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Birthday Greetings for Bloomberg

Dr John Oyston wants vapers to join him in wishing Michael Bloomberg a happy birthday and sending him a special message about vaping

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Dr John Oyston is an anaesthesiologist who has worked in a number of countries including in New Zealand and the UK, now an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto. He is urging vapers to join him in wishing the billionaire Michael Bloomberg a very happy birthday and encourage him to imagine a world where used his wealth and power to support less harmful nicotine products like vape and snus for tobacco harm reduction.

John founded the Stop Smoking for Safer Surgery campaign and publishes a blog series about stopping smoking. He is interested in the use of vaping as a way to get smokers to quit and has set up a Quit by Vaping program.

He explains that the purposes of the Bloomberg Birthday Initiative are:

  1. To wish Michael Bloomberg a very happy 80th birthday, on February 14th, 2022
  2. To congratulate him on his business and political successes and praise him for his generosity to many good causes
  3. To ask him to have Bloomberg Philanthropies consider changing its policy on less harmful nicotine products from prohibition to acceptance and support

John Oyston’s birthday message to Michael Bloomberg

John says: “Mike Bloomberg is a businessman and philanthropist who funds public health and tobacco control projects and plans to give away about 30 billion dollars. He runs a media empire and has the ear of the CDC, The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, and the WHO.

“Unfortunately, at present, he uses his wealth, power and connections to actively campaign against vaping and THR.

“The Bloomberg Birthday Initiative wants to change that by sending him birthday greetings, congratulating him on his business and political successes, praising his philanthropy, and asking him to take a second look at the data on THR. Bloomberg prides himself on ‘data-driven philanthropy’, but he campaigns against vaping when the data shows that 6.6 million lives would be saved if Americans who smoke switched to vaping.”

Dr Oyston continues: “Bloomberg thinks that nicotine is a dangerous poison. He does not think that adult smokers should have easy access to nicotine-containing e-cigarettes (also known as vapes), even though Public Health England has stated that vaping is 20x safer than smoking. He supports a ban on flavours in vape that would make vaping a much less palatable alternative to smoking and lead to an increase in cigarette use.”

He would like vapers to join him and take part in the Bloomberg Birthday Initiative. The objective is to try to persuade him to change his mind.

John adds: “Please send him your own birthday card and message by regular mail, email or by posting on his social media. The more people try to contact Mr. Bloomberg, and the more avenues they use, the more likely he is to take notice. Please send him your own birthday card and message. A sample card and text, and a list of contact information, are AVAILABLE HERE.”

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Dave Cross

Journalist at POTV
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Dave 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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