Chapman Demonstrates His Expertise
Simon Chapman, staunch anti-vaping campaigner and online troll, demonstrated his barely lucid ability to communicate
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by Dave Cross
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Rather than acknowledge the multiple reports of lung disease being related to illegal THC products, or question why the CDC and FDA have failed to act, Chapman used their lack of action to support his blinkered view: “The important thing here is that the officials in the United States who are investigating not only this death but the, I think it’s now, over 200 cases of serious lung disease, have not yet issued a report … and we don’t know what that person was vaping.”
He is obfuscating to perpetuate a fear of a product that reduces tobacco-related harm. But then he leaps into a world of fantasy: “Of course, many people who vape cigarettes will also use cannabis, and, so to say, well, if that’s the case it has to be the cannabis which is causing…not the nicotine that is causing the problems, and to also characterise nicotine which has been as a sort of vitamin-like, benign, is really marching well, well ahead of the evidence.”
Chapman is a past-master at ignoring evidence in order to claim there’s a lack of evidence, but his absolute invention of facts is remarkable to behold: “I mean a lot of the nicotine juices which have been used by people are made in bathtub and err kitchen sink type labs by amateur people mixing them up. They are not made by scientific labs adhering to world standard, umm, practices and things like that.”
What juices, Simon? Where? Or could this be yet more abject nonsense from a man who spends his free time online belligerently trolling vapers?
Dissing vaping as a smoking quit tool, Chapman continued his flight of fantasy: “Unfortunately for the rhetoric, they don’t actually show that e-cigarettes are much better, and in fact some studies show that, err, they’re a little bit worse than for example just going cold turkey. I’m talking about a study called PATH Study from the United States.”
“I mean, Colin referred also to the, err, randomised controlled trial from England, umm, it’s important to understand that he said there’s a doubling of the effectiveness, of people using the vaping, and yes, that’s true, but that doubling of effectiveness still didn’t produce very high success rates overall, and, not only that, the people who were in that study were not just receiving nicotine replacement therapy or e-cigarettes, they were also subject to intensive counselling, and so, what was it that kind of made the difference? Was it the counselling or was it the nicotine taken in different sort of forms?”
Either Chapman is being disingenuous at this point or is stupid. Counselling was given to everybody, it was a controlled variable, so if one group demonstrated better quit rates [vapers] then a simple conclusion could be drawn. He knows this, he is lying for effect.
Then he launches into his tried and tested ad hominem attack, disparaging certain views or findings because of some perceived corruption of the process: “We all hope that there’s things that come along that are these magic bullets, but there’s a lot of commercial hype driving this. There are a lot of investments that have been made by people, err, you know, that, err, in a high-end commercial area, that, sort of, at an amateurish street retail level. They will, err, not hear of any bad word against vaping, and, err, so that’s why it’s terribly important we go to our expert groups. And the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, erm, last year produced a 630-page doorstopper of a report, it had 46 conclusions in it, all ranked by what they called ‘level of evidence’. Now, in many of those, the majority of those conclusions basically said, ‘we know very, very little’, ‘the evidence we have is very poor’.”
Chapman likes to have it both ways: on one hand there is next to no evidence, the next minute he’s claimed there’s a wealth of evidence: “Look, there’s an immense amount of research going on, and, err, and there’s a lot of, barely a week goes by when another report, err, isn’t published about, you know, respiratory effects, inflammation effects, umm, err, addiction and people finding it very, very difficult to get off, err, these, these products, you know, once they’ve tried them, once they’ve started using them. Umm, so, you know, the evidence is building and, err, thankfully, umm, governments are trying to pull all of this together.”
The interview is linked to below, he actually sounds this incoherent.
“I guess, people who have an interest in promoting vaping, for commercial reasons or otherwise, are, are, going to sort of highlight the ones which are kind of good for their argument, ahh, and people who, you know, hate, err, smoking, umm, and want to sort of see it demonised, umm, or hate nicotine and want to sort of see it demonised, are going to give you the other thing.”
Barely making any sense, Chapman laughably attempts to lay claim to be the voice of reason in a world of extremist views: “I think the sane voices need to be listened to.”
Sane voices? Like the person who then goes on to say this about the danger posed by second-hand vapour? “Well, it’s all about the concentration, ahh, err, of, err, molecules and sort of particles that you’re exposed to. Umm, it’s not like being in a shower and sort of exposed to water vapour. I mean, the, err, the combu…uh...uh…products you’re seeing in that vape are, err, are things like, umm, well, nicotine, I, err, obviously vaporised nicotine, flavouring agents, propylene glycol, all those sorts of things, and it’s been shown that where you have a lot of people in a room, as in for example a crowded bar or vaping competitions where a lot of people come together to vape, err, umm, the concentrations can approach those where, you know, you’ve got people smoking in a bar.”
Unfortunately, Google’s Chapman-English translation page was down a the time of writing and so we have absolutely no idea what point he was attempting to get over.
Related:
- Afternoons with Sonya Feldhoff – [link]
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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