Stanton Glantz's New Enemy
Stanton Glantz has been fighting ecigs but is now setting his sights on a new target, "Big Cannabis".
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by Dave Cross
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Glantz always makes out that he’s being open and honest when he declares his funding sources. Stanton receives funding from the National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Drug Abuse, and Truth Initiative – but this doesn’t cover the millions of dollars the University of California receives from Big Pharma. You can be sure that if he’s speaking out against something then someone is being paid handsomely for it.
“California voters handed Big Tobacco a resounding defeat Tuesday when they passed Proposition 56,” Glantz ignorantly crows. Once more he conflates vaping with smoking and the ecig industry with tobacco companies. He considers vaping to be analogous with smoking, and believes that this vote heralds California becoming a “smoke free” (read ‘vape free’) state by 2020.
Hear him herald: “We can get rid of tobacco as a public health problem without adopting the industry’s phony ‘harm reduction’ strategies. We don’t need their e-cigarettes, which are presented as a healthy alternative to cigarettes, when, in fact, they extend and protect the cigarette market by attracting youth and young adults and deterring quitting for most, but not all, adult smokers.”
He simply can’t see beyond the tobacco industry’s involvement, he’s blinded by decades of campaigning and politicking. This isn’t to say it wasn’t involved in opposing Prop 56 or doesn’t have designs to control the vape market, it does – but tobacco does not control vape at the moment. Simple facts don’t appeal to Glantz.
Just as the professor lauded the voters for their sense to support his attack on smoking and vaping, he is thrown by their enthusiasm for recreational marijuana – or, as Glantz prefers to think of it, commercialised marijuana. He senses another battle to be fought, and no fight can succeed unless you demonise the opposition.
Vaping was easy, he drew links between a few cigalike brands and ancient fag adverts. From there on, Glantz couldn’t pass comment without alluding to the tobacco monster (even if it didn’t exist). Will marijuana prove to be different?
No, in short. He’s already started making up the similar fears he created for vaping: “The tobacco industry seriously considered getting into the marijuana business in the 1960s and 1970s and could do it in a second. They have the technology to design products to maximize use and the marketing prowess to maximize profits. And if they don’t do it, other corporate players will soon be doing the same thing.”
No actual involvement, just the potential for a business to expand into new territory with nothing illegal taking place? Businesses selling products for profit? How very dare they!
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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