Wednesday 7 September 2011

The Dangers Of Passive Water Vapour

I was going to let it pass but this is just too much California stupid to keep all to myself.

(Media-Newswire.com) - GAVILAN COLLEGE, CA - As of Fall Semester, 2011, Gavilan College is a smoke-and-tobacco-free learning environment. Smoking and use of tobacco products and non-FDA approved nicotine delivery systems ( such as "e-cigs" ) are prohibited on all areas of campus, except for designated smoking areas. FREE smoking-cessation counseling and FDA-approved nicotine replacement therapy can be obtained through the office of Student Health, through a partnership with Breathe California.
Is this really the standard of educators in California?

People who in one breath talk about how very bad smoking is and promoting alternatives, while in the next banning one which has been proven many times over to wean smokers away from tobacco. Hey, yanks! These morons are educating your kids, aren't you a bit perturbed about that?

It's enough that their gullible bandwagon-jumping has led them to ban the non-existent threat of secondhand smoke from the open air, but to enforce an outdoor ban on electronic cigarettes is fuckwittery of heroic proportion.

I mean, where on earth do they get such an idiotic idea from?

Incredibly, the answer is a more powerful - yet even more incredibly hysterical - body than them. The government.

Just as they may regulate the use of cigarettes and other tobacco products, state and local governments may pass their own laws to regulate where e-cigarettes can be used to protect the public from exposure to secondhand e-cigarette vapors.
No, you're not dreaming. The USA really is filled with that many levels of vacant irresponsibility.

The nation's foremost regulatory agency are seriously warning against the entirely fictional danger of "secondhand e-cigarette vapors", despite all available evidence - including their own study last month - finding no hazardous levels of anything in electronic cigarettes.

They may as well be issuing guidance on the health implications of breathing near a kettle, or the chances of contracting thrush by walking past a blonde pixie.

Altogether now ... it's not about health, you know.


15 comments:

Take Note said...

Altogether now ... it's not about health, you know.”

Neo-eugenicists can’t help themselves. They’re salivating at the prospect of……… PROHIBITION. If the neo-cons are masterful at anything, it is lying and camouflage. The neo-dimwits don’t like the term PROHIBITION – for obvious reasons. They prefer the euphemism “ENDGAME”, seeming to believe that this will alter the perception of their tyrannical aspirations.

Sit back and enjoy the one-sided blather-fest, i.e., no-one but we, the self-installed social engineers, is welcome.
dream: reactions to tobacco
endgame ideas among policymakers,
media and public health
practitioners

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/11/580

westcoast2 said...

They seem to go further and ban tobacco products that produce no smoke/vapour of any kind e.g Snus. The EU already did that but it is still available in the US.

Take Note said...

Is this really the standard of educators in California?

It’s not just California. Bans on smoking/tobacco are becoming more prominent across the USA.

“About 300 U.S. colleges and universities are completely tobacco free and more than 200 others are smoke free, according to the National Center for Tobacco Policy. Many more are considering tobacco limitations.”

E.g.,
http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2011/07/oregon_colleges_and_universiti.html

Mr A said...

They really are getting desperate and it's getting increasingly obvious that they are Big Pharma's stooges.

I mean, just look at that sentence about the campus, and think about the thought processes that were involved in getting there....

Student lights up cigarette.
PHARMA STOOGE: "No! This is a smokefree campus."

STUDENT: "Nazi. Never mind, I have some chewing baccy and snuff. No smoke there."

PHARMA STOOGE: "No! This is a smokefree and tobacco free campus."

STUDENT: "Nazi. Never mind, I have an e-cigarette that only produces water vapour and involves no tobacco at all."

PHARMA STOOGE: "No! This is a smokefree and tobacco free and non-FDA approved nicotine-delivery system campus."

STUDENT: "So, I can only use.....?"

PHARMA STOOGE: "Pharma products! Pharma products!"

STUDENT: "Actually, I'll just go to my room and smoke a Marlboro. I know it's a smokefree, tobacco-free and non-FDA approved nicotine delivery system campus, but since students have been E-ing it up and smoking weed in our rooms since time immemorial, and those are against the rules too, I don't really think that's an issue. Ta ta."

God these people make my blood boil.... Stupidity and authoritarianism. Is there anything worse?

Mr A said...

Then again, that's Universities for you. Mine has signs all over the place (outside) saying, "Do not smoke next to this window! People in these offices find it offensive." Now that's as maybe, but proof? Evidence? I wager those people weren't actually asked for their opinions before those signs went up, let alone expressed outraged disgust at the "offensiveness" of a wisp of smoke.

Similarly, there are signs saying, "No Smoking! Smoking is a risk to the health of others." Again, really? I expect this sort of waffley inaccuracy in most places, but in an academic institution where freedom of expression and evidence-based research is supposedly key? Do you think they'd take them down if I sent them that meta-analysis that showed 80% of studies into passive smoking showed no link between smoke and ill-health? Of course not, and that is frightening in a supposedly academic institution.

Then again, this is a University which gave a senior ASHite an honourary Doctorate for their "good work" and spends hundreds of thousands on AGW bollox despite none of the Academics who work there signing that "We are scientists who support the AGW theory" letter that went around last year. So I really shouldn't be surprised.

Dick Puddlecote said...

Take Note & Mr A: Universities do tend to be a hotbed of uncritical healthist group-think, it's true. Odd really, considering that they are supposed to be where youth learn how to question and investigate rather than just follow the herd. Or perhaps their role has changed over the years, I dunno. It would explain a lot.

Westcoast: The bans on snus are proof positive - while they are still in existence - that none of this is about health, but instead just a righteous attack on big businesses of which they disapprove. Maybe the popularity of e-cigs scares them. A few more years and they will have so much clout as to be difficult to hold back. I've mentioned this before.

nisakiman said...

The rather worrying thing about all this is that these lunatic movements that have their origins in the US have a tendency to cross the Atlantic.

Not that we're without our own fuckwit rent-seekers, but America does seem to take the lead in the realms of extreme fuckwittery.

Anonymous said...

Interesting this comes from Gavilan College, located in Gilroy, south of San Jose. Gilroy is the "Garlic Capital" of the US and every summer has their annual Garlic Festival. Garlic is outdoor cooked in every way imagineable as tens of thousands pour in daily to visit the Garlic Festival - and the heavy smell of garlic is in the air literally for 50 to 100 miles in all directions of Gilroy. Since e-cigs can use Vegetable Glycerin as steaming fluid and since VG is made from boiled down soy-beans, the same soy used to make tofu and organic foods sold in Whole Foods Markets - then is Gavilan College trying to imply that the strong stinking smell going 50 to 100 miles out from roasting steaming garlic is somehow innoculous and inoffensive, in comparison to the non-scent and aroma coming from someone steaming soybean juice in an e-cig? It's just how stupid and dumbed down American college campuses have become, a brainwashing center for the stupid.

Anonymous said...

Free Smoking-Cessation Counceling. I think I know who needs the Councelling here.

Anonymous said...

This is o.k. though !!
http://www.nicorette.ca/stop-smoking/products/inhaler.aspx

Lawson said...

Anon @20:41.
That ad cracked me up!
I can think of loads of other things to do with my hands, should I be foolish enough to attempt a life without smoke. The first that came to mind involved the neck of the smarmy, grinning git in the advert;)

SadButMadLad said...

It seems the difference between an e-cig and the NICORETTE® Inhalator is that the inhalator does not produce any vapour to simulate a cigarette. Therefore the pharma product is fine because it is designed not to be like a cigarette. For the same reason the old sweets that looked like cigs were banned. If it looks like a real cig there is the chance (in the prohibition's minds) that non-smokers will take up the evil habit purely on the basis that someone is using a cigarette simulation.

Dick Puddlecote said...

SBML: Spot on. This is precisely an accusation laid at the door of e-cigs, that they will encourage non-smokers to indulge. Yet studies into those who use e-cigs has shown that 100% of vapers are those who have previously been classed as smokers.

It's pure nonsense and they know it. But since when did anti-smokers (or pharma NRT boosters) ever let facts get in the way of a good old-fashioned propaganda-fest? ;)

Anonymous said...

There are notices on every outside wall of our local hospital, saying "Smoking prohibited within 20 metres of any window".

And on the inside, there are signs in every ward saying "DO NOT open any windows, this building has central air conditioning."

Anonymous said...

People inside the hospital might still "see" the smokers, thus it must be banned, outdoors.

It's the same excuse used in San Francisco to ban all tobacco product and tobacco related paraphenalia retail sales within any pharmacy or store that contains a pharmacy.

The people who come in to buy pharmaceutical drugs "shold not have to see" retail displays of tobacco or other people purchasing tobacco.

"Seeing" is the excuse for these bans, "just the idea of it" is what is smug and intolerable.