Ashtray Blog: An Electronic Cigarette Blog

It is not just Obama who has smoked, as Extreme Mortman has noticed,although it seems that it has been a long long time since Mc Cain last puffed – 43 seconds into this movie.

There are a number of wierd and wonderful smoking stories in the news today, starting with India.

Police there are trying to enforce the ban there, but have met with derision when asking eunuchs to stop smoking.

The eunuchs, who make their living by threatening to expose themselves to more prudish tourists and travellers, laughed their heads off at the thought of having to pay the fine to the police.

Saudi Arabia may be having more success in their fight against cigarettes. The country is considering bringing a law suit against tobacco companies for the damage cigarettes have caused their citizens.

Saudi Arabia is hoping to raise a cool 34 billion dollars in cash from the lawsuit – perhaps even enough to offset the falling oil prices for a while.

At least the tobacco companies can be relieved that harsher penalties are not being imposed – after all this is a country where criminals are still beheaded in public and the religious muftahs are calling for the owners of satellite television stations to be executed!

In America PR Log has come up with the six most common excuses for not giving up smoking. The source is from a hypnotist selling his services, but I did think this excuse was funny:

Why would I want to give up cigarettes, I would only add 14 years to my life but then that’s 14 more years that I have to put up with my spouse, kids and my job.

Even Indonesia, where nearly every man seems to smoke, is cracking down. They have got a long way to go – according to one letter to the Jakarta Post the country produced an incredible 235.5 billion cigarettes in 2005!

Image by Meanest Indian.

This new anti-smoking ad from the British government plays upon childhood guilt and fear to help persuade mother’s to give up – a strategy which can be very effective, as our Sales Manager also found out (see Recurring Smoker!)

In an interesting post Thurber looks at smoking and gay marriage, wondering how the same people who support gay marriage can also oppose smoking. Her point is that both are practised by minorities, and in both cases the majority take away the right of the minority to do something.

Which is an interesting point. At the Ashtray Blog we support the smoking ban insofar as it is to protect non-smokers from passive smoking – why should non-smokers have to smoke when we light up? Freedom of choice in then impeding on the freedom of other people to be free from harm. In that respect alone, we disagree with Thurber – after all gay marriage does not inflict physical harm on other people.

However, when the smoking ban goes further, preventing smokers from smoking outside or in special rooms, it does inflict upon freedom of choice – although it could perhaps be argued that when a smoker is addicted he/she has already lost his freedom of choice as to whether to smoke or not in the first place.

A routine test as part of a quit smoking programme for mother-of-two Annette Bolesworth has potentially saved the whole of her family from death.

The test revealed that she had carbon monoxide in her blood stream equivalent to that of a chain smoker puffing his way through a hundred a day.

Further investigation eventually revealed that the cause was a faulty pipe in her car – a car leaking carbon monoxide which was slowly poisoning her and her family.

Read the full story on the BBC website!

An unusual site that popped up on my alert today is Smokers News, a website which states that it is dedicated to being anti-anti-smoking. At first I thought that the site was amusing, but after browsing it for a while I decided it was either crackpot or dangerous and nasty.

The site is actually dedicated to selling low-cost tax exempt cigarettes & tobacco – and I doubt whether it is completely legal, as the site promises users that there is “No risk of being reported to ANY Government Agency”.

Presumably as a selling point, the site makes a point of being anti-anti smoking site, which is fair enough, except they go as far as to describe the anti-smoking campaign as being fascist, comparing anti-smoking campaigners’ efforts to prevent children from smoking to Hitler gaining control of the children in Nazi Germany.

Now, we at the Ashtray blog have no objection to smokers smoking if they choose to do so. In fact we have pointed out that smokers pay several times over for the cost of their healthcare, and that in fact smokers subsidise the health care of non-smokers in the UK.

However, the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of smokers want to give up – surveys often suggest that the number is 75-80% but are unable to do so because of the addiction. The majority of smokers also take it up when they are young and impressionable, a fact which they later regret, and anything that can be done to stop this is admirable.

And then there is passive smoking. Surely, the right and freedom to smoke does not extend to forcing children who have no choice to inhale smoke which will cause them damage in the future To compare people who are concerned about the health of children to a monster who forced children into huge ovens and then forced carbon monoxide into the rooms and the lungs and bodies of these children until they choked to death is the work of a sick mind.

Congratulations to Obama, both on winning the election – and in resisting the temptation to smoke during the stress of the campaign. Although, as we revealed in Smoking Obama, he did have the occasional drag (in cigarettes he ‘bummed’ of other campaigners) he managed to avoid resuming the habit in total. Apparently, this was part of a deal he made with his wife in return for being allowed to run for President!

The question is whether he can remain off tobacco. He may still be addicted to Nicotine, as he apparently chewed nicotine gum continually during the campaign, and with the undoubted problems and stress that face him as President of the world’s only remaining superpower, facing a crumling world economy and environment, two wars and the ever present spectre of terrorism, the tempation to resume smoking will be great. We wish him luck in his efforts to give up, and hope, unlike our sales manager, he does not resume smoking!

This was advertised as an aid to quit smoking, but the MHRA have decided that there is no evidence that it does, although some people have succeeded. However it does allow you to “smoke” the level of nicotine that you want, from High Marlboro type to zero – without tobacco, tar or smoke being involved, inside, outside, on trains boats and planes. Can’t be bad. E-cigars and pipes on the way too.

As you may have noticed we have removed all suggestions from our website that the Electronic Cigarette could help people to give up.

We have reluctantly done this as the Government no longer allows vendors of the e-cigarette to state that the e-cigarette helps people to give up smoking – or even, as we had done, to state that it could help people to quit if they were truly ready to give up.

Our address, QuitSmokingAid.co.uk, was also deemed unacceptable and we had to scramble to get it changed over the weekend to ECigaretteDirect.co.uk .

The testimonials left by some of our users stating that the e-cigarettes have helped them to give up have also been removed.

What we are particularly upset about is having to remove these testimonials. These testimonials were not our own opinion, but the opinion of our customers who had used these e-cigarettes. They were freely volunteered, and in our opinion gave valid opinion which could help other potential customers to make an informed decision.

In future, we are afraid, we will only be allowed to publish testimonials that do not mention quitting smoking.

On a more positive note, we have introduced new products: the electronic cigar is now for sale on our website, which will be great for anyone looking for a Christmas Present, and will shortly be followed by cigarette cases. We also have plans to add a car charger – and even an electronic pipe! More information and pictures to follow…

One of the most iconic photos of the war in Iran features a marine, face blackened, blood running down from his ear, with a cigarette hanging from his mouth, staring blankly at the sunset at the end of a battle.

The picture sparked both admiration and anger. Admiration came from the warmongers seeking to glorfy the Iraq war, such as CBS anchor man Dan Miller:

“For me, this one’s personal. This is a warrior with his eyes on the far horizon, scanning for danger. See it. Study it. Absorb it. Think about it. Then take a deep breath of pride. And if your eyes don’t dampen, you’re a better man or woman than I.”

Interestingly enough, the solder himself, though initially supporting the war later turned against it, saying:

“What have we gained as a country? What have we actually accomplished other than the loss of some damn fine people?

Anti-smoking campaigners attacked the photo for the postive image they saw it giving smoking. One man wrote:

“The clear message of the photo is that the way to relax after a battle is with a cigarette.”

Others in turn were angry that the main focus of this anti-smoking tirade was the fact that the soldier was smoking. As Naomi Klein pointed out:

“…letter writers from across the nation are united in their outrage – not that the steely-eyed, smoking soldier makes mass killing look cool, but that the laudable act of mass killing makes the grave crime of smoking look cool.”

The soldier himself, used by the various factions, gained little from the resulting fame. Suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome, he became unsafe with a weapon, attacked a sailor when he though a whistling sound was an approaching missile and was discharged from the army.