Simple Simon Blatantly Lies To Australia

As I touched on in the last article, the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) yesterday decided to continue with their ban on e-cigs containing nicotine. Part of their flawed reasoning cited evidence from the US which is hardly surprising.

You see, one of the prime Australian 'experts' in tobacco control Down Under is the vandal-turned-clown Simple Simon Chapman, whose prejudice against e-cigs runs so deep that he has scoured the globe for straws to clutch in his attempt to obstruct vaping.

Increasingly he has been drawn to the US where the CDC continues to lie about the subject by classifying e-cigs as a "tobacco product" despite containing no tobacco. That way, they are able to pretend that tobacco use remains unchanged as more youth vape and fewer smoke.

I highlight 'tobacco use' because it is a clever manipulation of statistics, however it's quite clear when you look into the data that youth smoking in the US has been falling to record low levels. For example, here is a graph taken from CDC data by Reason's Jacob Sullum in April last year.

Yesterday, though, Chappers appeared on Australian national broadcaster ABC's PM show and declared this to the nation.

"The fall in youth smoking that we saw for many many years in the United States last year, for the first time, stopped falling; and while that was happening, e-cigarette use was rising dramatically."

As you can see above, even if the CDC may try to argue that tobacco use remains overall the same if you fraudulently include e-cigs in the same category, it is completely untrue to say that youth smoking has stopped falling.

It's the same if you look at National Youth Tobacco Survey data, as Chris Snowdon did last month ...

... and also if you look at US Monitoring The Future surveys.

Contrary to what Simple Simon told Australia yesterday, nowhere is there a hint that youth smoking rates have stopped falling in the US. Yet if you're an Australian citizen who is largely uneducated on the subject of e-cigs, yesterday you would have heard someone called Professor something-or-other declare a falsehood as fact on Australia's state broadcaster.

In many professions, this kind of behaviour would be punishable by suspension or even dismissal. But in the unregulated Wild West world of 'public health' - where you would think accurate information should be far more important than in any other sphere - Chappers will get away scot-free with deliberately lying.

Sadly, he is just one small part of a broken and corrupt profession in which lying is viewed as an acceptable tactic, and which is actively harming social cohesion and liberty the world over. 

Meeting Asian Vapers

Following on from yesterday's article about the bizarre chaos at COP7, I mentioned that I had later attended an extremely useful event designed for vapers from a number of countries in Asia.

The first thing to note is that I finally saw an Indian vaper! His name was Nikhil, and a very personable young lad he was too. 

When I say finally, I mean that prior to that event I had not seen a single vaper in Delhi - and apart from Monday night's gathering, still haven't. In short, they just don't seem to exist. I quizzed Nikhil as to why this was the case and he told me that the police often arrest vapers if they vape in public, primarily on the grounds that they believe that the devices are being used to inhale cannabis juice. 

This is most likely because general awareness of vaping is scant. To give you an example, when I arrived at the airport at the weekend, the hotel had forgotten to send the car I requested to pick me up. Two representatives of the hotel - suited and booted - were apologetic and called another which could be with me in 15 minutes (it was a bit longer than that in the end). They took me to the road outside with my luggage and I got my e-cig out for the first time since Heathrow; that's when the questions started. 

I tried as best I could to answer them but it was clear they were unfamiliar with the products and they both admitted they had never even heard of an e-cig let alone seen one. In fact, as I vaped and let out a small cloud on a low-powered device, one of my helpful shepherds actually stepped back in astonishment. That gives you a clue as to how much work Indian vapers have to do get established in the country. So it was immense that quite a few determined vaping afficionados turned up to discuss what can be done about it, especially in the shadow of COP7. 

It was a very successful networking session which also included vapers from The Philippines, Hong Kong and Malaysia that I know of.

It was a whole new world for me and emphasised that - although vapers in the UK have their problems - the difficulties we face pale into insgnificance compared with these guys.

Having said that, many of the problems are identical to the ones UK vapers have come up against and, in many areas, still do. The most prominent being, of course, an inability to properly get the message out that vaping is all but harmless because there exist repellent tobacco control dinosaurs failing to live with the times and instead producing junk science and pinheaded ideological reasons to object to vaping.

And the interests of the Asian vapers will be instantly recognisable by those who vape in the UK. Very sociable, these vapers were talking devices, juice and regulations before we had even received our first cup of tea. The e-liquid testing scene below, for example, doesn't look dissimilar to one you might see in a vape-friendly UK venue too. 

Anyone who watches VTTV will know that I recorded some interviews on the night as a pre-arranged exclusive for Dave Dorn and the gang (you can watch the whole show here). They went remarkably well, especially the one with Tom Pinloc of The Philippines who gave his thoughts on how he saw the future of vaping under the rule of murderous dictator - and COP7's best friend - Ricardo Duterte. What also surprised me about his tale is that there are apparently around 100,000 vapers in the Philippines, served by a number of different consumer groups. That is quite a force to be reckoned with, but it will have to be while extreme prohibitionist Duterte is in charge down there.

Indian vapers boasted of the same kind of high numbers as the Philippines, so I also interviewed two Indian vapers and a representative of the newly-formed Association of Vapers India. These short video stories (on average about 5 mins each) were received very warmly in the chat area of VTTV and I've had requests to make them available widely. I always meant to do so anyway, so embedded below (in the order I filmed them) are the thoughts of vapers living far away in hostile environments but still fighting their corner admirably. They are well worth viewing to get an idea of the challenges being met in that area of the world. 

It's been a very busy week so far out here, but check back for the next blog which will be discussing a very special award for the WHO and the night I met A Bilion Lives Director Aaron Biebert. Oh yes I did, and have pics to prove it!

Another Outbreak Of Common Sense In New South Wales

Those with a good memory might remember Peter Phelps, an Australian politician and Member of the New South Wales Legislative Council. Phelps is notable for being incredibly principled in defending liberal values in such an illiberal environment as NSW, and in a chamber which is situated in nanny state central Sydney. As such, I was thrilled to unexpectedly meet him in July during a coffee break at a Royal Society of Medicine event on over-regulation of pleasure.

Last year - when he was government whip no less - I wrote about how he casually entered a chamber packed full of variously ignorant prejudiced prohibitionists armed only with insults, smears, innuendo, wild assumptions, and downright lies, and placed in front of them simple incontrovertible facts about e-cigarettes.

And arguably won hands down.

I love it when the Left is outraged by what I say, but can offer no evidence to counter my arguments #stillwinning

— Peter Phelps MLC (@PeterPhelpsMLC) May 27, 2015

Well, on Monday he was delivering more common sense, this time at the NSW "Inquiry into childhood overweight and obesity", colloquially known as the 'Fat kids' inquiry.

As expected he was sound throughout, but his exchange with Jane Martin - Executive Manager of what appears to be a turgid authoritarian organisation called Obesity Policy Coalition - was as amusing as it was accomplished.

Ms MARTIN: They should not be advertising to children so they should be happy to set that aside.
The Hon. Dr PETER PHELPS: Why not? What is wrong with children who have high calorific outputs exposed to advertising which gives them high calorific inputs?
Ms MARTIN: Because children who do a lot of exercise need more healthy food, not junk food.
The Hon. Dr PETER PHELPS: How you achieve your calories is a component part of that. If a child has a diet which only gives the child 8,000 kilojoules a day and the child is expending 12,000 kilojoules a day that child is manifestly unhealthy.
Ms MARTIN: Elite athletes who do a lot of sport do not eat more unhealthy food because they need more calories. We need to eat a nutritious, healthy diet. If you are exercising a lot you get your calories from nutritious food.
The Hon. Dr PETER PHELPS: But no-one—certainly not McDonald's or any other company—is suggesting that your only diet be McDonald's.
Ms MARTIN: But it does make it a more normal part of life. It also associates sport with—
The Hon. Dr PETER PHELPS: Having enjoyable food is not a normal part of life? 

The denormalisation of McDonald's, eh? Rings a bell doesn't it?

Ms MARTIN: I suppose if McDonald's is called a Happy Meal then maybe that means it is but it means that having these associations—as a mother, I know what it does. You go to play sport and then the kid thinks that they deserve a McDonald's or it creates that affiliation, it creates that association, it creates the pester power. That is exactly what it is designed to do. We need to protect our kids and support parents who have to deal then with the demand that is created by those associations. That is what it is designed to do.
The Hon. Dr PETER PHELPS: But parents should be in a position to say, "No, you can't have that. You had a McDonald's yesterday. You're not having one today."
Ms MARTIN: But kids pester a lot because there are a lot of promotions that they are exposed to. Much more so than when you were young or I was young, it is a very different sort of environment. I saw some research the other day which talked about the amount of times that parents are pestered in the supermarket. It is massive. Why should parents be the ones to fight this marketing and promotion?
The Hon. Dr PETER PHELPS: Because they are parents, Ms Martin. 

This!

The Hon. Dr PETER PHELPS: Are you saying that sweetened beverages in Australia are an increasing problem for people?
Ms MARTIN: I do not know that we said that in our submission. I think we said that what is acknowledged is that there is very high consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks. Most of the added sugar in the diet comes from sugar-sweetened drinks and some subsections of the population are very high consumers of sugary drinks, particularly young men.
The Hon. Dr PETER PHELPS: Would you agree with the Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS] figures which indicate that the proportion of people aged two and over who have consumed sweetened beverages decreased from 49 per cent in 1995 to 42 per cent in 2011-12?
Ms MARTIN: Yes, that is true, but that is all people including people who do not necessarily drink sugary drinks.
The Hon. Dr PETER PHELPS: Would you also agree that the ABS statistics show that the greatest decrease in consumption of sweetened beverages was seen among children, with the proportion of children aged two to three who consumed sweetened beverages decreasing by more than half, from 67 per cent down to 31 per cent?
Ms MARTIN: Has that taken into account the under-reporting in that survey? 

Ah, the old 'public health' under-reporting excuse, they trot this out occasionally. It's shorthand for "we can't argue with that so we'll try to pretend the data are flawed somehow". Phelps is on it, though.

The Hon. Dr PETER PHELPS: It certainly mentions under-reporting; however, I am sure that a survey taken some almost 20 years afterwards has better reporting mechanisms than the 1995 survey, which was more likely to be under-reported.
Ms MARTIN: My understanding is under-reporting was a bigger problem in that survey. However, it does appear there has been a decrease but that does not mean that sugary drinks are not a problem.
The Hon. Dr PETER PHELPS: Do you also agree with the ABS statistic which showed the overall consumption of soft drinks and flavoured minerals waters decreased from 33 per cent in 1995 to 29 per cent in 2011-12?
Ms MARTIN: Yes.
The Hon. Dr PETER PHELPS: And, moreover, the only age cohort which showed an increase in intense sweetened soft drinks was the ages 51 to 70?
Ms MARTIN: That is one subsection of the sugary drink market. I do not know what an intense—
The Hon. Dr PETER PHELPS: Presumably regular Coke and the like. Is it not true that in fact this supposed sugary drink menace is grossly over-reported whereby you have a situation of level or diminishing levels of sugary drink consumption in Australia over the previous 20 years and more particularly significantly lower levels of sugary drink consumption amongst children?
Ms MARTIN: I think you could still argue it is a serious problem ...

I suppose she will always have to say that no matter the statistics, considering it is the current approach of anti-obesity professional worldwide to lobby for taxation. They're not that interested in what works in so much as what is simple so they keep their highly-paid positions by producing 'results'.

And Phelps addresses this too.

The Hon. Dr PETER PHELPS: Ms Martin, is it ever legitimate for a parent to feed their children McDonald's?
Ms MARTIN: We have all fed our children McDonald's. The problem is that these kinds of treats are everywhere now. I ate one chocolate a week when I was a kid; now there are three packaged foods in children's lunchboxes and they are basically all unhealthy. That is the problem.

"One chocolate a week"? I suppose there's a hint there as to why she's grown up to work in such a miserable, joy-vacuuming industry.

The Hon. Dr PETER PHELPS: Children do not buy their own lunches and put them in their lunchboxes. Their parents buy it for them. Again it comes down to this: Are you saying because we do not think particularly working-class parents are very good parents that it is government's role to step in and stop them being parents and it is government's job to be parents for them?
Ms MARTIN: I think it is government's job to support parents and that parents are undermined a lot. I think a lot of parents, including myself, thought that things like Nutrigrain were healthy foods for my child. It has just been reformulated to 26 per cent sugar, but it was 33 per cent sugar. I did not know that was not a healthy product, because that is how it is promoted. A lot of people would think that Milo was a healthy product. The Olympics was sponsored by McDonald's and Coca-Cola, because being affiliated with health makes the products appear to have healthier attributes than they have. I think that governments should support parents.
The Hon. Dr PETER PHELPS: They should, but they should support them not in a sense of prohibiting or using draconian powers to stop things from happening and rather to encourage greater participation in sport, surely?
Ms MARTIN: I think there are a lot of nudges, like taxing sugary drinks, like removing things that create the demand for these products in children, which is the incredible barrage and wallpaper of unhealthy foods marketing that our children are exposed to. We need to see the Health Star Rating made mandatory on all foods, and some improvements made in how the rating is applied so that Milo does not get 4½ stars.
The Hon. Dr PETER PHELPS: That is simply because it is easier for governments to ban things rather than have effective behavioural change—you do not like the behaviour and so you ban things.

Bravo! Yep, that's about the sum of it. Well played again, Sir!

You can read the full transcript here, The excerpts above come from pages 10-14 of the PDF. Also look out for an appearance by Skype from Snowdon on pages 62-66.

H/T Catallaxy Files

Tobacco Control Fantasy Evaporates In Court

Great news from those spunky Dutch!

Cafes and bars can continue to set up special smoking rooms where customers can light up, judges in The Hague said on Wednesday. 

Good. As it should be.

Anti-smoking lobby group Clean Air Nederland had gone to court in an effort to have all smoking rooms abolished. 

Yep, that's what disgusting anti-social fuck-knuckles do. They would never go into these rooms themselves, but they went to court to stop everyone else from choosing to and to stop businesses choosing to provide them.

And the reason?

It argues that allowing cafes and bars to sanction smoking in certain areas conflicts with international treaties signed by the Netherlands.  

Note the absence of any mention of bar staff? That's old hat now. What this hideous bunch of interfering spooge-gobblers were complaining about is that the elected Dutch government was not adhering to a rule laid down by a cabal of unelected extremists at the WHO.

Fortunately, the Dutch court system recognised a very salient fact that tobacco controllers would prefer politicians didn't know.

The court ruled that CAN cannot call on the World Health Organisation treaty which requires signatories to actively combat the use of tobacco and to protect people against tobacco smoke.

The text of the treaty does not state that there should be a ban on smoking or that countries are obliged to introduce one, the judges said in their ruling.

This is article 5.3 of the FCTC (and even the FCTC in its entirety) being called out for what it is ... a big empty threat that the lying bullies in tobacco control wave around as if it were legally enforceable. Now, I don't know if they're just incredibly dense or that they actually believe their own lies, but we should thank the Dutch legal system for stating the bleeding obvious and ruling that FCTC guidelines (the clue is in the name) are nothing to do with the rule of law or legislation in any country which has ratified it. They are quite simply a mendacious tool that the tobacco control industry uses to control dissent and ensure their incompetence isn't challenged by people who know what they are talking about.

As Snowdon explained last year, tobacco controllers have built an elaborate fantasy around article 5.3 which they regularly try to use as a club against civil consultation and common sense policy-making.

Local councils have been sold a bill of goods by ASH about what they can and cannot do. I've been reading a document entitled 'Guidance for Trading Standards on engaging with the tobacco industry' which is endorsed by ASH and Public Health England. ASH has its own list of tips entitled 'Developing Policy on Contact with the Tobacco Industry'. Both of them offer highly misleading advice to local authorities based on a misrepresentation of Article 5.3. The first of them says:

This document articulates the legal obligations placed on public authorities by the Treaty and illustrates established best practice for those working in the sector.

The 'Treaty' has never been enshrined in law in Britain or the EU, so this is wibble from the outset. There are no 'legal obligations'. From a legal perspective, the FCTC is nothing more than a bunch of aspirations, but even if Article 5.3 was the law, it clearly refers to health policy, not trade policy, smuggling or waste disposal.

None of this stops ASH from making thinly veiled threats like this...

[Article 5.3] could be relied upon in legal proceedings brought by an individual or other non-state body against a public authority. An authority that does not act in compliance with the convention may be exposed to risk of judicial review. If a local authority decides to diverge from the guidelines it is suggested the reasons for doing so should be documented.

This is intimidation, plain and simple. It raises the spectre of lawsuits (that will never be filed) to coerce councils into taking an extreme position to suit ASH's comic book worldview.

Except, of course, in the Netherlands a bunch of deluded cranks thought that FCTC guidelines were so powerful that they could file a court case. They have now found out that their fantasy of legislative status for a wish-list written by vile tax-spongers, and a puerile "na-na-na-not listening" clause drafted by some of the world's biggest lunatics, aren't actually legally enforceable after all.

CAN said immediately that it would appeal.

Of course they will. The illusion they are trying to create dies and reality gets noticed if they don't.

Let's all look forward to their lying asses being whipped again in due course.