Complete (Tobacco) Control
The clash between pro and anti-vaping advocates centres on adverts and social media.
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by Dave Cross
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We covered the despicable Blowing Smoke health promotion on the site in March. The Not Blowing Smoke site adopted a similar style in order to get its message across. Divya Ramamurthi, Raj P Fadadu and Robert K Jackler have written a nonsense paper for the British journal titled: “Electronic cigarette marketers manipulate antitobacco advertisements to promote vaping.”
It is a submission described by Clive Bates as “faux-alarmist pseudo-research” and begs the question why the BMJ saw fit to print it? The paper accuses pro-vaping campaigners of “manipulating” the original CDPH advertising in order to gain a financial benefit. Laughably, it decries the tactics used by Not Blowing Smoke despite them being the same approach used by anti-smoking campaigns for years.
The research team go on to claim: “the e-cigarette company GreenSmartLiving and vendors such as South Side Vapor, eJuice House and DJ’s Vapes have used this tactic to promote their products”. They imply that it is “ironic” that vaping advocates write “Sick of being misled by harmful propaganda?” It displays the corrupt nature of the ‘work’ they carried out.
They state the Not Blowing Smoke site is not an example of “antibranding” and “subvertising” as it is all geared to “commercial advantage”. They make a call to the creators of the vile anti-vaping adverts to attack what they call “brandalism” and “defend their copyright” by issuing cease and desist notices, and also to “request Google, Yahoo, Instagram and Pinterest” block the URLs of the “knock off advertisments”.
This is not scientific research; this is anti-truth puffery.
The Daily Caller reports the paper is: “coming under fire for ‘factual inaccuracies’ and ‘raises serious questions about the university’s use of research funds’.” Stanford, need it be said, is the home to the wonderful Stanton Glantz and relies on pharmaceutical company funding. “The Stanford team also claims NOT Blowing Smoke was founded by ‘four creators, including an e-cigarette company marketing manager (Apollo) and vape store employees’.”
These allegations are strongly refuted in a press release by Stefan Didak, founder and president of Not Blowing Smoke: “I was completely confused by this research. Two of our three board members have no affiliation with the vaping industry and none of our team members work in a vape store.”
“Jackler alleges that the modified work infringes on CDC copyright, but as part of the federal government, it’s unlikely that copyright protection applies,” adds Didak. “We certainly shared images via social media. The backlash against CDC’s misleading campaign was completely a consumer-driven effort that we were happy to support.”
Didak has written directly to Jackler: “Despite having immediate and direct access to one of the most respected law schools in the United States, the paper fails to recognize that works of the United States government do not qualify for copyright protection. All the same, we believe the transformative works created by individual consumer advocates fall squarely inside the bounds of fair use. The images utilize less than 3% of the original source material, are wholly intended to provide both criticism and commentary and do not use the CDC logo.”
“Neither Mr. Didak nor Mr. Downing has been employed by the e-cigarette industry in any capacity whatsoever,” it continues. “To reiterate, a two-thirds majority of NBS’ Board is controlled by consumers without industry ties and the organization acts with complete independence from any e-cigarette manufacturer, retailer or wholesaler.”
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.
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