FOR EVERY PIECE OF EVIDENCE showing that youth smoking rates have plummeted since e-cigarettes became popular, there is a blowhard in Philadelphia who insists that vaping is a gateway not only to smoking but to crack cocaine. For every report from the Royal College of Physicians showing that e-cigarettes help people quit smoking, there are a |
hundred activist-researchers in San Francisco claiming that vaping makes quitting more difficult … Teenagers experiment, and there is no doubt that they have experimented with e-cigarettes in recent years. The real question is whether they are experi ment ing with vaping instead of smoking or if the former leads to the latter. The drip, drip, drip of junk science from the US would have us believe that vaping is a gateway to smoking, but the empirical data strongly suggest the opposite. Christopher Snowdon, Spectator, 8 February
I MAY NOT BE an enlightened nondrinker but I am an informed one. Sooner or later your vices catch up with you. The big bad medical wolves have
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achieved their goal. Dealing with unpleasant feelings seems a lot easier to me than any one of the ten horrible alcohol-related diseases I’ m destined to get if I go back to drinking. So, I’ m staying sober. For now. Helen Kirwan-Taylor, Telegraph, 6 February
THOUGH THE PLIGHT OF ALCOHOLICS is awful – the demonisation by society( medical professionals included), cuts to mental health services, the ready availability of the drug... the list goes on – often overlooked are the struggles faced by their children … Local authorities require proper funding to deliver crucial physical and emotional support to children in need. It is only by reaching out to the children of alcoholics that we can hope to definitively break the cycle of addiction that has a stranglehold upon the nation. Annie Beckett, Guardian, 27 February
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LOCAL NEWS REPORTS [ in the Philippines ] of politicians found to be directly funded by drug money are so frequent, widespread and often absurd it’ s hard to know where to begin … So while Duterte’ s reprimanding of, and promise to cleanse the country of, crooked cops and officials will only add to his popularity among common Filipino people, I wonder if this is a fight he will stand by as firmly as his ferocious war on drugs. The deaths of more than 7,000 addicts and low-level dealers is one thing, but ruffling the feathers and incomes of the country’ s most powerful? That’ s an entirely different battle, and one Duterte should make sure he is squeaky clean for, because the most sinister thing about the Philippines’ drug problem is not wild addiction statistics, but that there could be proof that corruption is endemic. Joanna Fuertes-Knight, Guardian, 2 February |
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