By Kennedy Shelley
“When one man dies it is a tragedy, when a million die it’s a statistic.” Communist thug Joseph Stalin.
Everyday 1300 Americans die from smoking related illness. Over 900,000 die from smoking in India every year.
But we treat these like statistics ignoring the human tragedy of people addicted to nicotine who only know combustible cigarettes as the only way to take care of their nicotine craving.
Like most people who smoked, I personally tried everything to quit smoking for years. From patches to pills, nothing worked.
Finally, in frustration seven years ago I quit cold turkey again.
I was showing signs of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) one of the first signs that my years of smoking was starting to kill me.
The big problem was that after two weeks, I could not stay focused.
In frustration, I was about ready to buy a pack of cigarettes again, but I noticed one of these new electronic cigarettes. So, I tried that instead.
It worked. I could think again. My thoughts were clear. And I became a vaper.
I talked to my doctor about it at my next appointment, and he was surprised that all my COPD symptoms were gone.
In the last seven years, the technology of vaping has changed dramatically.
Free of government regulation this industry has been highly innovative and nearly half of America’s smokers have quit smoking and took up vaping instead.
The British Medical Association has embraced vaping as a stop smoking harm reduction. Their in-depth research shows that it is 95% less harmful than smoking.
And they are revising their estimates again because as more evidence comes in, they can’t find any harms that occur from vaping, but they can from smoking.
But instead of embracing this technology in the US, the Food and Drug Administration keeps trying to equate vaping with smoking.
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?
There are many differences between vaping and inhaling burning vegetable matter. There is no carbon monoxide, tar or smell associated with vaping.
There are thousands of chemicals many toxic that are found in cigarette smoke that just don’t exist with vaping.
Vaping has just four chemicals in it, all approved by the FDA and nicotine.
Nicotine is a drug which has about the same negative effect as caffeine. It is fairly benign.
WHY THE RUSH TO BAN?
At the beginning of October, several things happened all at once.
The federal government released a study that showed teens were experimenting with vaping, and without any evidence made the assertion that “this MIGHT lead to smoking.”
Ignored in the report was that teen smoking dropped to its lowest level ever recorded.
And then there was an outbreak of respiratory disease caused by a drug dealer who made illegal THC vape cartridges using vitamin E oils.
The vitamin E (which is not used by commercial vaping companies) caused six or seven deaths.
This was used by anti-vaping activists to start to ban vaping sales and flavors.
WHAT’S REALLY BEHIND THE VAPING HYSTERIA?
Big tobacco and government have been losing money thanks to vaping. Literally millions of people have quit.
So many that it is causing problems in several states who count on smokers to fill government coffers.
Back in the 1990’s state governments sued big tobacco to cover the costs of smoking related illness.
Many of these states sold bonds to get the money fast. Then vaping showed up and the number of cigarettes being sold dropped.
California stands to lose the most because it said it would make up any loss in sales of cigarettes by using its general fund.
That means the taxpayers will have to pay nearly a billion to make up for lost revenue.
That’s it in a nutshell. The government is perfectly fine with 1300 people dying each day from smoking as long as the money keeps flowing in.
The government of India just effectively banned vaping in their country.
What is not reported is that the Indian government owns nearly 25% of the country’s largest tobacco company.
They are more than willing to let nearly a million of their citizens die each year from smoking to keep that money coming in.
When you get past all the government officials blowing smoke, just follow the money.
