In a new press release Ash is calling all smokers throughout the US to pay more money on health insurance than non-smokers.

Smokers already pay more on health insurance in a number of states.

Carolina has just joined those states, forcing smokers to pay 30% of health care costs rather than 20%.

Dodgy Maths

Ash argues that smokers costs the health system more than non-smokers.

What they are leaving out is the huge taxes smokers pay.

While we don't have exact figures for the US, we do know that smoking taxes in the UK pay for the cost of smoking diseases several times over.

What's more, smokers cost the country less overall, with smokers dying younger on average and therefore costing the UK less in pensions and less in treatment of old age diseases.

The truth is that non-smokers' moral judgements on smokers have lead to a situation where smokers already pay more than their fair share of the tax burden.

Discrimination

What is scary is that anti-smoker discrimination in resurging in a country which has worked so hard to get rid of other forms of discrimination.

Let's remember that this is the same anti-smoking lobby which has argued that we should leave smokers to die rather than treat them.

Ash, of course, goes even further than this.

They believe that even ex-smokers should be denied treatment that could save their lives. See "Action on Smoking and Health Suggest that Former Smokers not be Eligible for Heart Transplants."

Ash Accuses E Cigarette Research of Being Compromised

In a recent letter attacking E Cigarette Direct, ASH claimed that Electronic Cigarette Companies could not be relied upon to be neutral because of their financial interest.

They also claimed that any research commissioned by Electronic Cigarette Companies was compromised.

That research includes an analysis by Murray Laugeson, former principal medical officer of the New Zealand Department of Health and winner of the World Health Organization Tobacco or Health medal and citation “for achievements deemed worthy of international recognition in promoting the concept of tobacco-free societies.”

Yet the very organisation that claims electronic cigarette research is compromised is accepting money from a major pharmaceutical company.

Funding

It's not easy to find out where ASH's money come from.

We know they make some money by charging for advice on how to separate children from their parents.

But their financial reports are vague on the sources of their funds.

Busted

Pfizer, though, is not.

Jim Corken, of E Cigarette National, pointed me towards this document on the Pfizer website.

ASH is the first named partner in a $47 million dollar funding programme by Pfizer.

Pharmaceutical companies have a major interest in the electronic cigarette:

1. They sell billions of dollars of nicotine replacement aids per year. (Unfortunately, these don't work.) The market for these aids has been largely created by the Big Pharm funding of the anti-smoking movement, which has seem hundreds of millions of dollars channelled to public health organisations, much of it via the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

2. The big pharmecutical companies are evidently worried by the nicotine cessation industry, as shown by a report entitled:

E-Cigarettes Will Revolutionize The Face Of Tobacco Smoking And Could Pose A Threat To the Smoking Cessation Market

3. By removing the current electronic cigarette companies, big pharm can benefit by introducing their own version of the electronic cigarette in their future. Their huge donation to public health organisations means that these bodies are unlikely to protest.

Hypocrisy

It is standard for commercial companies to fund research into their products.

The FDA itself is funded by pharmecutical companies and, more recently, by the tobacco companies whose products kill more than 400,000 a year.

Testing organisations are supposed to maintain independence despite the source of funds.

ASH has attacked E Cigarette research because they can not reply directly to the points raised by our recent letter to the Peninsula:

1. That the electronic cigarette contains less nicotine than real cigarettes.

2. That the ingredients of the electronic cigarette are far less harmful than those contained in real cigarettes.

That they have made this accusation at the same time as receiving money from organisations with a direct negative interest in Electronic Cigarettes is simply breathtaking in its level of hypocrisy.

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