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.