magic in nicotine addiction. As drugs go, this one doesn’t do much for you. If you’re addicted you need it, and that's about it. Without the magic of a real cigarette and its brand power – you'll find that you don’t need all that much nicotine. And it will be easier to control. For the rest on how to jump the last chasm, I’m afraid you’ll have to read the book.
But since there are other issues raised by eCigarettes, I’ll answer them.
Yes, of course it is silly to argue that a product which tells you on the pack that it is deadly – cannot be replaced by something that may only be merely dangerous. But its a turf war – the FDA is only acting the way a government agency typically does while the lobbyists obviously represent drug companies that not only want to stave off competition but also possibly own this idea. Health groups – which should want the ameliorative possibilities of these cigarettes explored - just want cigarettes to go away. There is no place for discussion.
Like so much of the old economy, we have become boxed in by our usual thinking. Some version of the eCigarette was developed here about 10 years ago - Philip Morris' Accord and R.J. Reynolds' Eclipse (both had the idea but not the LED technology) and were quickly dropped, thanks to all the forces above plus the fact that no one really liked these devices.
So the eCigarettes were developed in Asia and at the same time, society changed: smokers became segregated and th eprice of cigarettes rose dramatically.
From the perspective of society however, the bigger issue is: do we want to sell a drug delivery system?
There are 2 answers. Wake up, we already do in – in many different ways from Ritalin to kids to Viagra and estrogen to adults.
We may also have a way to ensure that dangerous people who must take meds – do so: you addict them to the delivery system. Think of the mass killers who somehow went off their anti-depression medications…..if they were addicted to their meds, we wouldn’t have that problem……
The bottom line is:
1. Thanks to the internet, the people who want this product will easily beat the bureaucrats who don’t.
2. A cigarette without marketing magic is a product you can easily quit.
eCigarettes - My Comments in the Wall Street Journal
eCigarettes in the Wall Street Journal
It is laughable that a product that is labeled as deadly cannot be replaced by a product that may be merely dangerous. Especially when no one ever started smoking for their good health in the first place.
The truth is that smoking is really a form of psychological self-medication.
You could argue that’s true for the interested parties too: the FDA, the States, the drug and tobacco companies and even the Health Groups are far more interested in preserving their own point of view – and funding base - than actually helping smokers.
The really interesting thing is that when you deconstruct smoking – take out the branding and all the marketing hoopla – it comes down to an odd practice that people seem able to take or leave with ease.
It also brings us face to face with the idea that tobacco is explicitly a drug and yet we don’t seem to want to have that conversation.
Bottom line – when you understand why people smoke you’ll understand that they need more than a “just say no” approach.
The fact that we now have alternatives to the very old fashioned smelly cigarette is a plus. Back in 1907 public health groups actually praised cigarettes as a health benefit over spit tobacco! (But that was before cigarette taxes and TB was the big bugaboo.)
What we now know is that debranding practices always make it easier to quit or a least confront the psychic issues that underlie smoking - so people can much more easily move on with their lives.
Yet, as always, the so-called do-gooders don’t care much about whether you live or die, just that you do it their way.
It is laughable that a product that is labeled as deadly cannot be replaced by a product that may be merely dangerous. Especially when no one ever started smoking for their good health in the first place.
The truth is that smoking is really a form of psychological self-medication.
You could argue that’s true for the interested parties too: the FDA, the States, the drug and tobacco companies and even the Health Groups are far more interested in preserving their own point of view – and funding base - than actually helping smokers.
The really interesting thing is that when you deconstruct smoking – take out the branding and all the marketing hoopla – it comes down to an odd practice that people seem able to take or leave with ease.
It also brings us face to face with the idea that tobacco is explicitly a drug and yet we don’t seem to want to have that conversation.
Bottom line – when you understand why people smoke you’ll understand that they need more than a “just say no” approach.
The fact that we now have alternatives to the very old fashioned smelly cigarette is a plus. Back in 1907 public health groups actually praised cigarettes as a health benefit over spit tobacco! (But that was before cigarette taxes and TB was the big bugaboo.)
What we now know is that debranding practices always make it easier to quit or a least confront the psychic issues that underlie smoking - so people can much more easily move on with their lives.
Yet, as always, the so-called do-gooders don’t care much about whether you live or die, just that you do it their way.
Monday, April 6, 2009
How Come School Shooters Don’t Seem to Smoke?
[Tragically we revisit this chillingly cogent argument - should cigarettes be considered a form of self-medication? Or, since cigarettes are addictive and consumed like clockwork whereas most shooters are set off because they quit their antidepressants - should not the two should be combined?]
by Alan Brody
After the horrific shootings, there is always a swarm of agents with alphabet soup windbreakers that rummage through the wreckage. Leading this group is the BATF, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which is generally there to find casings and match them to the weapons.
It’s hard to imagine how much difference this information will make since we already know who the shooter was and just how legally they got their top of the line weapon technology.
So why aren’t they making good use of their time on the "A" and the "T" - looking for alcohol bottles and discarded cigarette butts? Granted, psychopaths seem to shun alcohol on their highly organized trails of retribution. But what about cigarettes?
Good and bad people - even sober judges - smoke. So how come there never seems to be a trail of smoldering butts? No unfinished Marlboros to mark their High Noon moment? Never a cruel cigarillo to show their contempt for society and its second-hand smoke regulations?
This is not just the Virginia Tech killer, the mad boys of Columbine seemed to be similarly abstemious. Then there is the shooting at Pearl, Miss., Jacksboro, Tenn. - and even the Amish country schoolhouse where I just can’t think of any one of them puffing on a stick, Bogey-like. John Hinckley shot Reagan with nary a puff, ditto for Chapman with John Lennon.
It seems like bad form to talk cigarettes at a time like this, although Virginia Tech’s shooter Cho, did mention Hitler, and Hitler as we know, was a non-smoker. (A vegetarian too, but that is another issue).
Is this to suggest that smoking a pack or two a day might have helped? Maybe - studies like the St. Louis survey and a recent American Journal of Psychiatry paper show that smoking and depression are profoundly linked.
The Secret Service psychologist, Dr. Robert Fein, in his study of stalkers and assassins, called the "Exceptional Case Study,” agrees. He adds there is another connected and recurring issue in the profiles of these diverse killers – with the possible exception of Hitler: that they were all at first suicidal. Once they had accepted their own demise, everything else in their terrible quests seemed to fit in rather nicely.
Now cigarettes, that much maligned flourish of youth, have the reputation, at least as far as former secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare Joseph A. Califano, Jr. is concerned, as being little more than a form of slow-motion suicide. Normally, you’d agree - who wants to be suicidal? But now we know what suicidal and depressed people can do once you free them of their bad habits, smoking may not be such a terrible thing after all.
Most reports, including those on the ASH.org website will tell you that 88% or so, of smokers have started by age 18. Except for these fellows, of course. (And it usually is fellows.) Obviously, smoking serves as a much needed form of initiation and these outcasts seem to have missed the boat.
Maybe we should invite them back. There’s something to be said for the idea of troubled people taking their suicide in slow, twenty minute increments rather than letting go in a hail of gunfire. Second-hand smoke may be a small price to pay. Besides, these shooters tend have been prescribed antidepressents but then stop taking their meds. That never happens with smokers – once they’re hooked they keep taking their smokes like clockwork.
So maybe we need to rethink the value of smoking. Of course, this would take some revisionist compromising. But dusting off the old “Reach for a Lucky Instead of a Glock” campaign is worth another look. And Lucky Strikes could be a good thing in a world of calculating psychopaths. Kool could have done just that - cooled a killer down. Camel - that could have meant nothing more than a trip to the zoo.
Realistically though, our current cigarette brands aren’t quite suicidal enough. We may have to develop a more compelling, more clinically informed family of brands that communicate the idea: “Why shoot me when you could be smoking one of these bad boys?”
This is not necessarily a call for the resurrection of the tobacco companies. After all, Philip Morris recently left New York in a puff as mounting taxes and regulation seemed to pull the rug under their Park Ave. welcome. So they moved their headquarters back to Richmond, Virginia which didn’t help the situation anyway. Apparently, easy guns trump easy cigarettes.
What we really need are prescription-strength cigarettes that health professionals can custom-design for troubled souls. We could call them Cig-Rx. They could have clinical names like Pufficide DX, or 2 Paxil-a-Day. Or they could go to the heart of the problem with displacement fantasy brands like Death Rays, Anti-Harmony, Bad Deeds, My Punishment and the freshly mentholated, Unhappy Days. These solutions are cheap, generate taxes and nourish our farmlands.
All of this really happening anyway, we just don’t control it properly. Psychcentral.com reports that doctors Cheong, Herkov & Goodman found in the St. Louis study, that depressed smokers use their cigarettes quite successfully as a way to self-medicate. This approach appears to be growing. A September 2003 study in the American Journal of Psychiatry (160:1663-1669), shows that smokers today are now more 3 times likely to be depressed than non-smokers. This is a relatively new phenomenon: back when smoking was widely accepted, there was no significant difference in depression rates between smokers and non-smokers.
Twenty five years ago that all began to change. Fewer people were smoking, but those who did were more like likely to be depressed. Note how that coincides with the beginning of this wave of suicidal, depressed, well-armed and non-smoking killers with Chapman in 1980 and Hinckley in 1981. Could it be that the health movement got to the wrong people? If so, could they call off the dogs and let them smoke again. Could the troubled people just blow off their steam again, please. It may not be good for their lungs but it could save my life. If that didn’t work at least their aura of smoke and puffing would serve as an early warning system. If you could at least smell them coming, the head start alone might be worth all the horses in Marlboro Country.
Alan Brody, a/k/a "The Smoke Whisperer" is the author of Cigarette Seduction, www.cigseduction.com
Sunday, August 3, 2008
BANNING MENTHOLS – THE POWDER VS. THE CRACK DEBATE ENTERS THE CIGARETTE WORLD
Is it fair to ban menthols? Of course not, at least not if you are a person of color. Or love the flavor of mint in the morning. Everyone else, mainly white smokers are left unscathed, or is that scathed?
But why go after menthols? The industry depends on flavorings – it is an essential part of turning cheap Bright leaf tobacco into the product we all love and use.
The fact that this process was invented by a slave by the name of Stephen in 1839 is all the more reason why we should tread lightly.
One group says this is this just another way of going after people of color. Another group says it’s a great way to get African Americans off smoking. They predominately smoke menthols and suffer disproportionately from tobacco-born illnesses.
So, to many this is just the powdered coke vs. crack debate – discriminate by way of cultural choices.
The real issue is what do we do instead?
Smoking is increasingly about self-medication and it is really only when people have chemical alternatives do they quit en masse.
Since American tobacco is so dependent on flavorings it’s pretty obvious this ban will be watered down or at least become somewhat discriminatory and absurdly shaped by lobbyists.
The truth is that light tobacco – the inhalable kind is the real problem. Not the specific flavorings.
Smoking wasn’t always about inhaling. Getting rid of fomaldehyde and glycerine may be fine but if congress really wants to help the world it should consider the lesson of President. Don’t let them inhale – just ban those kinds of tobacco and confine us to the coarse old stuff the real Indians smoked.
Case closed.
But why go after menthols? The industry depends on flavorings – it is an essential part of turning cheap Bright leaf tobacco into the product we all love and use.
The fact that this process was invented by a slave by the name of Stephen in 1839 is all the more reason why we should tread lightly.
One group says this is this just another way of going after people of color. Another group says it’s a great way to get African Americans off smoking. They predominately smoke menthols and suffer disproportionately from tobacco-born illnesses.
So, to many this is just the powdered coke vs. crack debate – discriminate by way of cultural choices.
The real issue is what do we do instead?
Smoking is increasingly about self-medication and it is really only when people have chemical alternatives do they quit en masse.
Since American tobacco is so dependent on flavorings it’s pretty obvious this ban will be watered down or at least become somewhat discriminatory and absurdly shaped by lobbyists.
The truth is that light tobacco – the inhalable kind is the real problem. Not the specific flavorings.
Smoking wasn’t always about inhaling. Getting rid of fomaldehyde and glycerine may be fine but if congress really wants to help the world it should consider the lesson of President. Don’t let them inhale – just ban those kinds of tobacco and confine us to the coarse old stuff the real Indians smoked.
Case closed.
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