Nicotine, Nazi's and Magical Thinking (Conclusions...)

In my last several posts on this topic I have addressed many aspects of the burgeoning e-cigarette business.  So let me summarize my thoughts:

The demonization of smokers is an activity as insidious and evil as any other racially-based activity.  There exist studies to indicate that smokers have various genetic predispositions to smoking and nicotine hence targeting them as a group is wrong.  (And yes this is like what the Nazi's did to the Jews - particularly because society as a whole goes along with it with a wink and a nod because the government portrays smokers and smoking as unclean.)

Smokers are people like everyone else.  They have rights which cannot be violated because they make others uncomfortable.

The exact same arguments where used by the Nazi's as an excuse to round up Jews.

And no, smoking laws that eliminate smoking from private enterprise are wrong.  Wrong because taking away the rights of the business is no better than taking away rights because of skin color or gender or anything else.

E-cigarettes have nothing to do with smoking and its associated medical side show of misery.  E-cigarettes function no differently than vaporizers and coffee pots.  Both heat liquids containing chemicals, both give off vapors you can breath, both address specific mental and physical cravings.

Personally I believe that they should not be called e-cigarettes because doing so associates them with the historical demonization of smokers.

So why do it?

I have noticed that in social situations most people are so used to the classic "smoking cues" that if you pretend like the e-cigarette is a pen or pencil virtually no one notices what you are doing with it - even in the homes of virulent anti-smoking Nazi's.  People today are accustomed to devices with lights so they don't attract attention - particularly if they are not orange.

People seem to accept it - sort of like seeing a joint for the first time at a party - "Oh, that's interesting!"  "How does it work."  "Can I try it!"

So in the best interest of success it would seem that its best for e-cigarettes not to be cigarettes at all - but rather vaporizers.

This will make it very, very hard to legislate exactly what the difference is between a vaporizer I might give my child as part of a breathing treatment and an e-cigarette.


Nicotine is not evil.  Its a drug, like most naturally occurring substances, that comes from a plant.  It occurs in eggplant and tomatoes as well as tobacoo.  It is not well studied except as part of smoking.

However, most anit-smoking Nazi's simply apply the evils of inhaling smoke to nicotine.

They should not be given a pass on this.


The government promotes all sorts of other dangerous behavior so long as its "socially acceptable."  For example, safe sex.  "Safe sex" spreads disease and creates children.  Birth control is never 100% effective.  They promote the latest "health craze" like Lipitor and statin drugs, antibiotics, and so forth even though there is ample evidence that these substances are not helpful and very, very often do much more harm than good.

But because they are in bed with the drug companies these facts are ignored.


Like a heroin addict government is addicted to cigarette taxes.  If you do not believe this conduct the following thought experiment.  "Every quits smoking today."  What happens?  Tens or hundreds of thousands who make a living because of tobacco become unemployed.  The local 7-11's go bankrupt or become unprofitable.  Thousands of FDA and academic anti-smoking Nazi's loose their jobs.  States lose tens of millions a month in revenue - revenue that props up bad pension and other decisions.  People stop going to places that accept smokers.  Millions gain weight and become obese - encountering numerous and serious health issues as they do so.

All of this cuts off the stream of cigarette, employment and excise tax revenue leaving states, already bankrupt, in worse shape than ever.

They turn to the federal government for aid - but its already over extended and fails to help...

The truth is the government (federal, state, and local) requires tobacco revenue, sales and businesses in order to function.  Take that away and they will go bust.

Yet...

They say they want us all to stop smoking...

Given this scenario do you think they really want to lose their jobs?  Go bankrupt? Have nothing to study?

Of course not.

And what about the moral implications of this?

If smoking is so unclean and evil how could anyone justify making a living from it?

Particularly if they, as their living, claim its evil and unclean.

No, smoking and her friends are like the prostitutes that visit the judges or police chief's office after hours - they are all corrupt.


E-cigarette technology comes from outside the USA.  This is very, very bad because it gives the FDA the entire force of the US government to use against it.  Honestly, I think that e-cigarette companies should set up shop in Mexico and give Mexicans crossing the boarder illegally huge bags of e-cigarette materials to carry (for pay of course) into the country.

This would solve the problem since the US government has no real concern about stopping this sort of illegal entry to the US.

Of course the real problem is that ridiculous laws here make developing technology to help smokers something can only be done in another country - thanks Mr. FDA for looking out for your charges here in the US.

Children will use them! Can you please give me a break.  The FDA is happy to give condoms to kids - with mere paper instructions in the box.  Do the condoms always work? No.  Are they reliable birth control? No.  Does little Suzy remember to take her birth control pills every day?  No.  And what are the risks of those pills long term?  Are they good for you?  If so, why to the packages have so many warnings on them?

Then there is the nonsense of "it entices children"...  So does pot.  So does drinking. So do most things that adults do that children cannot.

Anyone every been to a giant kids party for 18 and under where tobacco companies are giving out cigarettes?  No, me either...  Guess we'll have to wait for the vaping companies to do the same - that way the law enforcement community will have something to work with.

How about just saying "no".

Its time for the industry to setup a trade association and start beating the bushes in Washington DC.

Its time to have some hearings on capitol hill where vapers can sit in front of congressmen, like Henry Waxman, puffing away on their personal vaporizers while they explain why congress should leave the industry the hell alone...

This will all come to a head when some toddler or little kid grabs a bottle of nicotine juice, drinks it and dies.  This kid will become the poster child for the "vaping is evil" campaign.  Posters in every convenience store, dire online warnings, and so on.  But it will be a ruse.


Every vaper must claim that they are using the device to "help them quit."  Not to actually quit, but the help them.  Then explain to everyone that making the devices illegal will cause them to have to smoke again.

Nicotine, Nazi's and Magical Thinking (Part III)

One of the posters reading this noted that nicotine is a neurotoxin. This is the sort of thing I am talking about.  If you make the definition of neurotoxicity "anything that affects the nervous system" (as described here) then yes, nicotine is a neurotoxin, just like love, chocolate and caffeine.

Nicotine is probably one of the most widely used drugs on earth - particularly when you consider its alternate forms (things into which it is converted or is part of) such as Vitamin B3 (niacin). 

(For those that are interested the E-cigarette forum thread is here.)

First off, Vitamin B3 is nicotinic acid (created commercially by literally treating nicotine with nitric acid) - also known as niacin.  Humans, unlike some animals, cannot manufacture Vitamin B3 on their own so they must get it from their diets.

B3 is required for health.  You cannot live without it.

Pure nicotine, on the other hand, is naturally present in eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, and a whole host of other foods.  So, unless you avoid these types of food, you are exposed to nicotine on almost a daily basis.  (Though it is present in these foods the levels are generally much lower than the levels in cigarettes.  Eggplant has the most - about 10% of what might be in a cigarette.  The levels in other plants are about 10% that of eggplant.)

(I suppose that if you believe that nicotine is a neurotoxin then your mother's admonishment to "eat your vegetables" is tantamount to a conspiracy to kill you...!!)

In your body about 80% of the nicotine is converted to continine which is excreted via the urinary system.

So nicotine is closely related to Vitamin B3 that occurs naturally in things we eat.

As to what dangers nicotine present to a human (short of consuming too much) things are much less clear.  While there are a lot of studies about nicotine and smoking there are not a lot about what something like an e-cigarette might do as far as basically delivering nicotine only to your lungs.

So what you see written about studies and so forth related to nicotine are vary often linked to tobacco use.  In fact, there is very little published about nicotine alone - and what their is published you must read very carefully to tease out the issues related to nicotine versus those that are tobacco related.

The bottom line here, as I see it, and how this relates to e-cigarettes in general, is that "science" has done very little to study nicotine on its own, probably about as much as is done for caffeine.  Since its associated with tobacco it is just generally lumped into the "evil cigarette and tobacco" category and forgotten.

There are lots of silly sites like this claiming that foods of one sort or another are bad for you - but I think you have to be very careful when looking at this.  Personally I have come to believe that smoking is very likely done to address some sort of dietary deficiency.

Now, I am not a doctor so what I am telling you here is purely opinion.

First off, as I have documented in this blog, I have discovered that I, a person who is relatively healthy (or at least so I thought), is malnourished in today's USA.  What I mean by this is that my diet, though it consists of a variety of things does very little to address what my body really needs. This is due to many things as I have also written about here.

So one of the first things that I have to question is, relative to all this study of nicotine and excluding any tobacco studies, are these studies looking at healthy people in the first place.  And by healthy I mean people who are receiving proper nutrition.

More to the point, if you were properly nourished in the first place would you be smoking?  And, if you were properly nourished, would nicotine harm you more than love or a cup of java?

While you might scoff at this you really need to do some research before forming any sort of serious opinion.  For example, as I have documented here relative to Iodine I would say that probably 96% of everyone in the US is Iodine deficient.

What, you might ask, does this have to do with smoking?

Well, for one thing the symptoms of Iodine deficiency are many of the very same reasons people talk about as reasons for smoking - feelings of depression, tiredness, that sort of thing (see "Where for art thou Iodine").  Now, having addressed my own personal Iodine deficiency I have to say that the fact that medical "science" and the FDA ignore proper nutrition is the real crime.

And by crime I mean crime.

The FDA is supposed to help make sure that we citizens are healthy through monitoring and controlling issues related to foods and drugs.  The problem is that, as far as I can see (and again there are blog posts here to this effect) they simply don't care about things that don't involve good press for them and money.  Sure they spend lots of time making sure that Lipitor is available to kids - but as far as making sure the citizens of the country have enough Iodine in their diet they do nothing.

(Which is worse for your kid - smoking, e-cigarettes, or Lipitor?)

And that's a crime at the level of genocide.

So what we have here is a government that simply ignores the true health of its people working very hard on things, like Lipitor, that are really simply treating the symptoms of the people's underlying dietary deficiencies and doing nothing to correct the true problems, e.g., approving bromides in bread versus Iodine.

Given this you have a class of people, smokers, who are struggling with health issues.  The FDA, despite a vast collection of evidence that people's feelings about themselves (their self worth, worries about self, etc.) is more dangerous to their health than food, diet or lifestyle, works hard to demonize their smoking habit - thus directly contributing to they feeling of low self worth.

This demonization of smoking creates an untold negative mental affect on the smokers view of themselves.  A negative view compounded by malnourishment caused by the FDAs lack of action.

Now we have e-cigarettes - in fact not cigarettes at all as they involve nothing that burns.  I think the first mistake is to even call them e-cigarettes.  They are vaporizers - nothing more.

These devices serve to eliminate what is wrong with smoking - the smoke and burning - leaving only nicotine - a naturally occurring chemical found in many foods.

And what does the FDA do?

Attempt to make using these devices a problem.

(As a side note I find that most people don't even recognize an e-cigarette at all.  Because it does not smell or burn people simply don't notice it at all unless you try to make it look like you are smoking.  I think this is a very interesting psychological aspect to all of this.)

The truth is that the FDA is full of people who "used to work in industry" and, just like its total lack of attention to genetically modified and industrialized foods (because its staff came from that industry), e-cigarettes pose a threat to the well being of those its oversees.

The real problem is the FDA, the states, and the government in general is that they profit mightily from smokers.  (Do you really think the billions won by the states in the tobacco wars is being saved for your medical care as a smoker later in life?)

Only a government could do such a thing.  When the government runs a gambling casino they excuse themselves by displaying the 1-800-GAMBLING phone number at the bottom of the ad "in case you need help".

The hypocrisy of this is insane...

So far then I am saying (to summarize):

- The demonization of smokers is like all other racial profiling.

- Nicotine and e-cigarettes have nothing to do with smoking and its medical side show of misery.

- The government, with things like Lipitor, is just like a tobacco company pawning off bad things on unsuspecting victims.

- The government profits from this.

So how do e-cigarettes survive in this maelstrom of misery...?

Nicotine, Nazi's and Magical Thinking (Part II)

Juliet - Death by a Love Addiction (Ban it for the children!)

So we have clearly established that there is a bias against smokers - a significant, government sponsored, and perhaps racially based bias that says smoking is evil, wrong, and unclean.

And we also know that smoking as a nicotine deliver device is "bad."  But what exactly is the problem with nicotine?

Well, the US Surgeon General's report (PDF here) spends a lot of time talking (pages 103 - 110) about nicotine addiction and addictive behavior but no time talking about the effects of nicotine addiction itself other than smoking.  (You can read about the DSM symptoms for addiction in the report.)  So, without any sort of practical comparison, i.e., what is nicotine addiction in the absence of smoking, the report provides virtually no information on the effect of nicotine on the body.  On page 183 the report concludes about nicotine:

Nicotine is the key chemical compound that causes and sustains the powerful addicting effects of commercial tobacco products.

Now, it does NOT list side effects other than the addiction itself and the need for getting your "fix" each day.  In fact, it implies that the tobacco product, i.e., cigarettes, are the problem.  Without smoking, in fact, there would appear to be no more problems with nicotine than, say caffeine.  In fact, caffeine is close behind nicotine in terms of gaining status as an addiction just like heroin and cocaine.

And there are studies such as this that indicate that inhaling nicotine vapors (without smoke) does not cause tumors or cancer like smoking.

In fact, the study showed, the only side effect was weight loss.

(Perhaps nicotine would help with the obesity epidemic...?  In fact, if we banned cigarettes and everyone that smoked dies of obesity instead are we better off?  Think about it...  Is dying in bed from being overweight better than dying in bed because you smoked too much?  Actually both can cause heart disease so the death might actually be due to the same cause.)

So let's compare nicotine with something like, say, Lipitor.  (You can read about Lipitor's official side effects here.  Of course, there are many other problems people report but they are mostly ignored.)

- Muscle problems.

- Kidney failure.

- Liver problems.

Somehow you don't find these serious issues with nicotine. (Of course in sufficient quantity it is a poison and is used as an insecticide in other parts of the world.  But then, too much of anything, like Lipitor or electricity or water, is also a bad thing.)

There are many, many commercial drugs with far worse side effects, in fact fatal, dangerous side effects, that the FDA allows doctors to prescribe every day.  No one is concerned (unless of course they are impacted by such a side effect).  No one cares.  These medicines are socially acceptable and deaths and debilitation from them are also socially acceptable.

Why is this?

Well, for one thing ads for these kinds of drugs now appear on popular TV and radio shows.  Long ago, when cigarette ads were still shown through these media outlets the side effects of cigarettes were considered socially acceptable.  Today, Lipitor can cause your liver to fail and, because as a society, we see the ads for this all the time (and we believe the foolish "cholesterol is bad" Nazi propaganda that goes along with it) Lipitor-based liver failure is a socially acceptable outcome.

(I have written extensively about the entire cholesterol "magical thinking" conspiracy here if you are interested.)

That's right, just like driving 65 MPH which reliably kills measurably more people than 55 MPH driving faster is socially acceptable and a socially acceptable way to risk you life.  No one complains.   No one cries.  Its merely a simple fact of life they humans accept, live and die with every day.

Addictive behavior is part of the human condition.

Have we all forgotten this?

Human's do stupid things all the time.  They find comfort in ritual, fantasy, and addiction.

Love, for example, is also a demonstrable chemical addiction (see this): "Love, in other words, uses the neural mechanisms that are activated during the process of addiction."

So where's the FDA on this love thing?

Where the the anti-love Nazi's?

If love is an addiction isn't it unclean just like nicotine?
 Sometimes its even fatal, just ask Juliet...

Nicotine, Nazi's and Magical Thinking (Part I)

Anne Frank - From Wikipedia - Did she smoke?

I have been very busy and so have only been updating the Lone Wolf blog for the last few weeks.

Recently, though, I have been involved in a very interesting and unique process.  Several close relatives have been switching from cigarettes to e-cigarettes.  And, what is surprising to me, is how much illogical and foolish nonsense is involved in the "myth of the evil cigarette".  To the point that it involves something like an e-cigarette which does not burn anything at all.  How is such a think "smoking" in any rational sense?  How is it a nicotine delivery device any different than, say, an eggplant, which is full of nicotine?  How is something natural like niacin (nicotinic acid or vitamin B3) bad for you?

I call it a "myth" because most of what people seem to believe is not based on any actual science at all but is in fact based on what I will call "politically-based pseudo science".  What is fascinating is that this pseudo science is no more modern or reliable than Hatiian Voodou yet modern people cling to it as if their very lives depend on it.  (Perhaps its because as a nation our burgeoning scientific ignorance is accelerating at a remarkable rate, at least according to this.)

As an advocate of logic the pseudo science of "the evils of cigarette smoking" makes a very interesting tale...

(I am an advocate of the libertarian perspective on all of this - if you don't like it go away and leave me alone and don't take my rights away because of what you don't like.  There are many other dangerous activities and diseases but since they are politically correct science looks for cures and aids to make sufferers live longer - funny how you don't see that with smoking...  Is it morally "better" to create a medication to help an Aids or Hepatitis C sufferer than a smoker?)

The history of this begins in the 1950's as observations about what happened to smokers were turned into epidemiological studies.  I have written here before about this kind of study (magical thinking) and how they work.

In point of fact no one reports the number of smokers who die from cancer as a percentage of smokers, i.e., if 100 people smoke how many will die.  The answer, unfortunately for the anti-smoking Nazi's is that only about 10% or so are actually killed by cancer directly (er, as "directly" as can be claimed) as a result of smoking, i.e., 10 of the 100 will die of cancer (see this).  So the propaganda machine turns this around and always talks about how many people die from lung cancer - which tells you nothing about the actual risk of smoking.

According to this only 1 in 4 smokers will develop progressive and incurable chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

And most interestingly and more important there are many new genetic studies that point to all sorts of other genetic links between cancer and smoking such as this in Scientific American.

So my first point in the e-cigarette saga is that smoking is a problem related to being a "social outcast".  Its certainly less dangerous than many things, everyone regardless of whether they smoke or not will still die, and there are many more unpleasant ways to die than via lung cancer, COPD, or other smoking related illnesses.  (One study I would like to see is what does it cost to die.  I would also like to see studies that remove the elderly from the classic types of studies, i.e., what do younger people die from that is not usual.  As I have pointed out here in the past death certificates have only one box for a "cause" - and that is also a problem with all of this.)

So at any rate the ratcheted-up anti-smoking Nazi goose-stepping is all based on the fact that a majority of people don't like smokers.  Surprisingly even heavy pot smokers have complained to me that cigarettes "bother" them - as if that made any kind of sense at all.  They (the cigarette smokers) are "unclean" - to borrow from a more infamous famous historical perspective.

So the bottom line from the e-cigarette perspective is that its the "thought that counts": you're on your way to the concentration camp if you look like you belong there - life will be better for the rest of us (even the heavy pot smokers) without you...

Of course you think that I am some sort of anti-smoking extremist - which I am not. (I am merely a logician applying consistent rules across the boundaries of time to expose "pseudo science" for what it is: nonsense.)

Simply read the link above from the Scientific American - perhaps the smoker sitting next to you has a genetic variation leading them to smoke in the first place.

So how, in the eyes of a Nazi, is that any different than the genetics of Judaism, of Mishchling?

And given a demonstrated genetic component to smoking how is "hating smoking" any different than the evils of racial profiling?  Is a cigarette hanging out of someone's mouth any different than someone wearing a burka or turban?

Its not... its just plain old guilt by genetic predisposition.

While you many not like this, or me for saying it, you will not be able to convince me I am wrong because I am not.

E-cigarettes (which, again, don't even burn anything and hence are not related to smoking at all other than by appearance) have a big hole to dig out of...

E-Cigarettes

Over on the Lone Wolf blog I posted about e-cigarettes.  You can read there about what they are and how they work.

What interests me here is the reaction to these devices.

Now first off let's be clear.  There is no burning of tobacco - no smoke.  Instead nicotine infused steam or water vapor is created inside the e-cigarette and that's what you breath.

This has been studied in New Zealand (read this).  The report Summary says: "It is very safe relative to cigarettes, and also safe in absolute terms on all measurements we have applied."

As for the US you can download the full PDF here from the Surgeon General's website.  This is a long, tedious read about the hazards of breathing combustible materials.  Even the nicotine addiction section is tied to this.  I would imagine that no one is surprised to read that breathing smoke is bad.  Everyone knows this: smokers and non-smokers alike.  Unfortunately the government has spent a lot of money and time discovering and validating the obvious.

One imagines that, for example, firefighters would find this an important read because most of what is discussed about smoke and breathing smoke is generally true.  Apparently studying the effects on smoke on those people chronically exposed as part of their job is less important.  (As anyone who burns common paper household trash can tell you there is far, far worse involved than mere smoke.)

Then there is the FDA.  They have attempted and failed to have shipments of these products to the US banned or stopped at the boarder.  The FDA contends these are "drug" devices and must be subject to extreme regulation and control by the FDA (as opposed to, say, hypodermic needles, which you can buy by the dozen's in any drug store).

The problem here is really very simple.  All of this is about two things: money and control.

No one believes that smoking is good for you.

However, smoker's are addicted to two elements of smoking: the "hit" of the smoke from the drag and the nicotine.  E-cigarettes offer both - the vapor as the "hit" as well as the nicotine.

Nicotine is, in any significant quantity, a dangerous chemical.  In most of the rest of the world its used as an insecticide.  In small quantities, like those found in both tobacco and cigarettes, its dangers are much less clear.

A quick check of Wikipedia indicates many common elements between nicotine and, say, caffeine.  Both are alkaloids, both affect mood, both are consumed world wide in enormous quantities, both are mildly addictive to some degree, and on and on.

Sales of cigarettes in the US for 2005 was some 378 billion cigarettes which comes out to $180 billion dollars US at a retail price of $5/pack - which is probably around one percent (1%) of the US economy.  Another 1% of the economy covers the cost of treating smoking related health issues.

There are claims that "lack of productivity" caused by smoking costs around $100 billion USD per year but I think that number needs to be compared to the reality of eliminating cigarettes and any associated productivity losses associated with that to be meaningful.

The reason e-cigarettes are so popular is that cigarette prices are highly inflated by taxes.  Cigarettes in other countries where taxes do not play as much of a role is significantly less.  US states like New York can garner as much as $5 - $7 dollars a pack in taxes.

With e-cigarettes you can happily vape away for about $100 a year without paying any US taxes.  In a state like New York that probably means about $5,000 USD less a year per smoker in state tax revenue.  Given New York's tens of billions in budget shortfall you can see one of the reasons government is so interested in stopping e-cigarettes (200,000 smokers = $1 billion in annual cigarette taxes lost).

Then there is the control aspect.

The FDA believes that its role is to ban not only smoking but also the concept of smoking, i.e., its not good enough to control what you do, but you cannot be allowed to even want to smoke.  (Read the Surgeon General's report if you don't believe this).

The problem here is two fold.  First there is tax revenue and corresponding money spent on smoking remedies.  While on the one hand the government claims to want to ban smoking banning smoking successfully will strangle many state budgets because, as hard as it is to imagine, all those big dollar tobacco settlements won over the last decades are not sitting in banks waiting to pay for the cost of smoking related illnesses.  No, like social security, the states have long since spent that money and rely on direct tax collection of tobacco taxes to survive.

Second the FDA needs to control tobacco in order to manage the tobacco market relative to its big-tobacco friends in the industry (after all, their collective $180 billion dollar market is in significant danger if e-cigarettes go off the existing "tobacco control range").

Secondly, without a crusade, like tobacco, there is less for the FDA to do.  With less to do budgets shrink (just look at the hundreds of government funded studies in the Surgeon General's report).  So, though Congress told the FDA it can regulate but not ban tobacco, the FDA struggles to make itself relevant on the e-cigarette front.

All this said let's compare cigarettes to other "drug related" industries.

I would estimate that about 1,000 metric tons of cocaine is produced annual.    A metric ton is 1,000 x 1,000 grams (1,000 kilograms) or one million grams.  With a street price of $100 a gram that $100 million dollars per metric ton (more if the cocaine is cut).  Given 1,000 metric tons that's about $100 billion USD in manufactures cocaine sales - probably two or more times that retail on the street.

Now in the US a 100 billion dollar company is going to employ at least 50,000 workers - probably many more.  So one imagines that the same relationship must be true for cocaine.  Yet while there are lot of small scale arrests there are relatively few large-scale arrests (maybe 5,000 per year for trafficking - but I am having a hard time figuring this out).

At any rate while the FDA would happily shut down any US tobacco company at a moments notice for some trivial reason or other they apparently cannot manage to get their hands around the illegal drug trade's throat no matter how hard they try (I wonder if this is because government is full of baby boomer dopers who really don't want to see recreational drug use actually eliminated?)

Now if you add in cannabis, heroin, meth, etc. and other legal drugs used illicitly you will see that these industries employ a lot of people and are very, very large (like on the order of Mobil-Exxon for each type of drug).

The point of all this is that "clamping down" in terms of the FDA means at least a $100 billion dollars per year in annual sales - so clamping down on e-cigarettes (or cigarettes in general) would probably (actually) be a huge boon for the market.  Not to mention it would cut $100 billion out of state cigarette sales taxes.

The bottom line is that the FDA is grasping at straws: trying to get the cat back into the bag.

But I think its too late.  I have heard, but cannot confirm, as many as 30K people are converting per week to e-cigarettes (I wonder if this is because the FDA told them smoking was bad for them?)

Bottom line for me?

- E-cigarettes are far less dangerous than smoking regular cigarettes.

- Government and big tobacco are going to work very hard to protect their slice of the revenue and control pie.

- The FDA and state tobacco tax collections are going to go head-to-head for you cigarette tax dollars - its unclear to me who will win this battle.

- Banning e-cigarettes in hypocritical nonsense if you believe smoking regular cigarettes is bad.

- The FDA controlling tobacco and/or e-cigarettes to much will simply yield yet another giant criminal industry on the order of Exxon-Mobile.

- FDA regulation = means to tax.

- No one really knows what things like ionophores or genetic engineering might be doing to us and our food supply - but killing off smoking is apparently far more important to the FDA than stopping, or even studying, something that the entire general population has A) no control over, B) is not analyzed in anywhere as much, and C) is in virtually every food product we consume.

At the end of the day illegal drugs, tobacco, and alcohol probably make up a very large portion of the economy - on the order of health care at one sixth.

Perhaps the FDA should simply hire tobacco company execs to work there - after all they do hire big food execs - and magically there is not investigation or problem with genetic engineering or commercial chemicals with very little safety study.

Right or wrong smoking what people choose to do with their money.

(Again, I think that big government workers are liberally minded and see tobacco as evil and smokers are dull thugs unable and unwilling to think for themselves.  On the other hand, they see things like pot and so forth as enlightened recreational activities when properly used - after all, that's what they were told in the 1960's.  As I said - its what people choose to do with their money.)

But big nanny government knows you are too stupid to take care of yourself so they plan to do it for you.

Personally I think that all the tobacco settlement money states sued for should be required by law (or lawsuit) to be held aside for future tobacco health costs.  If the states cannot do this they are simply hypocritical liars who are out to take your money..., erh, ah, profit from your smoking habit.

Its a good thing we have exercised morality from our modern social conscience - otherwise someone might notice what's going on that think it was, gasp, wrong...