This is quite a hard blog post to write.

At least, I have started to write it several times and got nowhere with it.

Yet, I think it needs to be said that sections of the electronic cigarette community are defeating themselves with anger.

Anger on the Net

I've seen it before on the net.

A person loses his temper - and loses the argument.

You don't think well when you are angry.

It's better to go away, calm down, come back and then write your response. You then need to rewrite it about ten times, get someone (or, even better, several people) to check it, and then publish it. Your response wins not through anger, but through a cool detached anaylsis of your opponents arguments.

ASH International gets Angry

I firmly believe that ASH got angry at our exposure of their nature, and that is why they released an open letter critical of us.

Up until that time they hadn't responded directly to any e-cigarette company, probably because they knew their arguments were too weak.

If they hadn't attacked us directly, we wouldn't have investigated them further.

We wouldn't have found out that they were being funded by pharmecutical corporations.

We wouldn't have invited three scientists to analyse their health claims.

We wouldn't have challenged them to respond directly to the issues.

And they wouldn't, again through anger, have asked newspapers not to retract proven lies.

Getting Taken Seriously

Anger may contribute to the low quality of some of the press releases out there.

Many are filled with grammatical errors and even swear words.

No one is going to take these seriously.

We E-cigarette smokers have a lot to get angry about.

After years of abuse and discrimination, we finally get an alternative to smoking - and then the same people who hurled the abuse at smokers try to ban it. And they do so with exagerations, misfinormation and lies.

Yet it is best to put this anger aside.

Otherwise, we are just playing into the hands of our opponents.

An Ignored Study

In 1959 a huge study was initiated by Cancer America into the effect on living with people with cancer.

With a huge sample of 100,000 people it was to give the answers other studies had failed to give.

By the late 1990's, when it became obvious what the answer was going to be - that passive smoking did not pose a significant risk.

Cancer America pulled the funding.

As the only organisations that would continue the funding were tobacco companies, the study lost all credibility in the eyes of anti-smoking campaigners.

Politics or Science

For the purpose of this blog, the point is not whether passive smoking is dangerous or not.

I am still in two minds myself, if only because scientists I respect still believe passive smoking is dangerous for us.

What scares me, though, is the refusal of non-smoking bodies to accept any scientific studies which might contradict their own stance.

This refusal was so strong that they lambasted no less austere a publication than the British Medical Journal for publishing a study on passive smoking.

We are fortunate that some organisation still respect science above politics - the BMJ calmy responded:

"The decision to publish a paper is only taken after careful consideration. It is inevitable that some research may at times be regarded as controversial."

(Source: New Scientist)

For the Greater Good

The argument given by some, if only in private, is that it is worth brushing up over some weaknesses in the case for passive smoking, as it is all in a good cause.

This is dangerous for two reasons.

First, in peddling exaggerations or outright lies the anti-smoking movement may lose all respect, and invite ridicule.

This is a reason we have covered before, many times before.

Secondly, and perhaps worse, is a danger which scientists Robert J. Mathews pointed out in an article on the topic.

"...despite all the efforts of campaigners and governments, around one in five people on the planet are smokers. Passive smoking is thus ubiquitous, and its effects must be taken into account in any study into potential causes of cancer or heart disease. If the risks from passive smoking have been exaggerated, there is a real danger that the risks from other causes will be underestimated - with untold consequences for human health."

(Source: The Telegraph)

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