"There is another huge killer of smokers and it's not nicotine or the tar that 's causing it!"
by Pippa Starr
March 9, 2021
According to the World Health Organisation, as of May 2020 around 8 million people a year are currently dying each year from smoking and that is up from around 5 million people in 2015.
What are the real reasons why this death rate of pandemic levels is getting worse year on year?
As a society, we are prepared to tolerate this happening otherwise, we would do a lot more about this tragic pandemic right?
A new pandemic bursts out of China in 2019 so far killing over 2.5 million people and we hurry around at a phenomenal pace to organise a harm reducing vaccine to reach the market within a year, yet smokers can just die right?
How dare I even try and compare COVID19 deaths with smoking, some might say.
It's the smoker’s own fault! They knew it was bad for them and if they choose to die from it, then that is on them!
I've heard that being said by many
non-compassionate people like it's simply an accepted and reasonable dialogue.
The answer to solving the more than
3 times bigger than COVID19 Smoking Pandemic is that we all must start caring just a little bit more than that.
But, if smokers are too stupid and choose to smoke then that's on them, not me!
Is it? Like the other pandemic, smoking also put's a massive dent in our economy, effects productivity and fills up far too many hospital beds, often in places where there is already bed shortages. In Australia the overall economic costs of smoking impact us at around $10000 per taxpayer every year!
So if you’re a heartless and cold person that only cares for the bottom line, how much difference do you think that could make to the Australian economy each year?
Is that new information to you that makes you think that just maybe we should do something drastic now to try and make smoking history?
Firstly, let's have a look where you get your information from in 2021 to help make the best decisions as a caring person (either for money and/or compassion).
Like most of us your life research will revolve around what you hear and read around us via your pocket computer/manipulator/phone tool or computer somewhere on the information highway that dominates our modern world.
When you are interested about a subject you might even "google it".
Try "googling" - "quit smoking methods" and it won't take long till you see a heap of information that recommends smokers to do everything from take heavy prescribed drugs like Champix/Chantix that has killed people, take all the big pharmaceutical nicotine alternatives like gums, patches, lozenges, sprays ect. Then there is the mother of all convincing ways to try and quit the smokes, "cold turkey". All these methods are great for the around 5-10% of smokers trying to quit, but what about the other 90-95% that it doesn't work for?
We've had solid information for around 60-70 years now, that smoking kills the majority of long-term smokers prematurely. We have had nicotine replacement products on the market for around 20 years yet there are more deaths expected this century that based on current projections could exceed a billion lives being lost to smoking related illness.
Meanwhile, as we get our information about other alternatives like vaping with nicotine, we see headlines like, "It's a big tobacco conspiracy", "those vape things are only designed to hook kids and turn them into smokers" and cling on to that information.
Although that is far from the truth, if we hear it enough it becomes true unless we do a bit of our own research, but that would involve caring, right?
I urge you to do your own research to see exactly what the truths are about vaping and the use of clean non-combustible nicotine products have already done so far. You will come across a highway of information that make teens look like crack addicts by vaping and all sorts of other information that will make you think that vaping with nicotine kills people, most of it is absurdly inaccurate!
The fact is not one man, woman, alternate gender, or child has died, gotten cancer or any other deadly disease from any clean low dosage nicotine delivery via systems such as ecigarettes or heat not burn products.
The fact is that those products have become the most popular and most effective quit methods that have ever been used or seen in history!
Sure, they are not perfect as they are only around 90-97% safer than smoking however, nor are car seat belts or motorcycle helmets, masks or even COVID19 vaccines.
It's called harm reduction.
The at least 60% effective vaping with low dosage nicotine methods compared to the 5-10% effective of other alternatives must be something that our society will have to embrace to have any chance at getting smoking death rates down.
But smoking rates have already gone down heaps, why do we need these things?
Smoking rate decreases have almost stalled in Australia over the last 3-6 years.
"Why don't governments just ban smokes and make these safer alternatives available or ban cigarette sales altogether?”, some naive people have actually said this to me before.
That is called prohibition, no one in history has made prohibition work, in fact history has taught us that prohibition will only create black markets that feed into even worse criminal activities.
There needs to be all the options available for adults who can't quit smoking. That includes all the flavour options via safer nicotine delivery systems. Not many people really want to smoke, they are addicted to it, so why would most smokers want to only have tobacco flavours available to them?
That is like suggesting to a cocaine addict they should snort cocaine scented icing sugar to get off cocaine which is clearly ridiculous.
“The flavours in vaping products are hooking another whole new generation to Nicotine and it’s destroying their teen brains during development” is often splashed across our media channels, is this true?
Firstly, I will make it 100% clear, before I proceed further I do not condone ANYONE of ANY age to begin vaping with nicotine unless you are a smoker or former smoker needing to find a ramp off deadly combustible tobacco products.
Nicotine is NOT the devil’s nectar that the trial by media make out that it is. What kills people and causes a myriad of diseases is the smoke and the tar, not the nicotine!
Scientific studies have proven for decades that nicotine on its own can be beneficial to some people, especially to those suffering from some neurological disorders.
I saw a successful trial on a 5 year old girl that was suffering from awful seizures treated with a nicotine patch to the point where the seizures stopped.
I’ve seen another case where another young girl suffering from Tourette’s syndrome was also treated with nicotine and it helped to successfully reduce the ticks that were torturing her and her family.
There is NO human evidence of clean, regulated, low dosage nicotine used in a vapor product causing any detrimental life-threatening impediment until I’m shown otherwise (and I have researched this topic for nearly 5 years).
In fact, nicotine is often used by a massive cohort of people suffering mental illness because they feel it helps them with the symptoms they endure. That is why a disproportionately higher rate of people with mental illness are smokers.
Surely, they would be better off not smoking and getting their nicotine via a safer method, right?
Yet here we are in 2021 seeing sensationalist headlines that scare not only the general public, but also smokers away from safer nicotine delivery methods, because what we read or hear about must have some truth to it, right? Not anymore.
There are laws in place in most developed countries that protect youth from getting hold of products that are not designed for them.
Sure, kids often find a way around them, but I will go as far to say I would rather a nicotine vape product got in their hands than deadly cigarettes or even alchopops for that matter.
I was 12 when I had my first cigarette, although it was a far different time, I would have been far better off if it was only a vape device. Again, I am not suggesting for one second that vape devices should not be regulated out of young peoples hands, but when you can purchase flavoured nicotine products like gums and sprays legally from the age of 12 at your local supermarket here in Australia, there should be some consistency.
“You’re just saying that because you are a plant by Big Tobacco”, some may be thinking if they have read this far.
No, far from it! Big Tobacco killed my beloved Grandmother!
Recently I have witnessed many articles from various sources that try and indicate that vaping is a huge Big Tobacco conspiracy to hook a new generation, which I can tell you for free, it is indeed contrived manipulation by media and too many are falling for it, including current smokers.
I wish Big Tobacco could stay out of the alternative nicotine market completely, but I think the real payback is already happening.
Their hand has been forced by market forces to create and market alternative
non-combustible products so they can achieve some market share prior to the inevitable death of their combustible smoking market.
They have excellent market exposure that now sees most tobacconists stocking safer vapor products around Australia because the demand for way less harmful alternatives is on the rise and surely that is a good thing?
Meanwhile the headlines will keep rolling out with not one word of encouragement for smokers, rather a slew of propaganda that attempts to chase safer Big Tobacco and small business driven vape products out of town!
Imagine if it was real lives we were taking about.
Real lives that matter, like your Mother, Father, fellow sibling or other loved one that was trying to quit smoking and the only way they can find a ramp off smoking is with harm reduction products like vaping with nicotine and heat not burn devices.
Now imagine going to their funeral many years prior than expected only because those harm reduction alternatives were killed off in a trial by media rather than the real science that clearly shows that vaping with nicotine or heat not burn products have never caused one death, ever!
Over 60 million people world wide have stopped smoking with such devices!
We owe it to not only my late Grandmother but to our loved one’s futures to enable much greater access to far safer nicotine delivery systems!
Will you allow the media to manipulate your loved one to continue to smoke or will you support their health?
It’s a decision that we all must make because it’s costing 21000 Australian lives each year with no signs of that death rate slowing down.
Do you care?
When we stop really caring for each other as a community, we leave the door open to tyrants and shysters to do harm to the innocent.
It's past time that we also hold media sources accountable for the damage that they are causing whether its inadvertent or not!
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