What is keeping Bloomberg-funded activists and scientists awake at night and compelling them to lie?
Health warning: This article may present information that is deemed offensive to individuals who prefer to live in a reality that coheres with their dogmatic preconceptions.
A panicked Bloomberg-WHO coalition is slowly conditioning us that nicotine is the problem, not tobacco. And their well-funded campaigns are becoming a major failure for public health as tobacco harm reduction achievements are being reversed with confusion about the relative safety of e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches compared to smoking combustible tobacco. Whether they are flushing billions away on bad research to distort the evidence, pretend to save humanity from a straw-man threat or extract vengeance from an old industry enemy that was never quite defeated, it appears the scientists who have compromised their reputations and profession are clearly spooked by something. Nicotine has a terrifying little secret they don’t want the public to know, and Michael Bloomberg seems willing to throw his last billion at shaping the narrative to his favour.
Activist Science
More than a decade ago, I coined the term “activist science” to describe an emerging phenomenon affecting scientific research in the digital age. Rather than collecting evidence to draw conclusions, an activist scientist would start with a conclusion and look for or fabricate the evidence. And with the emerging precision laboratory technologies, it became possible for activist scientists to find any evidence that could benefit a campaign and their special interest funders. Add to the mix a broken peer review journal process, thousands of papers were declaring bodies bombarded by microplastics, pesticides, PFAS and other chemicals that activist groups have been running multi-generation campaigns against. These junk science papers were not produced for academic conferences or to advance discovery, but for the press release, shocking news headlines, NGO campaigns, lawsuits and foundation funders.
There has been some short-term success with the numerous publications of bad research. As the saying goes: If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything. But over the long-term, the scientific method will prevail and sort out the charlatans from the geniuses. But by then, in the fast-moving policy arena, the activists will have declared victory and moved on to the next fear campaign.
The activist science playbook has also been deployed against nicotine with research conclusions manufactured for the media. Like the weak studies on the health threats from second-hand smoke a generation earlier, who would dare stand up and challenge the activist evidence with the shadow of Big Tobacco lurking in the corner. The same cleansing tactics worked against Big Oil and the ghost of Monsanto. No one is willing to stand up and challenge bad science with facts and evidence under threat of a shill catcall?
But despite the special interests, facts and evidence still resist the rhetoric and in the long run, outside of personal wealth gain, the only thing activist scientists will achieve is their own reputation loss.
Relative Risks
Tobacco harm reduction strategies with alternative nicotine products like e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches have been shown to be the most effective means to quit smoking. Many ex-smokers, like my wife, accepted vaping only when they found a flavour they liked. And yet Bloomberg-WHO campaigns have concentrated on pushing regulators to impose flavour bans just to make vaping less attractive (and keep smokers smoking and in a more vulnerable health condition). Nobody wants to eat a meal with no taste but there are no campaigns against food flavours to reduce obesity levels. Bloomberg-WHO activists claim flavour bans are necessary to prevent youth vaping. But studies have shown a sharp decline in teenage vaping (and not due to flavour bans but from old-fashioned risk reduction measures).
Tobacco harm reduction is basic risk management. No matter how many billionaire-funded studies try to show evidence of risk from vaping or nicotine pouches, that are then amplified by the Bloomberg flotilla of anti-nicotine NGOs, the hard reality is that vaping is 95% safer than smoking combustible tobacco products (and nicotine pouches are even less harmful). See the IMF table below. Does this mean vaping and nicotine pouches are 100% safe? No, but nothing is 100% safe so activist scientists who try to peddle this fear are disingenuous (and ethically challenged).
Caption – Source Not 100% harm-free, but pretty damn close
Risk management is about reducing exposure to hazards. Promoting smoking cessation via far less harmful products like vaping and nicotine pouches is clear risk management. Combustible tobacco products are exponentially more harmful to human health than vaping making it the common-sense solution to reducing health consequences from smoking. Trying to categorise alternative nicotine substances with tobacco products (as the European Union is presently doing with its revision of the Tobacco Products Directive) means that consumers are misled into conflating the two and lose sight of the clear benefits from tobacco harm reduction strategies. The Bloomberg-WHO coalition is spending billions on policies and ideologies that will promote the continuation of smoking. This is dogma-driven madness.
And as activist scientists try to nibble away at the tobacco harm reduction strategy by flooding journals with well-funded pay-to-play articles suggesting e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches are not 100% safe, the data continues to confront their arrogant ignorance. Sweden has rejected the Bloomberg-WHO anti-nicotine ideology by promoting clear harm reduction policies (lower taxes on alternative nicotine products like snus, allowing flavours, open packaging and retail space, engaging risk communications…) and the results have been impressive. This year, Sweden became the first country to achieve smoke-free status (under 5% of the population smoking), 14 years ahead of the WHO 2040 target (that is already being dialled back). Even more challenging for the Bloomberg-WHO activist army to deflect is that smoking related cancers and COPD in Sweden are almost 60% lower than the European average (and likely to decrease more).
The response of the WHO to the Swedish success was tragic. Following the Bloomberg script (since their tobacco control programme, MPOWER, is fully funded by the American billionaire), the WHO deny that these results were due to snus or nicotine pouches, urging the public to not be misled by industry-led campaigns to place Sweden as the benchmark for tobacco harm reduction. They claimed that Michael Bloomberg’s singular strategy of higher tobacco taxes has led to the decline in smoking, but the Swedes have the lowest cigarette taxes in Scandinavia, and no neighbouring countries enjoy anything near the success Sweden has.
Why have these self-proclaimed promoters of public health acted so irrationally in the face of such evidence, openly campaigning against strategies that save lives and improve human well-being? Worse, the Bloomberg-WHO coalition must be aware of how the prohibitionary regulatory policies they are forcing upon governments is leading to an explosion of black markets, organized crime and illicit, unregulated contraband. And still they persist. What is driving the madness?
The Social Construct of Addiction
A common refrain from the Bloomberg-WHO coalition hymn sheet is that nicotine is addictive. We know that because it is the substance that makes tobacco addictive. But addiction is only an issue, we only talk about it as a problem, when there are negative consequences. Addiction is a social construct. The health consequences from smoking combustible tobacco products is a negative consequence. Drug addiction, like gambling, can ruin families and careers. Alcoholism has health and societal consequences. Addiction becomes a problem when the consequences define it.
I recently wrote an article confessing that I am one of the hundreds of millions of people addicted to running. But is that an addiction if there are no evident negative consequences? I am writing this article on my third cup of coffee (while contemplating a fourth). Caffeine is clearly addictive, but I welcome the benefits rather than being burdened by the consequences. There are sex addicts, workaholics, music junkies and compulsive Samaritans… all of whom, if acting responsibly, are not causing harm and thus do not fall under the socially constructed definition of addiction.
Does tobacco-free nicotine fall under the definition of an addiction with negative consequences that must be treated, or is it a practice that, if managed responsibly, is not at all a societal issue? The Bloomberg-funded activist scientists are working to manufacture evidence to show that there are health consequences from vaping and nicotine pouches, but the risks are so miniscule when measured against the health harms from smoking combustibles. The activists know that if they cannot find convincing negative consequences from nicotine consumption, then the addiction argument falls flat.
The Bloomberg-WHO coalition has also tried to argue that vaping is a gateway to smoking. The data does not back this up and the logic is rather twisted. People enjoy vaping because it is better than smoking (unless you remove flavours). But the logic does not matter here – the activists are desperate to find a negative consequence to justify their claim that alternative nicotine products are dangerous and thus an addiction that must be prohibited.
Desperation
There is one negative consequence from the rise in vaping and nicotine pouches driving the Bloomberg-WHO coalition to ban these products, but it is an argument they keep to themselves. If these products continue to be allowed to be sold, it will give a lifeline to the Big Tobacco companies that the activists have been driven to eradicate over the last 50 years. These zealots are guided by a vindictive outrage against an industry they feel has no right to exist. While it is not mature for stakeholders to behave in such a manner and it does not, in any way, justify their lies and fear-mongering campaigns, what we see is a campaign that is becoming desperate.
The Bloomberg-WHO coalition cannot prove that alternative nicotine products are anywhere near as harmful as smoking. Sweden’s data has shown how the consequences from tobacco harm reduction are negligible and the health benefits substantial. They cannot prove that young people are starting to use these products at increasing rates. The over-extended claims of nicotine as an addictive substance do not meet the socially constructed definition of an addiction issue. Their claims of vaping as a gateway to smoking ring hollow when the data is analysed. What Michael Bloomberg’s $2 billion contribution to a campaign against harm reduction has achieved is more consumer confusion, more people smoking, poorer public health and a rise in black markets, gangs and illicit contraband.
So why will Michael Bloomberg probably throw another $2 billion into this lost cause campaign? Nicotine has a terrifying secret that no one talks about and that precautionary prohibitionists like Bloomberg will never want to accept.
The Benefits of Nicotine
Imagine a wonder drug that picks you up when you need energy, calms you when you are stressed and allows you to concentrate and focus on important issues. That wonder drug is not caffeine (sorry) but rather, nicotine. And if the Bloomberg-WHO zealots allowed people to understand how these benefits could be attained relatively harm-free, then the Big Tobacco profits would massively increase (and the activists just could not accept that). If the nicotine health benefits were to become widely known, then the anti-nicotine campaign would fizzle out in a heartbeat. The benefits of nicotine become a terrifying secret that cannot be spoken of.
But I prefer to consider facts and evidence rather than dogmatic activist rhetoric, so allow me to indulge in the subject matter.
While there is a cardiovascular risk from elevated levels of nicotine, there are important pharmacological and cognitive benefits from nicotine use, namely:
- Nicotine enhances cognitive functions (attention span, alertness, reaction time) over the short-term. It does this by stimulating the nicotinic pathways and increasing dopamine, acetylcholine and serotonin levels. The nicotinic pathways are central to cognitive function and working memory. See studies here, here and here. The last paper, by Koukouli and Changeux, states: “In humans, administration of nicotine ameliorates cognitive impairment such as deficits in attention, social interactions, and working memory and thus has a positive action on high-order cognitive processes.”
- Nicotine can create neuroprotective effects. These same studies postulate that the enhanced cognitive functions can reduce neurodegeneration and help patients battling Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, anxiety, depression and schizophrenia.
- Nicotine is anti‑inflammatory. Nicotine activates the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway (via α7 nAChRs) on immune cells, reducing pro-inflammatory cytokines. There are ongoing studies on how this can help in cases like sepsis, ulcerative colitis and autoimmune inflammation as well as the role nicotine can play in reducing inflammation in diseases like Alzheimer’s and arthritis. As a sufferer of osteo-arthritis, and the constant chronic pain caused by inflammation flares, this information is important to me.
- Nicotine reduces appetite and body weight. Studies have shown how nicotine increases blood glucose and metabolic rates, reducing appetite while increasing energy expenditure. Weight gain was always considered a necessary evil in quitting smoking, but by allowing smokers to quit with e-cigarettes or nicotine pouches, this is no longer the case. A good study looks at the physiological and molecular mechanisms behind how nicotine affects energy and food-motivated behaviour.
Many would argue that caffeine, the highly addictive drug found in coffee, provides similar short-term cognitive and anti-inflammatory benefits. But nicotine is far easier to administer and more effective as a pharmacological drug.
This begs the question: Why don’t people know about the health benefits of nicotine?
As a 63-year-old who is starting to become forgetful and struggles to keep focused, with a family history of dementia, fighting weight gain and struggling with chronic osteo-arthritis and the pain caused by inflammation flares, I would clearly benefit from taking up vaping. But it was only after researching this paper that I discovered this important information.
Once again, the health zealots have done their job preventing people from living healthier lives.
Bloomberg’s Last Stand
Imagine Michael Bloomberg sitting behind an impressive leather-bound desk in his large New York office, being presented with evidence about:
- the health benefits of nicotine in protecting patients suffering from chronic diseases,
- the reality of fractional risk levels of nicotine products compared to smoking,
- the evidence against his claims of youth vaping levels and as a gateway to smoking,
- the success in smoking cessation and health benefits via tobacco harm reduction strategies (as demonstrated in Sweden),
- the social chaos of black markets, gang violence and unregulated illicit contraband in prohibitionist countries like Australia.
A rational person would take a moment to reconsider whether funding activists who choose to fight facts (with the sole motivation of attacking industry) is such a good idea. A cautious person would take the time to seek advice from a wide range of experts (and not just the ones he funds in his foundations or the WHO).
But Michael Bloomberg is a zealot. He cannot accept that he may be wrong and is going to do whatever it takes to win. He’ll hire more activist scientists to refute these studies, play up the miniscule risks and use his networks to pressure what the media will report on. Writing another check for a further $2 billion won’t really hurt his wealth ranking. … But a lot more people will needlessly suffer and die.
Zealots. I truly hate them.
