Seeing the light
A few weeks ago I wrote a wee post called A Billion Lies.
In it I mused on the concept that the Tobacco Control Industry was reaching a point of desperation and churning out so many blatant lies and distortions, that surely people would begin to see them for the mendacious cunts that they really are.
One of the sites I read is The Rest of the Story: Tobacco News and Commentary written by Michael Siegel, who is an avowed Anti. For some time now, while remaining Anti Tobacco, he has come to see some of the appalling lies put out by his cohorts, and has become increasingly disillusioned by their activities.
In his latest post he states –
I have not been able to write because I have been too distraught. I have come to the realization that the anti-smoking movement – which I have been a part of for the past 31 years, is essentially dead. And even worse, the anti-smoking movement is now actively promoting smoking. This is extremely difficult for me to understand and to reconcile. And it is especially difficult to stomach given the irony that while the anti-smoking movement is promoting smoking, hundreds of for-profit companies are the ones who are actually fighting to make smoking obsolete. In contrast, anti-smoking groups are fighting to preserve smoking and make sure that it does not become obsolete.
So it appears that the scales have fallen from his eyes, and the movement that he once supported has now alienated him. He then goes on to say precisely what we have been saying for ages –
1. Electronic cigarettes represent a huge threat to their ideology. There is simply no room for a nicotine-containing product that could actually help improve people's health.
2. E-cigarettes are also a threat because it destroys the anti-smoking ideology to think that a person might actually derive some enjoyment from nicotine without it killing them.
3. It is unacceptable for people to be using a nicotine product that does not kill them because it doesn't allow for punishment of what is seen as this bad moral choice. In contrast, continued high levels of smoking are tolerable because these nicotine addicts are being punished for their poor behavior.
4. The "save the smoker" argument does not bring in donations, while the "save our children" appeal allows anti-smoking groups to continue to produce effective financial appeals to their constituents.
5. E-cigarettes not only threaten to make smoking obsolete, but to greatly reduce the use of pharmaceutical products, harming companies with which numerous anti-smoking groups have significant financial relationships.
6. Actually making smoking obsolete would essentially put anti-smoking groups out of business. Ensuring that vaping remains at the margins of society helps ensure that anti-smoking professionals continue to have jobs. Vaping products would actually make a cigarette "end-game" possible because they provide an alternative to smokers, easing concerns about the development of a cigarette black market. Thus, vaping actually does pose a threat to a continued high availability of jobs in tobacco control.
It must be hard to take that the movement of which he has been a part for so many years has finally shown him their true colours. Maybe now he'll look back on those years he has been in business and examine them in the new light? He will hopefully discover the underlying truth to the whole movement –
It has never been about health.
Heh! The scales are falling from his eyes? A Damascene conversion? Don't be too sure, GD. Once an anti-smoker, always an anti-smoker. But it's interesting, nevertheless, that he is starting to realise that what we have known for years is an actual fact.
How will he deal with it, I wonder? Will he be able to reconcile these realisations with his ideological stance?
I've been saying for some time now that e-cigs are really going to throw the cat amongst the pigeons in TC, and it looks like I was right. We're seeing all sorts of schisms appearing in 'Public Health' and the TC community.
However, the bottom line is "the mortgage has to be paid" and "The payments on the Range Rover Vogue come up every month", so e-cigs must be quashed, post-haste! Can't have any new technology queering the pitch! Heaven forbid that the gravy train should grind to a halt!
Can you imagine the effect on a cardinal if he is given definitive proof that God doesn't exist? I presume the reaction would mainly be one of denial [I couldn't possibly have been wrong all those years] through to disbelief [Maybe it's only proof that God doesn't exist now]. I presume he would carry on believing in God despite the proof?
Some day in the [hopefully not too distant] future, they'll look back in amazement at the Puritanical Period and wonder how people put up with such control and brainwashing. Maybe it will become known as Prohibition II?
Ok, it doubled up. Duh! Delete one of them if you can be bothered, GD.
It did, and of course I can be bothered. I don't want the place cluttered with superfluous comments? Must be minor teething problems on the new site! 😉
Is this your new site? Though I'd make a superfluous comment just to try it out. Enjoyed the post.
It is indeed, and I'm glad you had to ask, as presumably you can't see a difference? There are differences [I defy anyone to notice them!] and hopefully it's a bit faster?
You must remember though that Michael Siegel is the man who "produced" the evidence of the horrendous health effects of passive smoke.He has always argued that his evidence is accurate even though he utilised scientific research that was never intended to be used in the way that he used it.I regularly commented on his blog for a year or two ,until i decided that trying to debate the issues with a "learned man" afforded little common sense.In my view,once an anti,always an anti,and stuff the science.
Welcome Simes! I never trust an Anti, no matter how reformed. Even if he turned and said that everything he had ever researched or published was completely wrong, the damage he did in the past can't be repaired.
The fact is that an Anti by definition belongs to a mindset that believes that regulating a person's life and lifestyle, and treating grown adults like imbeciles is a good thing.