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A good question, with multiple issues to address: timescales, previous examples, laws implemented to protect large-scale commercial opponents, oppression of minorities for profit by governments, increasing ‘globalisation’ - perhaps best described as more control of consumers by multinational industry; and so on. Thank you for the question.A big subject, then; the sort of subject you could really get your teeth into as a discourse for a degree: it’s new, it’s complicated, it addresses global health in the immediate future, it all hinges on new technology in a health-related area, and it concerns the fight of the public against exploitation by giant industry and their partners in government. As I’m not punting for a masters in Social Justice at this time, forgive me if this answer is somewhat shorter than a thesis. I’ll do my best to outline the issues, though.TimescalesHow long does it take to see the result of a major consumer shift to a healthier lifestyle? My guess is 20 years, confirmed at 30 years, undeniable at 40 years, and the full benefit measurable at 60 years.As we are talking about reducing the damage done by smoking, we must consider the timescale to be of the order of 60 years to full benefit: peak presentations for cancer occur in the 70 year age decade: the peak in lung cancer presentations is seen in those 70 or older. No doubt it is possible to present after 20 years smoking, but most cancer is seen after at least 40 or 50 years smoking. CVD issues do kill people quicker though. All the graphs I have seen of smoking prevalence vs smoking-related mortality show a significant timelag between national reductions in smoking prevalence and the later fall in the smoking-related death rate - at least 40 years. Last week I saw another, and it was captioned something like ‘30 year timelag shown between fall in smoking prevalence and fall in related mortality’ but the graph itself clearly showed a 40 year timelag, so interpretations can be faulty.We can also note that virtually all research on smoking-related mortality and life expectancy shows that if a smoker quits before age 35 (or age 34, or similar - depending on the study) then on average they will not face any reduction in life expectancy. Smoking takes decades to affect health severely enough to cause serious morbidity or death (though as a sports coach, I have to point out that the average person is crippled, competitively-speaking, by a couple of years of smoking, if they are taking part in a high-endurance event).I cannot see any way to reliably measure the result of smokers quitting en masse in under 20 years. It might be seen earlier in the UK, since the smoking and vaping statistics are honestly managed there and that is is definitely not the case in the USA.Previous examplesThere is at least one previous example of the impact of THR [1] that we can examine: the Swedish Miracle.Nordic countries have a tradition of using oral tobacco as well as smoking, something like some parts of America. Sweden has the strongest tradition, and in the later part of the 20th century the manufacturers identified health issues resulting from consumption of low-quality oral tobacco (oropharyngeal cancers, principally - aka ‘mouth cancer’) and the harmful ingredients in tobacco (the TSNAs) causing the problem, and were able to remove most of them by high-quality manufacturing. They established the Gothiatek Standard, a quality control standard applied thereafter to the Swedish oral tobacco product called Snus. This process was copied some time later by US manufacturers.As a result, it could be clearly seen by 2003 [2] that Snus consumption, in Sweden, in the modern era, had no measurable association with any morbidity, or with mortality.Because it became well-known in Sweden that Swedish Snus was not a route to disease or death, more and more smokers there switched to Snus; and perhaps even more importantly [3], people who would normally have taken up smoking instead took up Snus. From 2003 onward, male smoking prevalence in Sweden fell by 1% per year, a world-beating drop; as Snus consumption is more common in men than women, so men reap more of the benefits. From about 17% in 2003, already a vastly lower figure than any other Western developed country, because of the Swedish Snus tradition, male smoking prevalence fell at 1% per year to 2014, when it was around 8%. At that time smoking prevalence overall (male + female) was about 12%. These figures are dramatically lower than for any other EU country. Sweden has the lowest ‘tobacco-related mortality’ - more accurately, perhaps, the smoking-related death rate - of any Western developed country by a wide margin. It actually has the lowest rate of any developed country, but this tends to start arguments about semi-developed and third-world countries and suchlike, so it is generally better to restrict this claim to an area where the statement is inarguable even by the most fanatical tobacco-hating zealots.In fact Sweden is the world leader - by a long chalk - in the reduction of tobacco-related mortality (smoking-related death). Since Sweden also has the lowest male lung cancer and oral cancer rates in the EU, it is obvious that Snus consumption is a huge public health gain. The fact it occurred at zero cost to the state, and was an entirely consumer-led revolution, and completely outside the aegis of the Public Health industry, are also significant benefits - although those with a financial stake in the smoking economy hate it, and see it as a major negative [4]. The louder they shout their lies about Snus, the more obvious it is they get paid in some way if people keep smoking.Now 66% of Swedish tobacco consumers are snusers, and only 33% are smokers. The health statistics related to disease and death only reflect the number of smokers, as no morbidity can be associated with Snus consumption in Sweden. To make this point clear: it doesn’t matter how many people consume Snus, in Sweden, the diseases specifically caused by tobacco consumption are only measurable in the smoking population; mouth cancer for example has no association with Snus consumption in the modern era [5]. Therefore, the Swedish national health statistics are unique: incredibly low levels of tobacco-related disease and death, when compared to similar countries. Sweden is the world leader in reducing smoking-related death, the world leader in reducing smoking-related disease, and the world leader in reducing smoking prevalence - all because of Snus.The real problem with Snus is that it works, and that it works exceptionally well, and that it is - up until 2013 at any rate - the only thing that did work to reduce smoking prevalence in countries where the 20% Prevalence Rule operates [6]. That’s a problem because the smoking economy is worth more than $1 trillion a year and it pays a vast number of people, many of whom have a great deal of power.Nobody wants a cheap, harmless alternative to smoking, and the sooner people realise that, the easier it is to work out why anything along those lines will be bitterly opposed.Apart from the consumers, of course, but they obviously don’t count.VapingEcigs began to be sold in the West in 2005, in England, and by late 2006 several brands were sold in the UK and USA. By 2012 use had become widespread in both countries, and by late 2013 it could be seen from the UK smoking and vaping statistics that vaping had begun to have an effect on smoking prevalence.UK smoking prevalence had fallen to about 20% by 2008, and stayed there for 5 years until 2013, despite huge sums being expended to try and reduce it further.Then in late 2013 the ecig effect began to bite: smoking prevalence started to decline again. Because of the accuracy and honesty of our statistics [7], we can see that the reduction in numbers of smokers almost exactly equals the number of vapers who have quit smoking.More vaping = less smoking = big gain for public health; there is not really any other way to put it (see the Swedish Miracle for why).How much, how fast?How much will vaping (or THR overall) reduce smoking, and how fast will it do it? How soon will we see the benefits? How quickly will we see smoking-related lung cancer disappear?Ah, well, now you’re asking. We know the answer in a perfect world: look at how fast Snus reduced smoking and smoking-related disease in Sweden, once the truth came out. The thirty years from 1996 to today, 2016, saw a dramatic fall in smoking-related disease, as smokers switched en masse to Snus.Unfortunately this is not a perfect world. This is a world in which money is worshipped above all else, and human life and health is a disposable asset that can be sold to the highest bidder.ProhibitionAll vaping regulations are direct, or partial, or de facto prohibition. I am an expert on vaping regulation [8] and I have never, ever come across any regulation or law or statute concerning vaping that improves safety or has any other benefit to anyone.The problem with vaping is that it’s like Snus: a cheap, harmless way to substitute for smoking and avoid all the disease and early death and taxes - OK, not all the taxes, in the case of Snus. Nobody wants that. Governments make a vast, enormous, astronomically huge amount of money from smoking, and pharma is not far behind in reaping the rewards. Then you have the cigarette industry, who actually make less out of it than anyone else, and finally the fake charities and front groups who lobby for pharma, and who ultimately depend on the gravy train, i.e. smoking, for their obscene salaries. You know the CEO of one of these ‘body part’ fake charities in the USA makes over $1 million a year, yes? The whole house of cards depends on cigarette sales - so everything is done to ensure that cigarette sales are protected.To illustrate just how much money government makes from smoking, here is the UK situation:The UK government is an 86% stakeholder in tobacco sales receipts measured by the OTC price and its allocation. Annual sales total about £14 billion, and £12bn of this is tax. By the time other revenues and savings are added in, it is clear that gov UK is a greater than 90% stakeholder in tobacco. Indeed, in the UK (in China too), government is tobacco. Given that the pharmaceutical industry also makes more than the tobacco industry does (tobacco only makes $2bn, and pharma makes a lot more than that in the UK from smoking - at least £3bn, and probably £4bn), we can honestly state - since it is obvious - that the tobacco industry is a minor partner in the business.Gov UK clears around £20 billion a year from smoking, after all costs and expenses are paid. This comprises the £12 billion tax on the frontend; plus nearly as much on the backend, as smokers die - we are told - 10 years early, so there is a huge saving on pensions, healthcare and other costs for the elderly; plus all the taxes from retail, wholesale, manufacturing and logistics on tobacco; plus all the taxes on pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical companies resulting from the supply of expensive drugs to treat serious smoking-related illness; and so on, and so on - there is almost never-ending chain of revenue channels from smoking. Minus some costs for NHS treatments and sick pay. Keep in mind that half the NHS costs for treating smoking-related disease are the drug costs, i.e. money for pharma.Currently, the renewal of the Trident nuclear deterrent is being debated in the UK. Apparently the cost of this program is ‘absolutely enormous’ at £40 billion.Sorry, it’s not ‘enormous’ - it’s just two year’s smoking profit for the UK government. Or perhaps we should recognise that these sums are, indeed, enormous? And that government does everything possible to protect their receipts, no matter the cost to human life and public health?The abject terror THR caused for the gravy train profiteersUntil THR came along, no one had to worry about anything. There is no known way to get smoking prevalence below 20% in a Western developed country (the 20% Prevalence Rule). All the noise, all the shouting, all the utterly pointless policies and initiatives, all of the bans and restrictions, all of the army of paid staff - none of these have any effect at all once you get down to 20% smoking prevalence in the adult population. It all sounds wonderful, and endless lies are spouted about ‘strong progress’ and ‘better public health’ - but nothing happens. As in the UK, where smoking prevalence flatlined for 5 years at ~20% [9], you can shout all you like but nothing happens. This is hugely valuable for the Public Health industry and everyone else involved, as it means everyone still gets paid since no reduction in cigarette sales or smoking is taking place, in reality. No smoking = no pay. They have to constantly lie about the ‘progress’ being made on reducing smoking prevalence, since no progress at all has been made; but lying is the foundation of the national-level Public Health industry’s modus operandi, so there is no problem there [12].Then along comes THR, smoking prevalence drops, and everyone making a fortune from the gravy train has a heart attack. Christ almighty, what are we going to do about it? We’ll all be out of a job soon if the Swedish scenario spreads. No smoking = no job = no obscenely inflated salary and benefits. Better kill it ASAP.What happens next?A shedload of bans, is what.A perfect worldIn a perfect world, we would attempt to reduce smoking by consumer choice, for the simple reasons that (a) it works better than anything else (see Sweden - obviously) and (b) it is morally correct.We would ensure smokers and prospective smokers know the true situation regarding health risks for cigarette smoking or for substitute products.We would make sure everyone had honest, truthful and complete information on safer substitutes for cigarettes.We would remove all tax on THR products, and promulgate truthful information about them, so they became more popular than smoking, and so that anyone considering starting to smoke might take a safer option to start with.We can already see that THR products tend to vaccinate first-time users against smoking, and we would try to maximise that effect.We could then sit back and watch a situation develop in which the Swedish scenario is leveraged to the max, THR product use gradually replaces smoking, smoking prevalence falls through the floor, and after a suitable timelag, smoking-related disease and death rates fall in parallel (exactly parallel, in fact) with the reduction in the numbers of smokers.We would see a proportionate rise in the number of THR product users, employing vaping and Snus to avoid smoking. Perhaps 50% of smokers would switch? Perhaps the 66% seen in Sweden? Perhaps even more, since vaping + Snus is a fairly powerful combination: something for everyone?We might even see greater overall numbers of nicotine users than before, but this is irrelevant since nicotine is for all practical purposes harmless - otherwise it wouldn’t be a nutrient present in the normal diet, for which everyone tests positive; and for which clinical trials with never-users are routine, indicating that it is considered harmless by those researchers and ethics panels who routinely work with it.Since nicotine has zero potential for dependence outside of delivery in a tobacco vehicle, and especially in smoking, the number of people *dependent* on nicotine would fall even if the number of users in total was larger.In 20 years we would be seeing a dramatic fall in smoking-related disease, and by 30 years the number of smoking-related deaths will have fallen through the floor. The deaths will all be associated with smokers since no mortality in THR product users can be found by epidemiological / statistical methods.Public health will have received the biggest boost since the discovery of antibiotics, and a significant number of deaths will have been prevented.Unfortunately, this is not a perfect world. We did not consider the effects of money, power and corruption.The endemic corruption in governmentGovernments are composed of institutions and agencies. The strongest lobbying factions should also be considered part of government, for the simple reason they are in effect just that.Governments are under massive pressure to make money, but above all, not to bleed money. Smoking makes government a fortune, and it makes its commercial partners, the giant multinationals, almost as much. Government has to protect smoking: it’s as simple as that. People often ask why cigarettes can’t be banned like heroin, but government doesn’t make any money from heroin, so that the fact cigarettes kill hundreds of thousands of times more users than heroin is not important. All sorts of contrivances are used to protect that situation, which is where the world’s largest and most expensive propaganda campaign comes in, ably managed by government’s commercial partners.Because smoking (aka ‘tobacco use’) has been cleverly contrived to be an evil with no limitations, it is in effect a free-fire zone in which anyone can do anything without regard for morals, or even a requirement not to kill the public. It is perfectly permissible to kill as many consumers as you like if they are smokers, and there will be no comeback. For example the EU can ban Swedish Snus in order to maintain government cigarette tax receipts, keep on killing older people to save money on pensions and healthcare for the elderly, protect pharma receipts from drug sales to treat smoking-related morbidity, protect cigarette manufacturers, and preserve the gravy train. The EU’s ban on Snus kills at least 70,000 EU citizens a year, and is one of the best indicators that the famous statement by an insider that the EU is a vast, stinking cesspit of corruption is accurate.The FDA and CDC can lie blatantly and outrageously about hypothetical ‘dangers’ from vaping, and the NIH funds junk science on a massive scale to support the propaganda. The FDA is a pharmaceutical industry client organisation and will do whatever it takes to protect pharma.The golden years of vaping and THRThe result of all this is that large regions such as the USA and the EU have had to react to the serious threat to cigarette sales, on which the whole house of cards depends. Bans are coming thick and fast (aka ‘regulations’), to prevent the Swedish scenario spreading and cigarette sales plummeting to record lows.Smokers could not prevent the various bans and restrictions they now face, because of two important factors:They were far too apathetic, and naive, and disorganised, and led by people of less than impressive capability. (How badly do you think you would have fared with 30% of the population behind you? As badly as the smoking community did? Probably not…). But - see #2 here - they were fairly effectively stabbed in the back, which must be taken into account.The cigarette trade did a deal with government to accept restrictions in return for a guaranteed future. The deal included an important clause: keep quiet and accept the inevitable. Smoking can’t be driven down past a certain minimum, in any case, so ultimately they had nothing to worry about: just put the prices up. Luckily, taxes are so high now that manufacturer’s price increases are almost invisible. Stabbing their customer base in the back was just part of the deal.In the UK it is impossible to sue a cigarette manufacturer, so they are safe (see McTear vs Imperial Tobacco); in the USA, they pay a set fee based on stick volume to stay in business (the MSA funds etc.). It’s perfect.No industry has a better guarantee of future existence and profits than the cigarette industry: just look at the share prices, and the earnings per share: better than any other large industry. That is all you need to know. This is why the hedge funds, pension funds, local authorities and many other big fund managers put their money in tobacco: it is guaranteed safe by government, and so it pays better than any other private industry investment. It has a guaranteed, safe future; and in the UK they don’t even have to spend a penny on marketing, as all promotion of any kind is banned and the products are effectively invisible. It’s simply perfect.Vapers, though, are not smokers. They are not nearly as apathetic, and since they had to start with the online community in late 2007 in the first place (with the founding of ECF), it is normal and natural for them to have continued with that activity, and to leverage it for the benefit of the community. They are heavily invested, and strongly anti-government corruption. For them, it is a matter of life or death and they will make sure you know it. The Leave vote in the recent UK/EU referendum was certainly assisted by the EU’s oppression of vapers; you can argue about the exact numbers, but you can’t argue with the fact.Now that the EU and USA look set to strangle vaping by gradually regulating it out of existence, vapers will act strongly to resist the globalisation of oppression, and will assist and promote the inevitable black market that takes over the legal sales when such sales are prohibited or taxed out of contention.What the future holdsIt seems that exploitation, oppression and desk murder of minorities is just fine in the EU and USA. Vapers will not stand for that, and will work together globally to ensure vaping survives. For many of them, and perhaps most, it is the only way to avoid smoking. If government wants to keep them smoking, they will fight government. Government is tobacco, so government will be resisted. It is an honest citizen’s duty to ignore corrupt laws, and to fight them where possible.The inevitable prohibition means that the rate of vaping uptake will slow down. Government and its commercial partners will attempt first to remove the most effective vaping products, then tax what remains, then remove more products, then raise taxes expeditiously. Government is tobacco, so it has to do this.The black market will fill in where it can, and be ably assisted by grandmothers, teachers, police officers, accountants, bricklayers and everybody else. The public hates corruption with a vengeance when it is so obvious. Unfortunately, sales cannot stay at the same level as as if they were street legal, but nevertheless vaping has to grow, since it is the modern solution to smoking.It generally takes about 30 years or so for a new technology and a new system to sweep away the old [10]. The corruption, lies, propaganda and junk science rise to a fever pitch as the incumbents fight desperately to protect their incomes, but no one can put the genie back in the bottle: eventually the new technology triumphs and the old system is kicked out, no matter how much power they have or how much money they spend on bribery [11]. When everyone is using the black market, and the black market is normal, and everyone from grandmothers to police officers despises the law, and honest medics and public health staff are very clear on the issue, and government sees how much tax it is losing but cannot do anything about it, and when vaping becomes a voting issue, then the law changes. Out goes the old, murderously corrupt system, and in comes the new tech and a new era in public health.The stats slowly, ever so slowly, begin to replicate Sweden’s unique national health statistics.The $64,000 questionAnd so we get to the big question: what is the likely timescale of health benefits resulting from a move to THR products at population level, but in a thoroughly corrupt environment?Normally we would expect the first epidemiology - clinical data based on long-term studies - to show a drop in smoking-related morbidity and mortality in around 20 years from the off. The first thing to do is work out the year in which there were enough vapers switching from smoking to make a difference to population-level measures of health, reflected later in stats at, say, the 20-year mark. Then we can add 20 and look at that year as the first in which some movement should be visible.Vaping in the West started in 2005 in the UK, and by late 2006 in the USA. Too few ex-smokers were generated by vaping at this time to result in any marked change to population-level measures 20 years later. By 2014 there were clearly enough switchers to create a visible, beneficial effect on national morbidity/mortality figures related to smoking at a later date. Therefore 2013 seems a reasonable guess at a start point where we will be able to see some later downward movement in mortality from smoking. This is an especially useful date in the UK because it is the end of the 5-year flatline in smoking prevalence from 2008 onward after it hit the 20% prevalence barrier. Virtually all reductions in smoking prevalence after this date are due to the vaping effect, either directly or indirectly via the drag-down effect.Explanation of ‘drag-down’The ‘drag-down effect’ is seen in physics, health stats and probably other areas: if 100 people are standing next to a few people affected in some way by an external force, and those few move in a certain direction as a result, then some of the bystanders who are not themselves directly affected will move in the same direction even though there is no direct force on them. See HF dragdown (power output reductions in HF radio transmissions caused by other stations adjacent in frequency and location) and Swedish Snus-influenced reductions in smoking prevalence even among those who are not Snus users.To explain the Snus dragdown effect: men are far more likely to use oral tobacco (Snus, for example) than women. Many Swedish men began to use Snus in the modern era. Male smoking prevalence plummeted. Fewer women began Snus consumption but even so the number of Swedish women smokers fell sharply. Via the dragdown effect, smoking prevalence was reduced among Swedish women even though they did not use Snus. Less smoking results in less smoking. The result was Sweden becoming the world leader in smoking prevalence reduction, and the world leader in the reduction of smoking-related morbidity and mortality.So, we ought to see the first clearly identifiable downward movements in smoking-related morbidity and mortality in the UK at around 2013 + 20 years, which would be 2o33. There may be some indications of the trend starting, before this - perhaps even at 10 years, by 2023.How will the bans affect this?As explained above, the EU and USA have to try and prevent this happening, since harm = profit, and very large federations where politicians are isolated from the public by the distance and layers between the individual and the executive will prioritise for profit over personal rights and health.Vaping product sales will gradually move to the black market, starting around 2018 when the regulations begin to bite - unless legal challenges in the USA succeed. The legal challenge against de facto vaping product bans failed in the EU as the ECJ is just another corrupt tool of a corrupt administration.Therefore the significant annual increase in vapers and vaping product sales will slow down. The whole point of the regulations - more correctly, de facto bans - is to protect cigarette sales, and they will succeed since thousands of vape stores and online vendors will be forced to shut down: the desired result.Nevertheless, the black market will fill in for supply, to a certain extent. Virtually all current vapers are either aware of how to source ultra-low-risk products to enable continued avoidance of smoking or know others who can assist, even in an era of prohibition. Far fewer smokers will be able to quit, as they will not all know vapers who can assist them with supplies. This, after all, is the main purpose of the regulations.We can expect vaping and vaping product supply to grow, however - you cannot put the genie back in the bottle, and you can’t ban a new technology that saves people’s lives on a vast scale. One way or another, vaping will continue - just not as visible as far as supply goes. New and clever ways to sidestep corrupt governments will be found in order to enable smokers to quit.The twin graphs of vaper numbers (and therefore ex-smokers) and the size of the vaping products market will probably flatten out to a slow rise instead of their current steep incline, though. This will have a knock-on effect on the reduction of smoking-related morbidity and mortality, which will slow down.The population-level health benefits will still be visible of course, because if 10% or 20% of smokers are removed from the disease stats by vaping, the effect is going to be clear. From 2033 the effect will be obvious, but perhaps even after just 10 years, at 2023, we might see a developing trend. CVD instances should be reducing measurably by that time, even if a reduction in cancer stats take many decades to be obvious.Expect a shedload of lies about it by the world’s most highly-paid professional liars [12], but that’s par for the course.Notes[1] THR is Tobacco Harm Reduction: substitution of a low-risk activity for smoking; replacement of cigarettes by low-risk alternatives; consumer choice of a safer alternative. Harm reduction is a major theme in our lives and operates in virtually every area of human activity, from seat belts to condoms. Harm reduction is almost the identifier of an advanced society: the recognition that people will always do what they do, so safer options are needed, not prohibition.Prohibition has never worked in the history of the planet, as far as I am aware; it is among the most corrosive and destructive forces that can be unleashed in a society, and provides a foundation for fascism or Stalinist communism (the same thing) to operate without check or hindrance. Once oppression of one minority becomes accepted, it is much easier to begin oppression of more minorities. Those who support oppression of one group will be found to support oppression of more and more people, until oppression becomes the norm.[2] Foulds et al, 2003Effect of Snus on smoking and public health in SwedenAbstract:Effect of smokeless tobacco (snus) on smoking and public health in Sweden.Full text:Effect of smokeless tobacco (snus) on smoking and public health in SwedenMore references at: References - THR, SnusNo association can be found between Snus consumption and mouth cancer, any other cancer, CVD, or any morbidity. There are a multitude of studies, some quite powerful (nearly 100,000 subjects followed for multiple decades). The bulk of the studies report no association with morbidity can be found, and Foulds et al, in the long form, is a good guide to this if you have the time to read it - it is an exhaustive analysis of studies published up till 2003. Note that Foulds and colleagues are not admirers of tobacco or the tobacco industry, in case that is a worry. There are one or two studies that indicate - for example - a small elevation in risk for pancreatic cancer, and conversely one or two studies that report less incidence of pancreatic cancer in Snus consumers (i.e. a protective effect). These studies are regarded as outliers, and disregarded. There is a small indication that stroke incidence is no higher in Snus consuming populations but survivability is compromised.[3] It seems generally agreed that most smokers start young, and whether or not this is true, it is obvious that if a potential smoker starts with an ultra-low-risk product instead of cigarettes, and this behaviour is replicated at population level, and when there is a very low likelihood of changing to smoking (as is the case for Snus consumers), then it is a massive gain for public health.[4] Sections of the Public Health industry, notably the more extreme members of tobacco control, see the saving of life as an unnecessary inconvenience in the journey toward elimination of tobacco and the tobacco industry.The reasons are debated, but have to include insanity - a reasonable deduction, despite its initial appearance, since the principal definition of a zealot is that he is insane when measured by normal community standards. Zealots see the goal as of more importance than the people, and therefore death, on any scale, is unimportant if the goal is better served. Perhaps you can see that insanity is not such an unreasonable term for such people; the common ground all zealots share is that their opponents can be eliminated if it serves the purpose of progress toward their objectives. It does not matter to a zealot if one person or a million suffer and die, if it serves their purposes.Zealots in tobacco control see the death of smokers as a desirable feature of their fight to prohibit tobacco use; saving lives is not just a waste of resources, it is a major negative since it might lead to continued tobacco or nicotine use. Harmless use of tobacco or nicotine is probably their worst nightmare: it destroys their goal, and nobody gets paid: the two worst possible outcomes for a Public Health zealot. They have no other employment opportunities at such obscenely inflated salaries, and will - literally - protect their fiefdoms to the death. Your death, not theirs, of course.[5] See Foulds et al, or Lee and Hamling, for example:Systematic review of the relation between smokeless tobacco and cancer in Europe and North America.Rodu’s commentary on Lee:Cancer Risks from Smokeless Tobacco Use: Next To NilKeep in mind that politically and commercially-funded work such as the IARC report on oral tobacco and cancer may involve some measure of fraud. That particular report used data from current S Asian chews and historic American oral tobacco products, but didn’t make it clear: it reads as if it is an analysis of current Western oral tobacco products; which is, essentially, fraud. IARC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of WHO, which is part-funded by the pharmaceutical industry, who are absolutely desperate to protect cigarette sales and will stop at nothing to do so.You can treat IARC papers as if they originate from pharma headquarters in Geneva, as for all practical purposes, they do.[6] In a developed Western country where smoking prevalence has been reduced to about 20% by the usual methods including consumer education, high taxes, certain types of bans and so on, then it cannot be reduced significantly below 20% by these or similar methods (e.g. standardised packaging or ‘plain packs’). Only substitution works for any great effect after this point. Substitution is a consumer choice to use alternative products with lower risk. In some cases, such as Snus and vaping, it is entirely legitimate to refer to such choices as ultra-low-risk, since no harm can be reliably measured, partly because any health impact with an effect below 1% cannot be statistically confirmed with any reliability. See:The 20% Prevalence Rule[7] We are extraordinarily lucky in the UK to have honest and comprehensive smoking / tobacco / nicotine consumption stats, collected by Prof West / ASH / YouGov, as part of the Smoking Toolkit longitudinal study. These stats are England-based but can be used as a proxy for all-UK numbers, as there is no indication that other regions are substantially different.Latest StatisticsUntil you see the result of extensive corruption involving zealots funded by giant commercial actors, as in the case of the US statistics collection and publication process by the CDC, you may not realise how useful it is to have honest statistics properly collected, un-massaged, and not kept secret by professional liars.[8] To be quite honest I am not an expert on vaping regulation, I just know where the resources are; but you can think of me as an expert on it, as that makes things simpler.[9] Smoking prevalence in the UK flatlined at ~20% for five years, between 2008 and 2013.[page retrieved in 2014] ONS smoking stats 2012 (UK):"One in five adults (aged 16+) in Great Britain were cigarette smokers in 2012. The rate of smoking in Great Britain has remained largely unchanged over the last five years.""It is likely that the survey underestimates cigarette consumption and, perhaps to a lesser extent, prevalence..."[ARCHIVED CONTENT] UK Government Web Archive[10] See link in Note #11.[11] The shipping wars are the most recent example, where the UK was forcibly changed from 45% employed in manufacturing, to 15%, due to the outcome:The Impact of Technology ChangeNo matter how hard they try, those paid by the old system cannot stop the new technology.[12] There are two ‘public healths’:(1) The local or street-level operation run by local authorities that protects public health: vaccinations of babies, special health clinics, midwifery, community nurses, health inspectors and so on. This is the real public health: action to prevent disease and promote health in the community. It works, it makes real progress every day, it acts to maintain safe modern life. It is admirable in every way.(2) Then there is the national-level Public Health industry, a thoroughly corrupt lobbying business composed of pharma whores, zealots, barking-mad crackpots, sociopaths, and the rare, honest and sane but utterly naive individual who thinks that being part of a bunch of liars will help the public in some way. No impact on public health would be seen if this whole clan of toxic parasites was swept down the drain. They are a special interest group with only one aim: increasing their already obscene salaries, paid out for zero results apart from successfully promoting the pharmaceutical industry.Much of what they say or publish is composed of fantasy, naked zealotry, twisted ideology and lies, or logical fallacies that must be considered as lies, and some would say that proportion approaches 99%.A2A: “When will vaping have an impact on tobacco-related health statistics? In 5 years or in 50 years?”