The Bain Of Vaping’s Existence
Bill Bain writes for the Scottish Herald about vaping in the most ludicrous terms
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by Dave Cross
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Bane is a fictional DC Comics super villain; Bill Bain is all too real. Appointed as group senior production journalist at the Glasgow daily paper in 2014, Bain previously worked as editor at the Irvine Times.
Previous Future Shock articles Bain has written have suggested that we are actually living in The Matrix, that we are facing a global flooding crisis, and how well-prepared the rich are “for the end of the world”. Fear sells copies – and Bain has an apocalyptic vision for all possible topics.
Rather than push a need for change to achieve positive results, this week’s article demands the Scottish National Party acts tough because “science has proven vaping is harmful”.
“Before Google,” Bain claims, “doctors were the accepted authority on health matters.” Presumably, Bain believes that articles such as his now supersede seven years at University and a lifetime of on-going medical training. It seems a reasonable position to hold given that “until recently” those nasty doctors advised patients to smoke “plenty of cigarettes”.
We can’t trust professionals, Bain believes, because of decades of supporting the tobacco industry – and now “Big Tobacco [is] currently evolving their old strategy of health reality distortion with their mass production of cyborg fags – e-cigs.”
The common zealot reaction to anybody speaking out in favour of vaping and harm reduction is to levy slurs. Frequently, we are seeing advocates labelled as being industry shills and researchers as having received funding from Big Tobacco sources.
Bain contends that the current position on harm reduction and vaping isn’t the result of thorough fact gathering and expert opinion (they could have just Googled something after all). No, it is because of “heavily-lobbied UK and Scottish governments”.
“A recent report published by the Science and Tech Select Committee has … urged a review to allow such prescriptions. Ever wonder why Japan Tobacco International and Imperial paid for presence at the recent SNP conference? Far be it from me to speculate on such matters” – he says, speculating on the matter.
Speculating, then regurgitating nonsense, ignoring evidence from ASH and Cancer Research UK: “…the new generation of kids they’ve hooked on nicotine who have never even tried a cigarette. Or maybe I’m being too cynical and flavours such as Gummy Bear and Candy Crush are indeed intended for adults.”
On of the biggest issues raised by the recent government select committee investigation was that adult smokers are being fed a diet of lies and fear stories. It warps their opinions and leads them to believe vaping is as dangerous as smoking (if not more so). Such a believe results in smokers continuing to smoke.
Bain, willingly or otherwise, is directly contributed to this problem. Does he genuinely care about the impact of his words or is he content to smile when seeing numerous comments at the bottom of his piece?
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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