Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Oscar Wilde and Motivating Vapers and Cigar Smokers

I'm not sure how to make you care,how to make you understand what this is.

What will resonate with people?

Should I talk about this being our last stand?

Should I tell you that disinterest and ennui will destroy  everything we hold dear?

Should I tell you a lack of activity will doom us to being a black market activity?

Something made illegal by the partnership between large corporate interests and our regulatory agencies?

Should I mention that we stand together or we fall as one?

I'm not a good motivator.I never have been I am a just the facts kind of person.

If I were a television character I'd be Joe Friday.

The facts are you have one chance to step up and do something and so many are letting it slip through their fingers and I don't know why.

By the time this goes live on my blog we will have 3 days. Three days.

It sounds like an eternity.

It is anything but an eternity.

Why does this make more people to respond than anything I can manage with words?





Why when it means the things you love could be taken away in a matter of 24 months if not sooner does it mean that no one cares?

How is it a comedian can make people care more than the people trying to lead the way?

And it's not just vapers this time...........

Last Call

Stop posting pictures of what cigar you smoked or are smoking.  Because if you don’t get busy your cigar days will soon be gone.  We are in the last hours to submit comments to the FDA on its deeming proposal that would bring cigars under its control.  To date, the FDA website shows only 66,000+ comments on the proposed rule.  Now considering not only cigars would come under the FDA, but so too would e-cigs, which don’t even contain tobacco nor emit smoke, and there are by estimates millions of e-cig users, that comment number is pathetic.  To give you an idea, when the Federal Communications Commission called for comments on the so-called net neutrality issue, there were more than a million comments.  Of those 66,000 you can bet many are from the anti side, although the Sunlight Foundation says as of July 18 slightly more than half come from our side.  But then again another 11,000 comments have come in since that report. We still have to do better.


When even the cigar rights people think vapers have done a shit job  I'm going to say we have done a terrible job in rallying the troops.

How the hell do we fix that?

Some people tried showing people how to comment






But it doesn't have the punch of that Net Neutrality video now does it?

And that makes me wonder if deep down we're all o.k. with being told what to do.

We as a society must be if we have to get a comedian to tell us to be politically active.

Or it speaks to the great truth of society 

"If you want to tell people the truth make them laugh,otherwise they'll kill you." Oscar Wilde

Perhaps Wilde got that wrong though it seems more like if you want to motivate people you have to make them laugh or they'll ignore you.

Any comedians want to try and motivate vapers or cigar smokers?







Wednesday, July 23, 2014

State attorneys general's and e cigs aka Y'all gonna make me loose my mind


I am no blogger.


More's the pity,because honestly this could use a rewrite by someone with good grammar skills and an understanding of how all of this connects to each other.



The state AG'S are a force to be reckoned with.


They run a sort of regulatory agency all of their own with no constitutional restrictions or oversight.


I think to best explain it you would need to look at an article written by Daniel Fisher in 2008.



The name of the article is The House Tobacco Built



(I'll place a small portion of the text here but it is worth a read to try and grasp exactly what I think is coming.)




Beside funding antismoking campaigns, the loot from the tobacco companies has helped turn this once sleepy professional association into a kind of super regulatory body, hunting for antitrust and consumer-fraud violations. It doesn’t sue anybody, instead working behind the scenes to coordinate the efforts of state attorneys general and provide legal advice.

“This is a de facto regulatory agency, they just don’t call it that,” says Michael S. Greve of the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “It corresponds to nothing we know about the constitutional landscape.”


So from that piece we see some odd things,the MSA money and what is done with it,where it goes and what they do with the things they have uncovered.


But it gets weirder and it once again ties into the State AG's and yet another Fischer piece,this one more recent but still worth careful reading.



Holy End Run! Attorneys General Urge Action As E-Cigarettes Gain Market Share



There could be trouble ahead, however. Payments under the MSA fell from $7.6 billion in 2009 to $6.2 billion last year, and Fitch Ratings warned earlier this month that e-cigs could threaten bonds backed by MSA payments.

All of which explains the concern over at NAAG, which some jokingly dub the National Association of Aspiring Governors. In their letter to the FDA, and by extension, Congress, the AGs warn that youth surveys show e-cig use doubled last year.



Consumers are led to believe that e-cigarettes are a safe alternative to cigarettes, despite the fact that they are addictive, and there is no regulatory oversight ensuring the safety of the ingredients in e-cigarettes.



All good reasons to fold the newfangled products under the oversight of the feds, which the FDA is expected to do by the end of next month. But there’s not much the AGs can do to plug the loophole that is draining revenue from their 1998 settlement agreement. Having bet on the continued success of conventional cancer sticks, they were caught sleeping when the market went digital.


(I have to stress the above portion of text are not my words.)

We know the tobacco bond market is in the toilet and circling the drain ever so quickly.


Some blame e cigarettes,they might be correct in that assumption,


Again from Forbes


Tobacco Bonds Feel Heat From E-Cigarettes



Meanwhile, lawmakers in states including New Jersey and Minnesota are taking measures to tax electronic cigarettes like traditional tobacco products, which could reduce growth.


"Something that might slow this down is if more legislation gets implemented to tax or ban e-cigarettes, which would be beneficial to the sale of combustible cigarettes," said BlackRock's Mr. Milway.



So here we can sense a sort of threat both in the language used and in the implications about regulation and what the bond market would like to see,a growth in traditional tobacco and a steady death of e cigarettes.


And from a recent New York Times piece



Officials Focus on E-Cigarette Ads Aimed at Youths


State attorneys general must investigate, and consider taking legal action against, e-cigarette companies that appear to be using some of the same advertising tactics that once drew young adults into smoking, a Kentucky deputy attorney general told his law enforcement colleagues gathered here for a retreat to discuss emerging legal issues in states nationwide.

The gathering of nearly two dozen attorneys general, and senior members of their staffs, came on the 20th anniversary of the initiation of the historic lawsuit that states filed against tobacco companies — resulting ultimately in an approximately $10 billion annual payment, which is still being made, and an agreement to restrict advertising everywhere from outdoor billboards to sports events, to try to curtail the appeal of tobacco to youths


Sean Riley, the chief deputy attorney general of Kentucky, told his law enforcement colleagues that Kentucky had left behind its status as the state with the highest percentage of youth smokers. But he said he was concerned that e-cigarette advertising could reverse that progress.




I find it fishy and suspicions are raised when every single one of these mentions one group or another willing to step on and stomp to death a new industry for it's own gain.

I am starting to assume from a careful look that the next few years are going to be an uphill battle for vapers as they start to be attacked on all sides,from the WHO,from their own governments both state and local and of course from the propaganda pieces like this that we're starting to see appearing in newspapers everywhere.

And if you never thought it or ever dared to believe it before by now you can begin to see why it rings so true what Dick Puddlecote has always said.

It's Never Been About Health


(And because it's tradition a song that feels fitting.

They are headed our way and we know it.

Ya sorry about the profanity, But it was more included because of the chorus.)

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Follow the Money and give yourself a migraine and a revelation AKA The failure of the sin tax

Read the entire thing.

It's enlightening. If you follow the money (it will give you migraines lol) you can see why the governments around the  U.S. are enacting such insane legislation.

The taxation rates,the demonizing,the shunning all of those contribute to people going another way.

 Some grow and harvest their own,some vape and some very smart people roll their own.

This is the monster striking out at people for starving the beast.
It looks like it's only going to get worse for these governments.
Tax too much,shun too much,enact too much legislation against people and they will rebel,some through black market tobacco,some through vaping and some through quitting smoking just to spite you.

A smart person will not pay anyone to abuse them,why the governments expect to be exempt from that simple fact is beyond me.

I don't enjoy watching cities and countries falter and not be able to pay their bills but in truth by following the anti-tobacco blueprint they have helped to sign their own death warrant.

The money won't last forever and if you keep robbing the same group of people over and over again they will wise up and walk away.

Put people out of the society they used to share and they will abandon it and learn to live a different way.

Persecute smokers and drinkers at your own peril.

They might not run America but their sin tax dollars make America run.

Don't pay these bastards to persecute you,starve the beast.

Starve the beast

"Moody’s predicts that the accelerating rate of decline in cigarette shipments will cause Gross’s Buckeye debt to default. From 65 percent to 80 percent of tobacco securities may fail to pay principal on time as demand for cigarettes falls short of assumptions, the company says.

The ratings firm ranks the bonds due in June 2047 at B3, six levels below investment grade. The Total Return Fund is also the biggest owner of tobacco debt from West Virginia maturing in 33 years, with a $155 million stake, Bloomberg data show. The securities have a B2 rating from Moody’s, which includes them among bonds that will probably default.

The default likelihood stems from rosy projections for cigarette shipments, which have declined each year since 2007. Tax increases at the federal, state and local level and e-cigarettes have contributed to depress demand."