In the Press – Smoking Ban
If a smoker had written the piece in the Wiener Zeitung, the outrage would have been huge, of course. But as it happens, the journalist who really did the digging is a non-smoker.
And what he uncovered is genuinely explosive. We all know how studies can work: “Tell me who commissioned it, and I’ll tell you what it says!” But the role of the WHO (World Health Organization) is what really deserves far more attention.
As we showed on Tuesday, countries that grow tobacco are also countries where vaping is banned. Several other countries on the list have a strong pharmaceutical industry that would quite like to look after smokers itself — even if its track record is more than poor. After all, it’s not really about whether a treatment works, but about asking: “Who makes money from it?”
The Austrian journalist points out, for example, that there is a link between smoking bans in the USA and the rise in antidepressant use, and that some smoking cessation products have had side effects for which pharmaceutical companies have already had to pay.
We think it’s a really interesting read — and everyone is free to see a connection between smoking bans and industry interests.
And of course smoking isn’t healthy, but plenty of other things in life aren’t either. By the way, if you’re thinking: “Yeah, whatever, I vape — why should I care about smoking?”, you’re almost right. Unfortunately, only almost — because the pharmaceutical industry would love to get its claws into vapers too. So it certainly doesn’t hurt to take a closer look at the ties between the WHO and the pharmaceutical industry, because that’s ultimately what the article is about. What applies to smoking surely also applies to other areas where the WHO and the pharmaceutical industry sit at the same table.
You can read the article here!
