If there was any doubt in your mind about our MPs at Westminster being a total waste of space and a brainless bunch, they have certainly dispelled it last week with their announcement that ‘vaping’ should become the acceptable face of smoking, and indeed funded by us taxpayers.

The gaggle of village idiots who have come-up with their controversial plan [to an outcry from leading scientists] to back use of e-cigarettes in Britain, get them readily available on NHS prescriptions, destroy bans on use in public places [like hospitals, restaurants, buses, trains, tubes], and abandon rules for advertising control, are members of the House of Commons Science & Technology committee, chaired by one Norman Lamb [an ambitious second rate LibDem ex-Minister and solicitor by trade specialising in employment law – so knows sod-all about either science or technology, does he? Or another 8 of his committee crowd as only 2 others have science knowledge?]

[What you have to understand about the working-way of politics and politicians in the UK, rests on the premise that neither MPs nor indeed the most senior Ministers running the Country should actually be ‘knowledgeable-about’ or ‘experienced-in’ anything they are dealing with or responsible for – which probably is so that they can’t be held accountable for major things going pear-shaped (as it regularly does, eh?). They are generally smooth-talking eloquent bluffers (majority men – two thirds), sometimes with dubious or questionable motives, who can pretend to know a lot but in fact know virtually nothing except how to survive in the Westminster bubble You can’t even tar them with the brush ‘A jack-of-all-trades is a master of none’ because they don’t even meet that criteria, do they?]

This committee’s demand that current Ministers burn the existing (but insufficiently robust?) rulebook on e-cigs, comes in exactly the very same week as yet another scientific medical study identified the risk of lung disease posed by e-cigarettes [finding that the ‘heat-vaporised’, nicotine infused liquids, become much more potent cell killers than when cold, hamstring the immune system’s ability to clear the lungs or prevent harmful chemical buildups, a disablement of the body’s cleaning system that can cause chronic lung disease (Birmingham University researchers)].

Now, you don’t have to be a scientist nor a doctor to realise that the body’s lungs were never designed to breath-in noxious smoke, do you? Now, just why people choose to challenge their own body to a ‘do-or-die’ conundrum by infusing it with chemicals will confound psychiatrist forevermore, won’t it?

The problem with these misled MPs is that they are gullible and victims of the fraudulent guiles of the tobacco industry’s diversity into e-cigarettes and its take-over of that market – just like the politicians of half a century ago who believed the manipulated research [by buying up scientists on a spectacular scale] promoted by the industry that denied that their products caused cancer [As a consequence of that the tobacco barons were allowed to further purloin their fortunes for many many more decades, while in the process they were killing millions of people with their tobacco.

These MPs have once again fallen into the trap set by the tobacco giants by relying on ‘favourable’ research papers [just who do you thing might be behind them that champion e-cigarettes, eh?] while side-lining other evidence highlighting health risks. In addition to that latest report there is NY University medical school finding that e-cig vapour caused DNA damage to heart, lungs and liver; WHO have recommended that e-cigs should be banned indoors.

E-cig vapour contains a number of toxins which obviously WILL cause harm over time both to users and bystanders – not yet evident because it is so short a time in use (in UK since 2007). Chemicals used to flavour vaping liquids often contain aldehydes which irritate the lung lining.

The evidence is that e-cigarettes are NOT better for quitting smoking than other aids [WHO & USFDA], while NICE has decreed there is little evidence of effectiveness or safety as medicinal products, so the very idea by MPs that e-cigs are the best aid to STOP smoking is a conundrum, as not only are they designed to be pleasurable to smoke, are attractive (particularly to the young and impressionable), but they retain the innate comfort of childhood suckling as did cigarettes, and into the bargain they fully satisfy and carryon the existing addiction to nicotine, while still retaining the heavily promoted glamour of being a smoker. WHAT ADDICT IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD CHOISE TO STOP or even swap to go onto nicotine patches with a reducing dose, so that an expensively acquired habit can be finally abandoned, do you think?

[It’s far more likely for e-cigs to result in the smoking of cigarettes than not].

The general public have suffered the abuse in public places for countless years until 2007 of the billows of toxic smoke blown out by the tobacco afflicted, and now MPs want to return to that enjoyment destroying nuisance by subjecting us all again to the nuisance of smokers – those weak morons who historically have shown their complete distain for those around them (including children, even their own) and make us suffer the danger, the smell and the vapour cloud produced by vaping while we are eating our food in a restaurant, drinking in the pub, travelling on the train or other public transport, or even sitting at our office desk or in other workplace. WHY, WHY, WHY, SHOULD WE? Why do we all have to suffer to satisfy the craving of a bunch of bloody addicts who embarked on smoking when they knew full well that it was long-term addictive and a life changing debilitating choice? [only those over 60 years old have any slight excuse]

As the major tobacco companies of the likes of Gallaher, Reynolds American, Philip Morris International, Lorillard, Imperial Tobacco, RJ Reynolds, Japan Tobacco International, Altria, British American Tobacco, saw the market shrink in the risk-aware ‘knowledgeable world’, they focused on the “emerging markets” [the less-developed countries & Eastern Europe] to aggressively increase their sale of cancer sticks and retain their massive cash-cow income, but then for the last decade-and-a-half they have invested heavily in the non-cigarette nicotine products industry, so that they could revive their previous massive income here by continue to fleece smokers and to addict our own. and similar populations, to the highly addictive drug of nicotine which causes increased heart rate and blood pressure– so damn the health and human consequences, in their view.

[Once your body gets a taste for nicotine, it can quickly become a life-long addiction, with extremely fatal consequences. It’s even more dangerous for the young because they’re still growing and developing, so drug abuse during these years in particular can have a lasting impact].

Now, these influential MPs, for reasons that are incomprehensible to most of us, want to roll back the clock on the pretence of helping (un-saveable?) smokers, but to allow the tobacco lobby once again to takeover the lives of our citizens by keeping them addicted to smoking nicotine, this time via the vehicle of e-cigarettes, or alternatively by even using the snus product [why for god’s sake have these silly MPs recommend that it should now be legalised in the UK, despite it having been linked to oral cancer, eh?]

[Snus is a moist powder tobacco product originating from a variant of dry snuff and is placed in lower lip for extended periods before swallowing].

Oh yes, the vape industry is over the moon and are taking to the airways to say this was a ringing endorsement of vaping’s public health potential and reiterate their false claims about their products [like e-cigarettes being the ‘most effective’ tobacco harm-reduction product] and dismissing fully justified health concerns as mere ‘scare stories’ [exactly as the same tobacco industry had responded back in the first half of the last century, despite the ever increasing and mounting evidence then that cigarettes caused cancer, eh?]

The half-awake MPs also concluded that we hadn’t needed to worry at all about the dangers to the young of vaping or it acting as a gateway to smoking, but clearly, they hadn’t noticed the disturbingly catastrophic development with it having now become an out of control addictive craze of viral proportions in America where it is sweeping over their schools, and is now a significant public health concern, no less? [Tobacco use remains the leading preventable cause of death and disease in the United States].

For the use of e-cigarettes among youth has skyrocketed in the U.S. – from 2011 to 2015, a 900% increase among high school students. There is the ‘Juul’ (being highly promoted on social media so securing some 70% of the market), a highly addictive vape pen, (nicknamed the ‘iPhone of e-cigarettes’), already launched in the UK, looks like a USB drive, can be charged on a computer, and is small enough to fit in the palm of the hand – readily being surreptitiously smoked by schoolchildren despite it being illegal for the under 21’s [no icky cigarette smell, minimal vapour trail, innocent & innocuous appearance].

Back in 1949, medical research first established the link between lung cancer to tobacco, and by 1956 that link was scientifically incontrovertible: however, the tobacco industry’s own documents have revealed the most astonishing systematic corporate deceit of all time in their fabricated denials (which have continued unabated to this very day) as determined by their lawyers and public relations outfits, that smoking was a matter of choice, was non-additive, didn’t cause cancer, the young weren’t targeted, advertising had no influence on total consumption, cigarettes were safe, no harm was caused by second-hand smoke,

The truth tells a much different story, doesn’t it? Their own documents obtained by legal action  show they understood or knew:

• since the 1950s, the cancer-causing nature of its product
• since the 1960s, that the crucial selling point of its product was the chemical dependence of its customers, and that the cigarette simply was a drug delivery device [So, without nicotine addiction there would be no tobacco industry]
• that the market of young smokers (teenagers and younger children) was of central importance to the industry [so great lengths were gone to in order to influence smoking behaviour in this age group].
• that advertising was crucial in nurturing the motivation to smoke [so its advertising set about creating or projecting the positive values erroneously associated with the product (independence, machismo, glamour, intelligence)]
• that they needed to abandon plans to make safer cigarettes, as that this would have exposed their existing products as ‘unsafe’ [instead they deliberately promoted ‘low-tar’ cigarettes to offer false reassurance without health benefits]
• that their freedom to smoke excuse would fail if smoking was considered to harm people by second-hand smoke, it would limit the smokers’ freedom to smoke, and would make smoking more socially unacceptable [so the industry took major steps to deny the harm caused by second-hand smoke and thwart measures to protect the public from it

How the hell have they been allowed to get away with it scot free, stay in business, and still be peddling death around the globe, do you think? Is it because money talks, influential corporate bodies are funded, lobbyists control the media, and they have politicians in their pockets, perhaps?

Well in UK we certainly have say the Institute of Economic Affairs so funded (consistently arguing against legislation on the industry), or the likes of so-called Tory grandee Kenneth Clarke, an ex-Health secretary, ex-non-executive Deputy Chair of BAT [he admitted the company they didn’t actively prevent overseas cigarette smuggling], or perhaps the sacked International Development secretary Priti Patel, an ex-lobbyist for the tobacco industry and as being an MP still defending them (old habits die hard, eh?), or nearly fifty MPs wined and dined before voting on cigarette packaging controls (fiercely fought against by the industry).

Our society no doubt can only wish NOW that smoking (and alcohol) had never been permissible or made easily available here, as it has had (and still is having) a serious debilitating impact on society. Although, great strides have been made in the UK to halt the mayhem caused by smoking, and it has to be said not without a great deal of opposition from those with a vested interest (including the government who were raking in massive tax), as well as the tobacco companies themselves using their massive war-chests of wealth, together with every trick in the book (legal or not) to thwart the legislation setting out to save the lives and futures of smokers, passive smokers, and the inducting our next generation into smoking and addiction (without doubt the industry’s aim)

[Our legislators have to stop NOW, the pandering to and indulging of the tobacco industry with its vaping offspring. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH]