Will the Bureaucrats Listen?

Tuesday 10 June 2014 - Filed under Authoritarianism + Dumbassery + Economy + electronic cigarettes + Government + Regulation + Science + Vaping

I highly doubt that the science verifying the efficacy of using e-cigarettes as a far more healthy form of ingesting nicotine than traditional cigarettes, and a legitimate means to quit smoking analogs will have any bearing whatsoever on the FDA, which has vowed to hang its looming regulation of the industry on the frame of science. The media surely hasn’t allowed science to trump the narrative passed on to them by their government masters. Spinfuel Magazine:

Since these proposed regulations were disclosed [by the FDA], there has been a surge of news stories published and run on national television regarding the industry that have been…well, rather uneducated and downright harmful to smokers who might have otherwise already quit smoking for vaping.

While a large portion of the electronic cigarette (Vaping) community has been passionate about education, we have seen countless articles and news reports by national and local news agencies twisting the facts and publishing biased “articles” that simply seem like propaganda to the most educated on the issue.

This manipulation and creative interpretation of the scientific evidence is just as the media and their government benefactors would have it: using the perceived credibility of the media as an independent body in order to further the government’s agenda by doing what it can to strengthen the case in favor of government regulation. Unfortunately it’s working despite dozens of scientific studies which show that vaping is orders of magnitude safer than smoking (if not vitually harmless) and the ability to use vaping as a means to quit smoking traditional cigarettes.

And it’s not just the media licking the boots of government, but also NGOs that are funded primarily from government sources and serve their masters well by vomiting up unsubstantiated claims about both the health and social dangers of vaping. Dr. Tom Friedman, director of the Center for Disease Control has expounded his “personal belief” that vaping is little more than a means to get kids hooked on smoking traditional cigarettes. He denies the efficacy of using electronic cigarettes as a means to quit smoking, despite scientific evidence which strongly suggests that not only can vaping help smokers quit smoking, but that it may well be the most effective way of doing so, thousands of anecdotes at places like The #IMPROOF Movement which show real-world success stories, and the market explosion of vaping in the form of vape shops opening in droves throughout the country over the last two or three years (if smokers weren’t switching to vaping, why on earth would the market indicate that people are spending a shit-load of money on vaping?). Scientific studies, thousands of people, and the market clearly making smoke vapor signals that show people WANT to vape rather than smoke isn’t sufficient for Tom Friedman, yet somehow his own “personal convictions” are enough to convince him that he’s right, and set him on a quest to do everything in his power to make sure the government will have the last say regardless of the scientific evidence available to us all.

And yet it’s Tom Friedman and his ilk that fly the banner of science.

2014-06-10  »  madlibertarianguy