Berkeley City Council – Too afraid to have their lies corrected on the record!

We went to the Berkeley City Council meeting on September 9th (the day after we got home from Ontario, CA. where we were to attend some meetings and ECC) to set the record straight after the city council and our opponents (the body parts people such as the American Lung Association, American Heart Association, Tobacco Free Kids, etc. and the various other tobacco control groups) had done a hostile and violent bashing job on electronic cigarettes and vapor products at their previous meeting on the same topic on July the 8th. At the time only two people were present to oppose the ordinance. You can read my wife’s version of her experiences here.

We had no reasonable expectation to “win” (in short; “because it’s Berkeley”) but needed to address it regardless. For about a month I put out the word and request to join us at the next council meeting, in various places including several specific to vapers in the San Francisco Bay Area. I had not expected a huge turn out but what we got was beyond disappointing. But let me get into that a little later in this report and start off with out strategy and what transpired.

The TL;DR version

If you want the short version you can listen to me talk about this council meeting on Smoke Free Radio with Dimitris Agrafiotis.

The Strategy

We had written up statements for talking points for anyone who was going to join us and wished to speak but would not be able or have the time to craft something. We had plenty of things to address and debunk to have something fitting for anyone comfortable with a given topic. And for those not comfortable speaking we asked if they would yield their time to those who do. This is a strategy that often works quite well if there is only a limited amount of time to address an issue. And this one needed a lot of points addressed and speaking time was 2 minutes per speaker.

An unexpected change in agenda item sequence

The first thing that happened was the council deciding to move our agenda item to the consent calendar. Some folks were texting and tweeting me and my wife to start making waves or else we’d miss our speaking time. However, every city has different rules and policies and in Berkeley it means you still get to speak so we weren’t worried about that. We got our first round in as part of the speakers on the items on the consent agenda.

Here is a link to the recorded stream of the council meeting. The full unedited version of the recording is provided here purely for reference sake and as a matter of official record.

One of the council members starts off the public speaking portion by saying;

“We now have an opportunity for people to speak now. You have two minutes and if more than three speakers speak, we will hold it over to the end of the agenda, the item. So it’s a long agenda. So I think you should exercise prudence. If you are happy with the action there shouldn’t be more than three people.”

Speaking during the consent agenda

My wife, Sallie Goetsch, went first. Time was yielded to her by the next speaker, Brett Waldon and Sallie continued. All the way at the end of this post you can find the full text of Sallie’s testimony. I particularly loved the part about our opponents losing their funding and professor Stanton Glantz losing his $20 million grant.

Next up, yours truly. I had to look at my notes a lot because I had only written them hours before because there was no time to do so in the week prior due to the busy nature of ECC and the many meetings and activities. I think I got a good number of points across and made sure that on the recommendation of an attorney with a strong presence in the vapor industry, I got the term arbitrary and capricious on the record (I’ll skip the explanation on why because that would fill another post or two and this one may already become quite lengthy).

I must admit that Council Member Gordon Wozniak gave me looks that if they could kill I’d be dead by now when I addressed his comments about PG and informed him that it does not cause asthma as it is used in asthma inhalers! I’m sure Wozniak already knew that when he made those statements on July 8th (that PG causes asthma, vapor travels through walls, and smoke and vapor are no different).

I only had 3 more paragraphs to go plus I had some extra bits for potential use of left over time when my first 2 minutes ran out. Breanna Head yielded her time to me but I got cut off by the city council…

“You can’t. You yield, it’s going to go over to the next person. We already had three speakers, so if you yield your time it will go to the end of the agenda. You will not speak now. It will go to the end of the agenda. So, sir, you sound like you want to speak, it will go to the end of the agenda.”

So we all went back to our seats to wait for the end of the agenda.

Every city has its own way of doing things and we were aware of how Berkeley does theirs. Having seen other council meetings including portions where more than a handful of people all yielded time to one speaker, which has traditionally been allowed and within the rules, we weren’t worried and decided to have a “second round” at the end of the agenda. Of course, it did mean having to stick around until much later to do so. We even had time to go out and have a vape because it was a lot of time between the consent portion and the end of the agenda.

And suddenly our opponents showed up!

An interesting thing happened. At the end of the agenda we noticed our opponents suddenly showing up by the numbers. We are convinced someone got worried and called them and urged them to make their way to the council meeting because they were not present throughout the meeting and only showed up at the end of the agenda. They could not have known about the scheduling change and the sequence of the items nor the time any single item would take. It would stand to reason if they were there to speak they would have been there earlier. Instead they showed up in the nick of time. This, my fellow vapers, is not a matter of coincidence, for ALL of them to appear at the same time.

At that point we already had an idea of what might happen next and that they were there in full force to ensure we would not be the only ones speaking on this matter. All of a sudden the council decides to go back on its earlier words by stating;

“Now, we have heard from some people. Now anyone who has spoken, cannot speak again. Anyone who wishes to speak on the item 59, you have the opportunity to do it now.”

Getting cut off by the council

Breanna and myself went up to remind the council that Breanna yielded her time to me, or would do so again as we were told earlier, at the end of the agenda. What happened next is that the council cut me off from speaking, inciting a sudden “not the same speaker twice”. Something they have always allowed in other meetings and also allowed earlier in the same meeting and also for a few other people who were there for other agenda items.

Council Member Maxwell Anderson mumbled something about “you already gave a long diatribe”. Long? It was within the 2 minutes in the first portion. If they consider that long they should perhaps consider not giving people 2 long minutes. Of course I can imagine that 2 minutes of getting your lies corrected on the record must be painful and cruel in their experience. The response from the council was pretty clear… they did not like being confronted with the truth and certainly were not pleased at all by having their blatant and outrageous statements and lies corrected ON THE RECORD and IN PUBLIC, knowing very well it would all be a matter of public record.

Is this why someone quickly rallied the body parts people and tobacco control freaks to show up, because they were afraid statement would be made that would not go unchallenged?

Now let’s go through the other speakers…

Justin Newman

Justin came all the way from Oregon to attend ECC and had to be in San Francisco after that and made the effort to join us in Berkeley. It makes it even more of a shame that NOBODY (other than one vendor) FROM BERKELEY showed up. In the video above you can see me hand my other points over to Justin but since he had no time to familiarize himself with them they unfortunately weren’t made. The remainder can be found at the end of this post, though.

Ben Cabbie (Grand Vapor Station)

Ben made some excellent points about the progressive nature of the city of Berkeley and expressed his concerns that the council’s decisions on the proposed prohibition would set back the level of progress the city has been known for in the past. Ben also highlighted how electronic cigarettes and vapor products are a truly disruptive technology.

Americans for Non-Smokers Rights

Of course they were in support of the ordinance and did their usual speech about all the “toxins” in electronic cigarettes. And of course they bring up the unsubstantiated and unproven “renormalization” fears.

Justin Friedman (Tobaccoless Club)

We had seen Justin before as he was there for the July 8th council meeting. He basically stated that he is against “any kind of smoking the e-cigarette” and that he’s worried that kids are breathing the “all kinds of chemicals from the e-cigarette”.

Carol Denny (Americans for Non-Smokers Rights)

No surprise that another control freak with an organization who’s existence depends on money generated from tobacco (the MSA and California Prop 99) is fully in support of banning vaping in multi-unit apartment complexes.

“All these people who are congratulating themselves for having switched to, quote, vaping, are still sucking down the nicotine, exhaling the nicotine and that nicotine is going right next door”.

She then goes on to suggest there are other ways for us to get our nicotine and basically ends up suggesting WE SHOULD EAT IT. She then managed to combine her nonsense with canabis issues and promotes the use of nicotine patches (which of course people with this control freak group would since that’s also partly where their funding comes from through big pharmaceutical interests).

She says she lives next to people that smoke, use e-cigarettes, and canabis and that it all comes through the shared air and THROUGH THE WALLS. I will refrain from commenting on that because I’m not sure all my readers would pick up on the heavily laced sarcasm that comes to mind here.

She also claims that the city needs to act because none of this will be handled by the state because “we know tobacco policies”. I guess what she really is trying to say is that we, vapers and proponents of vapor products as a reduced harm alternative to smoking, have been fairly successful at the state level in preventing nonsense bills from passing.

It does, however, underscore the importance of people staying alert at the local level because what these people can’t get through the state level they will attempt, in force, to get through the local level. I cannot urge you enough to pay attention to these things and not to rely all the time on people like me who try to keep on top of of it all and warn those in affected areas.

Didn’t catch the name or group

She complains about the cigarette smell when she walks throughout downtown and reminds the council that is is already prohibited to smoke down town. I guess what she’s really saying is that the city is having enforcement issues. Which is what you get if you pass laws that make little sense and turn out to be un-enforceable.

She then goes on to complain that she often walks past people at the International Language Institute where there are regularly 20 people clustered together smoking both regular and e-cigarettes outside. And how she then hands out cards that say smoking is illegal there and how she also calls the police to ask them to take action.

As a friend  jokingly (I hope) would say, “there will be a special place for people like that after the revolution”. 🙂

Alexandra Nelson

She’s with the American Lung Association and is the co-chair of the city’s tobacco prevention “coalition”.

Alexandra does her usual routine about her 10 year old son (Lars) coming home from school saying that an e-cigarette is “pretend smoking” and therefore not a problem, etc. Funny thing is that she did the same routine on July 8th and has done so before and yet the details of her story seem to be different every time. I guess it is true what psychologists say, that keeping track of lies is much more difficult than telling the truth. I wonder if her kid also comes home from school with a 0.5% alcoholic beverage saying it’s “pretend drinking”. It would sort of fit into the pattern.

She states that she already read in the city’s staff report that there are dangerous carcinogens in the vapor from e-cigarettes. Of course, she and her cohorts are the ones who provided the council with that blatantly false information in the first place. This is how they usually play their game, they provide the information and then refer to it as if the council has done its own research. Often they will even compliment a council for the amazing research they have done.

Serena Chen (American Lung Association)

Serena refers to the latest CDC report. Again, it would take more than a huge blog post to address that piece of ill written and badly done “research” so I will defer to other discussions on that and stay within the scope of this post. She claims youth uptake of vapor products has tripled instead of doubled and conveniently doesn’t mention that smoking amongst youth has actually gone down by the same ratio.

Her unsubstantiated fear mongering is basically that kids that try out e-cigarettes will move on to smoking actual cigarettes. Everyone already knows that the “gateway effect” she describes does not exist. The fear of it is like fearing that the use of smart phones will lead to the use of phone booths and that drinking water will lead to drinking vodka.

Serena then goes on to display a fair amount of “butt hurt” about state bills that were killed that could have helped their cause.

Please allow me to NOT apologize for being part of that, Ms. Chen. 🙂

(big smiley fully intended here)

Max and Jack (Vapor Den, Berkeley)

We were surprised to see anyone from Vapor Den show up given that they were absent at the July 8th council meeting. I will give them credit for being there and appreciate it. However, I can’t justify in any way the medical and cessation claims that were made and then ended up being repeated in the paper. For a company that has been around for 4 years you would expect better. It is possible that they do not have legal council to vet their statements beforehand or do not quite understand the position in a regulated market and how the FDA and FTC would look at the statements made.

Our lawyers, of which we have several, as well as our legal advisers who help guide us through regulated markets and the detailed legalities have been very clear as to what you can and can’t say on the record. Referring to e-cigs and vapor products as “cessation device” is not one of them. Saying how you have “saved people’s lives” is another no-no.

Also, claims of “safe” or “safer” are also a big no-no. An individual consumer can make those claims but not if you are a business even if you are, at the time, not directly representing your business (which in the US is considered a legal person).

You can say something along the lines of “e-liquid has 4 ingredients, none of them carcinogens and cigarettes have over 4000 chemicals, hundreds of which are known carcinogens” and leave the judgement on safety differences up to the person receiving the information.

Aside from the cringe-worthy claims that crossed into problematic legal territory, both still made several really good points. If I am in Berkeley at some point in the future I’ll see if I can stop by for a chat and see if there is a way in which we assist with some information and perhaps media training, something that is generally very helpful when talking not just to the press but being out in public making statements that could reflect on all other businesses and the vapor industry as a whole.

The deliberation

Note that the council made an exception for medical canabis within multi-unit apartment housing. But don’t you dare vape your nicotine or 0-nic e-liquids.

Of course, at this point Council Member Gordon Wozniak seizes his chance to use the statements made by Max and Jack from Vapor Den into the advantage of the council and our opponents. Wozniak accepts the statement and definition that e-cigarettes are a “smoking cessation device” and ties this in with the Sottera case against the FDA and how the vapor industry argued it should not be regulated as drug delivery devices and now claims that they are such (sorry Vapor Den but the rest of the industry does not share that with you nor do you guys speak for the entire industry, alas Wozniak capitalized very quickly on your words to create the perception and appearance as if the entire industry stands by those statements).

Not that this is a lesson to other vendors; you don’t show up, then your competitors will be doing the speaking for you. Is that what you want?!

Wozniak then, either out of ignorance or just a bold faced LIE, goes on to state that the vapor industry ASKED the court TO BE REGULATED AS TOBACCO. This is a complete falsehood. At no point did the industry, nor Sottera ASK that. In fact, the industry does not support being regulated as tobacco products EITHER. But I guess it would not be in Wozniak’s interest to actually be clear and truthful about that.

Wozniak used the statements by Vapor Den to state that the industry “wants to have it both ways and you cannot have it both ways”. And goes on to say that the e-cigarette industry does not advertise them as cessation devices but as e-cigarettes. Which is correct because the industry does not support the concept of how it was presented to the council by, mostly, Jack.

Wozniak closes by saying if the industry wants to be regulated as cessation devices, go back to the FDA and be asked to be regulated as such. Which of course he knows is an impossibility at this junction and shows just how disingenuous he is on this topic.

Council Member Maxwell Anderson tells his story about how he quit smoking (again) and creates the impression that he is fully in line with the “quit my way or die” sentiments held by public health and tobacco control groups.

The council proceeded to unanimously vote in favor of the ordinance.

The aftermath

As a result of the city of Berkeley’s decision a group of businesses have gotten together and are working on a boycotberkeley.org website and will be informing the businesses in the city that they may see a minor drop in revenue because of the boycott against the city over these arbitrary and capricious decisions made on the basis of lack of research and blatant lies.

Needless to say, I support those actions. Not that I think it will cause a reversal or change in the ordinance they have now adopted but certainly actions should have consequences.

Why we decided to go to Berkeley

Going back to a bit of history and the reason we decided we needed to make a stand in Berkeley and at least go on record to counter their idiotic statements. Instead of writing the summary of the previous hearing on the topic, let me just copy what I wrote at the time…

This is a quick report/recap from the Berkeley City Council meeting on the topic of regulating ecigs. You can watch the whole item yourself if you are one of those who is suffering from low blood pressure. It’s not a super long item but certainly long enough to get your blood pressure up for the next few… oh, weeks.

The bottom line:

The ordinance will come back with some amendments in September. The changes they are looking for is an exemption for MMJ use of vaporizers. So, banning the use of ecigs in multi-unit apartment buildings (amongst other things) but allowing the use of vaporizers as well as the combustable smoking of MMJ in the very same environment. The City of Berkeley is clearly setting a “new” standard here where smoking and vaping MMJ is allowed but you better not have any e-liquid with flavors or nicotine in these devices because that’s BAD BAD BAD.

The highlights:

• The woman from Public Health threw out the usual garbage, ignorance, and lies. And spoke about how ALA, ACS, etc. have all pulled their support for CA SB648 because the “bill has been gutted” and is something they can no longer stand behind. In other words, PUBLIC HEALTH DOES NOT SUPPORT A BILL THAT PREVENTS MINORS ACCESS TO ECIGS FOM VENDING MACHINES! Yes, please keep repeating that and tell everyone. PUBLIC HEALTH and the other tobacco control organizations ARE AGAINST THAT.

• A woman from a minority tobacco control organization claimed she and a colleague spent 2 hours in a room with vapers, talking, and admitted the vapers were not using their devices. However, she repeated, at least twice, that just being in the room with “these vapers” made her nauseated. She also said she could just smell the vapor on these people and that after 2 hours she and her colleague felt PHYSICALLY ILL.

• Councilmember Wozniak made compounded ignorant statements regarding ecigs and at one point said that they may be worse than regular cigarettes because ecigs contain a chemical known as Propylene Glycol “which causes asthma”. I guess Mr. Wozniak has figured out why people have asthma. Because they use asthma inhalers. And those usually contain PG. I guess that’s what he must be thinking because if PG causes asthma then why on earth would it be used in inhalers unless the purpose of an asthma inhaler is to… well, cause asthma!

• He also claimed there is little to no difference in particulate matter between smoke (from traditional cigarettes) and vapor from ecigs. He was corrected on that by a member of CA NORML. Unfortunately, I think Mr. Wozniak will not be so easily convinced based on the amount of other drivel he managed to verbally produce on the topic.

• Councilmember Anderson compared ecigs with cluster bombs that are being dropped by big tobacco and went into an explanation of what cluster bombs are. He says cluster bombs are “dropped on innocent countries by unscrupulous countries”. At this point I should remain civil and not add anything more to that comment.

• Two guys from the Tobaccoless Club (there is such a thing?!) spewed off a bunch of ignorant comments that they were reading from their phones and written statements. It included all the usual outdated stuff along with the usual twists of the dangers of ecigs. I, personally, think it was perfect irony that the closed caption text on the video reads TOBACCOIST CLUB instead of TOBACCOLESS CLUB. Almost as funny as references to Stan Glantz being translated into “Stand Glands” 🙂

• The support for the SMOKE Act by Speier was not addressed during this meeting.

As you can imagine, the summary above should be enough of a reason for you to understand why we had to be there on September 9th given how things went down on July 8th.

Additional Material

Sallie’s Testimony

My name is Sallie Goetsch. I have never smoked or vaped. I am here to oppose the ban on electronic cigarettes in multi-unit housing.

No one is paying me to be here. Unlike my opponents from the so-called public health organizations, my advocacy efforts are not funded by tobacco industry money or pharmaceutical industry money.

I am here at my own expense because I never thought my husband would quit smoking, but he hasn’t touched a cigarette for more than a year.

If more people followed my husband’s example and switched from smoking to vaping, the air in Berkeley would be cleaner. The population would be healthier. Stanton Glantz would lose his $20 million grant and my opponents would lose their funding.

At least the vapers are honest about their motives: they want to be able to vape in their own homes. Our opponents are telling you they want to protect public health when they only care about protecting their budgets.

Members of this council have expressed concern that exposure to electronic cigarettes would be a bad influence on children.

When I was young, children had parents.

What’s more, parents knew how to say “No.” When I wanted Froot Loops and Coco Puffs, my parents said “No” and fed me whole-grain cereal.

My parents taught me that smoking was bad for you and cigarettes could start fires.
And even though both my parents started smoking for a few years after their divorce, neither my brother nor I ever smoked.

Are all the children in Berkeley orphans?

My school health classes in the Seventies taught me that smoking could cause cancer.
Is health education so much worse now that the mere sight of someone vaping is going to cause teens to forget everything they’ve ever learned at home or at school?

Berkeley’s high school students have proved themselves smarter than that on many occasions. Don’t underestimate them. Don’t underestimate their parents.

The City of Berkeley probably has more PhDs per square foot than any other place in the East Bay. This council should be too intelligent to fall for claptrap that no freshman at Cal would be allowed to pass off as research.

If you believed such a thing as the gateway effect existed, you would not subsidize medical marijuana, you would outlaw it.

If all forms of nicotine were incurably addictive and dangerous, my opponents would not advocate products like Nicoderm.

If only children liked the flavors of candy and baked goods, not only would we have no flavored vodka, but I bet we would have no overweight adults in this room.

If vapor had an inherently greater penetrating power than smoke, this council would be urging that smoking, rather than vaping, of medical marijuana be permitted.

I urge the council to exercise common sense and permit vaporizing nicotine inside of residences in multi-unit apartment buildings.

Stefan’s Testimony

Good evening, members of the city council.

I am here representing the users of vapor products that are unable to be here. I do not receive any benefits, financial or otherwise, to be here. Unlike our opponents of the public hate, sorry, health and tobacco control organizations.

I am here to oppose the ban on the use of vapor products in multi-unit apartments. The last hearing made it clear that your lack of research and decisions are ARBITRARY AND CAPRICIOUS.

Having council member Anderson compare e-cigarettes with CLUSTER BOMBS was bad enough but having council member Wozniak say, and I quote;

“I think there is not much distinction between vapor and smoke”
“A vapor is more transparent through walls and things”
“Propylene Glycol can cause asthma”

This shows a level of ignorance amongst elected officials in the people’s republic of Berkeley that is no different from that of elected officials in Europe in 1938… but that was the republic of Weimar.

Propylene Glycol, Mr. Wozniak, is USED IN ASTHMA INHALERS and not because it CAUSES asthma. “Here, have an asthma inhaler, get yourself some asthma”. Seriously??? Will the council ALSO ban the PG that is inhaled in hospitals through the air ventilation system?

This council is concerned about addiction. Has the council looked at the MSA and Prop 99 MONEY generated by tobacco to which the public health and tobacco control groups that are pushing for this ordinance are EXTREMELY ADDICTED TO? Maybe you SHOULD.

There is so little time and so much ignorance to address so perhaps I should just stick with some bullet points.

There are over 13.000 small businesses in this emerging industry but only a handful of big tobacco players in this space. Smearing all of them as big tobacco racketeers may lead to a defamation suit.

Comparing the vapor industry with big tobacco is like comparing a nice 5 star meal with a $1 dollar fast food meal. And on that topic, will the council consider banning cooking smells and vapors also?

—- this is where things were cut off —-

Why is this council so accepting of public health and tobacco control doing a GLORIFICATION of Professor Glantz. A mechanical engineer with no credibility in this matter and has has stated in the past that supporting questionable science pays for his mortgage?

Has this council ever considered potential conflicts of interest between the Berkeley “quit program” services, grant money, and how supports big pharma’s financial interests? Has any council member received any campaign donations from any such interests?

We urge you to reconsider your ordinance after you have had some time to research this matter in a way that does not make this city the laughing stock of the state, or the country for that matter.

We and others would like to work with you but I think we should first consider dropping this open hostility based on ignorance and ARBITRARY AND CAPRICIOUS decisions.

Thank you for your time.

Other written statements we had as guidance for those joining us

Who is affected the worst by this ordinance?

Why would a city as progressive as Berkeley, a city with rent control, want to give landlords a way to arbitrarily and cruelly evict tenants who are doing something that is scientifically PROVEN to have ZERO harm to people, even if they are in the same room? Not even asthmatics!

Even the FDA agrees that these people are saving their own lives.

Statistics show that the deepest harm to health will hit the LGBT and poor minority smokers.

Do some of you need to raise rents on properties you own that have retirees in them?

Renormalizing Smoking

Our opponents have expressed concern that the popularity of e-cigarettes will ‘re-normalize’ smoking.

Will all the vapers in the room please hold up your mods?

I would very much like to know how the use of these devices can ‘re-normalize’ smoking combustible cigarettes.

Yes, I know there are e-cigarettes that resemble combustible cigarettes. Most people start with them when transitioning away from tobacco, but rarely continue to use them for more than a few months.

At a convention for vapers this past weekend, only a handful of the hundreds of vendors even sold “cigalikes,” and very few of the 30,000 attendees visited their booths.

The only thing that vaping is likely to ‘normalize’ is vaping, a behavior that even the FDA acknowledges is far less harmful than smoking.

Shouldn’t the public health organizations be concentrating their energy on smoking and tobacco?

Debunk Testimony

My name is [insert] and I am here to oppose the ban on electronic cigarettes in multi-unit housing.

The City of Berkeley probably has more PhDs per square foot than any other place in the East Bay. This council should be too intelligent to fall for claptrap that no freshman at Cal would be allowed to pass off as research.

If you believed such a thing as the gateway effect existed, you would not subsidize medical marijuana, you would outlaw it.

If all forms of nicotine were incurably addictive and dangerous, my opponents would not advocate products like Nicoderm.

If only children liked the flavors of candy and baked goods, not only would we have no flavored vodka, but I bet we would have no overweight adults in this room.

If vapor had an inherently greater penetrating power than smoke, this council would be urging that smoking, rather than vaping, of medical marijuana be permitted.

I urge the council to exercise common sense and permit vaporizing nicotine inside of residences in multi-unit apartment buildings.

Enforce the Laws You Have

I have seen city council after city council rush to impose bans on electronic cigarettes without considering the fact that their problems stem largely from failure to enforce the laws already on their books.

For instance, California already forbids the sale of electronic cigarettes and e-liquid to minors. Are you checking all of the smoke shops, vape shops, and convenience stores within city limits to make sure that they check IDs for vapor products as well as for tobacco products and alcohol?

Many cities are concerned about teen use of electronic cigarettes for marijuana. Are you checking all of your dispensaries to be sure they require proper prescriptions? Are you checking your doctors to be sure they only prescribe marijuana to people with a genuine medical need?

If you aren’t enforcing the laws you have, how do you expect passing a new law to do you any good? Can you promise to enforce that?

You can’t, because no one will ever be able to detect someone vaping inside of an apartment without seeing them in the act.

How to Lie with Statistics

When I was taking undergraduate statistics, my professor assigned us a book called How to Lie with Statistics. Our opponents have clearly read it.

They quote the part of the CDC study that mentions the increase in the number of teenagers who have used e-cigarettes between 2010 and now.

What they don’t mention is that teen use of combustible tobacco cigarettes has decreased in that time…by about the same amount.

Or that the survey was conducted in such a way that it is impossible to tell whether those teens who smoke as well as using e-cigarettes had been smoking before they tried e-cigarettes.

Other surveys have shown that only about 1% of the population—either children or adults—of NON-smokers even tries e-cigarettes, much less starts vaping regularly.

Children are curious, but the major appeal of these products is to those who already smoke.

Ask the vape store owners who their customers are.

Inaction also has consequences

The reason our strategy of yielding time and having speakers address various aspects that needed to be addressed is mainly because of the lack of people supporting us by showing up. We get more people to show up at state bill hearings than we got in Berkeley, a place known for its activism. Well, not amongst vapers, obviously.

There were several folks who would have attended but couldn’t. Some, like a great vendor in Oakland were actually out in Washington DC on a SFATA fly-in to educate politicians on vapor products. Some had family or emergency issues. All of which are understandable. But even so the total lack of ANYONE from Berkeley showing up (other than Vapor Den) does not fit the statistical likelihood.

I posted a short blurb on Reddit thanking those who didn’t show up and was very critical of that inaction. Of course I knew already what the level of response would be to that because in my extensive experience in the various communities both online and offline it is easy to capture the “essence” of the prevailing attitude of apathy. I would like to share with you some of these responses so you can see the kind of obstacles that vapor product advocacy faces.

• I’d rather see vaping banned than have somebody with your attitude defend it.
• If it was a meeting like the town meetings in my town, it probably ran late. Not everyone can sacrifice a night’s sleep and the ability to get up in the morning for an ideological fight that they probably won’t win anyway.
• It’s not anyone’s problem other than yours that your plan to have a bunch of people show up and yield time to you didn’t work.
• This isn’t the civil rights movement all over again and you’re not Dr. King. Besides fuck Berkeley anyway, that city sucks. Fucking hippies.
• And no I won’t be standing up for vapers anywhere they can stand up for themselves or not that’s up to them.
• Let me just extend my middle finger from nowhere near CA! Your post here is pompous and very negative.

These are likely the same kind of consumer of vapor products that are eagerly awaiting the formation of black markets through which they hope to procure their products and liquids in the future when the FDA gets its way. Funny thing is, no reputable vendor is in favor of that. I always ask that if a vendor is consumer driven, whether that means they will start selling their products from the trunk of their car. So far I have not yet encountered a vendor who wishes that or expressed any interest in doing so. These are also likely the same kind of vaper that took absolutely no time filing a comment with the FDA during the comment period on the deeming regulations.

The level of apathy is appalling and as vaping expands exponentially we are clearly also seeing an increase in apathy both amongst existing vapers and new ones. I guess the only message left to send these types is

“Do nothing now. Have nothing later.”

Of course, several people were quick to accuse me of not having organized it well enough, not having notified the right groups and that I can’t expect people with jobs to be able to make the time to sit through boring political crap when they have to get up early in the morning. Clearly these folks can’t take the criticism they deserved because;

• Every single person that did attend had to get up early the next day.
• Every single person did not even come from Berkeley (except Vapor Den).
• Every single person attending made the effort that others did not.

So all vapers in and around Berkeley have jobs that they need to get up early for in the morning? That is a statistical impossibility considering the economy of the area and shows that the people using that as an argument really do not understand the demographic in the area at all. But hey, it sounds nice as an almost logical sounding argument, eh.

As for not having notified people. The notification and posts about this meeting had been going out once a week for a whole month in various online communities where it is more than clear lots of vapers from the area hang out. Based on the responses there certainly wasn’t a lack of awareness about it. Each time I posted one I used a slightly different tone (because a single post does not always get seen by all people). In one I was pleading for folks to join us. In another I tried to “guilt trip” them into joining us. A fairly wide spectrum was used mostly as a test to see what would get a certain type or kind of response or reaction.

The last request went out the day before and in a group specific to vapers in the bay area that has many thousands of folks that are a member. There was just one person responding to that and it was a question why on earth we would do such a thing if we don’t live in Berkeley nor are a vendor. Dismissing our actions as “mind your own business”. I was hoping this one person did not speak for the entire group of bay area vapers but at this point I am starting to doubt that and perhaps that person did embody the sentiment and attitude that prevails there.

Some others suggested the failure of getting people to show up might have been due to the fact that we were not simultaneously doing a “giveaway” or a raffle. I find it very demeaning and sad that people would show up for a lousy bottle of juice or a gadget or a piece of equipment. What does that say about those vapers who would make an effort for that? On top of that, I am not a proponent of providing incentives for something that should come natural. And I’m not going to even get into the fact that incentives for action is what got big tobacco companies in some trouble during their days of flavor bans. Astro-turfing, you know.

In the end vapers in Berkeley probably got what they deserve. Many of which appear to be just fine with it. After all, standing up for themselves is too much trouble. The fact that they would be standing up for all the current smokers as well clearly never entered their minds. But then again, perhaps they are too inherently selfish to even have such thoughts occur.

I think the Berkeley City Council and the vapers there deserve each other.