Updated 31 Jan 2024
As happens with all new and emerging science, things are moving fast in the research evidence base that informs vaping policy. When there are huge vested interests (commercial, personal/doctrinal) involved in generating, interpreting and critically appraising research evidence, things can get heated. Here, vaping research and advocacy has fast moved to the very front of the grid when it comes to relentless nastiness.
Across my 45 year career in public health, I’ve come under sustained attacks from the gun lobby, mandatory backyard swimming pool fence and bicycle helmet opponents; anti windfarm, mobile phone and WiFi radiation phobic fruitcakes; climate change deniers; far right and extreme libertarian opponents of state regulation and the dreaded nanny state; and of course the tobacco industry. One of my favourites was an anti-vax queen bee from the Blue Mountains who once challenged me to bare my backside on national television to be jabbed with multiple vaccines. As it turned out, I’d then recently been vaccinated for typhoid, cholera, hepatitis A, tetanus and even plague because of planned travel to central Africa, Pakistan and India.
In public health advocacy, you need to grow rhino hide. But vaping fanatics are the next level. Here’s a selected list of some of the worst examples targeted at me that I put aside some 5 years ago. I’ve long blocked activist vaping trolls after relentless, insistent streams. I explain why here.
Dr Alex Wodak, who has an entry in that list, is a veteran advocate for harm reduction in the drug field. In recent years, he’s become a prominent advocate for vaping.
He’s also a prodigious, almost incontinent user of Twitter.
If you go to Wodak’s twitter feed and search for “polite”, “civil” or “respectful” you will find many tweets like those below. He unctuously bangs on about this with great regularity.
But like many vaping theologians, Wodak has a deep penchant for rushing into abuse and sheer nastiness. Here are a few examples.
He has repeatedly and falsely accused the Cancer Council of taking money from Australia’s biggest tobacco retailers (supermarkets) and never apologised. (the truth is that supermarkets pass to the Cancer Council money collected in their stores from customers and staff making donations and buying Daffodil Day pins).
He’s played the Nazi card, implying those supporting the serious regulation of vapes are group-speak Nazis, like those in the photo he selected below. Another strike for Godwin’s Law which states “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one”. Wodak should read the brilliant essay by Stanford University’s historian Robert Proctor on Playing the Nazi card in tobacco control which I published in 2008 when editing Tobacco Control. Proctor is the author of the seminal The Nazi War on Cancer.
Note above the gratuitous slur that anyone not in complete agreement with his take on vaping is “a Big Tobacco Little Helper.” I’ve explored this galactic nonsense here.
He’s accused the Australian Council on Smoking and Health in Perth (formerly directed by Maurice Swanson) of being quietly funded via Michael Bloomberg money apparently routed through “a few [of course nameless] organisations”. Very odd indeed, that neither Swanson, ACOSH nor Bloomberg know anything about this. It must be like one of those effusive letters we sometimes get from Nigerian correspondents saying that untold, unexpected riches are waiting unclaimed to be delivered to us.
He retweeted a tweet claiming my university (and therefore me presumably) also took money from Bloomberg and a Chinese Research Centre to critique vaping, when neither was in any way true.
He tweeted in agreement with someone who said I hid behind a fake Twitter account. I have never done this. He offered no evidence and never apologised.
He retweeted some miscreant’s twitter push poll inviting people to vote that tobacco control researchers’ highest priority was to “murder smokers & vapers” (below).
He asserted that the reason there was such animosity to Big Tobacco in public health was that many of us had been punished, hurt, suffered and damaged by Big Tobacco. There were more laughs in this claim than at a week long comedy festival.
Wodak is not averse to arrogant Jurassic “Dr knows best” rhetoric either.
Does he imagine that Quitlines across the country which talk with many 1000s of smokers a year are staffed by clinicians?
His co-director Joe Kosterich at ATHRA, the vaping lobbying group that today has three directors and no members and which hasn’t put out a press release on its website for 42 months, went one better with this little cracker below, when interacting with a post from England’s Prof Robert West who (whoops!) has no medical qualifications.
This one is pants-wettingly funny because a large number of the pro-vaping leadership are not medical clinicians either. What must have Scott Balin, Clive Bates, Linda Bauld, Ron Borland, Jamie Brown, Paddy Costal, Cliff Douglas, J-F Etter, Wayne Hall, Peter Hajek, Martin Jarvis, Lyn Kozlowski, Ann McNeill, Ethan Nadelman, Ray Niaura, Lion Shahab, Gerry Stimson, David Sweanor, Ken Warner and Robert West –all “clowns” with no medical degree and no “real world experience” all made of their fellow vaping enthusiast’s excoriating criticism?
Wodak goes full offensive
On 29 January 2023, thirsty for polite, respectful debate, Wodak published the tweet below, responding to a tweet posted by the Northern Territory Seniors for Tobacco Harm Reduction (yes, there really is such an account).
Wodak used a tortured analogy to declare that Dr Sandro Demaio, the CEO of VicHealth, was a “leading Baptist”. During alcohol prohibition in the USA, both Baptists and liquor bootleggers campaigned for restrictions on alcohol for different motives. But they should both be thought of as similarly misguided, the argument runs.
VicHealth and Sandro Demaio, along with all the groups shown on the left of the table below, support the provision of nicotine vapes via prescription, and therefore only through pharmacies. To call this “prohibition” as vaping theology decrees, makes as much sense as calling prohibition the regulated supply of statins, blood pressure drugs, antibiotics, oral contraceptives and indeed, all prescription drugs. The most recent available data show 315m prescriptions were filled in a year in Australia in a population of 25 million. Pharmaceutical “prohibition” is clearly getting lots of drugs to lots who need them.
Wodak wants to see vapes made as equally available as cigarettes, as if he had been in a tobacco control cave all his life and learned nothing about the unmitigated historical disaster that followed making cheap cigarettes available almost everywhere, promoted by massive advertising.
The Northern Territory Seniors tweet proposed that Demaio ought to be thought of as a valued Marlboro (a Philip Morris brand) employee because, presumably, they would just love his efforts to support the prescription-only access to vapes. Philip Morris International sells its IQOS NVPs internationally and wants nothing to do with prescription access.
A few days later, Wodak doubled down and retweeted the picture again (below).
Vile US troll retweeted by Wodak
Another who responded to the Northern Territory Seniors tweet was @vapelawguy from the USA, a brave anonymous keyboard vape warrior with all of 535 followers. Wodak republished it in a retweet (see below)
Mr Vapelawguy was apparently very excited by the brilliance of his tweet, trolling it five times earlier naming the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids Matt Myers ) (”two of them in his mouth”), US Food and Drug commissioner Scott Gottlieb, the tobacco control Truth Initiative, the ParentsvsVape movement and the vapers’ anti-Christ Prof Stan Glantz.
So let’s parse the message in Mr Vapelawguy’s tweet that Wodak passed on to his 11,000-some followers. The illustration shows a vape with the acronym PENIS for Personal Electronic Nicotine Inhalation System. Sandro Domaio does not vape, so it’s clear that he’s not being called out as a hypocrite by claiming he not only vapes, but puts two or three vapes in his mouth at once. Instead, it is obvious what they are plainly suggesting that Demaio “often” has in his mouth.
Tweeted and retweeted in response to the context of the purposefully insulting “Marlboro Employee of the month” tweet, the penis tweet was intended to add an extra dimension to that insult.
Sandro Demaio was clearly playing deep inside Wodak’s head. Demaio is an articulate, evidence-based advocate with vast experience in advocacy. Wodak did not seem to realise that Philip Morris (Marlboro) is implacably opposed to NVPs being available only through prescription access. Philip Morris have never submitted an application to sell their NVPs via TGA authority. They and all Big Tobacco companies are fully committed to the “consumer model”, in lockstep with Wodak and those shown in the right hand column of the table above.
So why then, would Philip Morris make Demaio — a potent advocate for the very policy they virulently oppose — their employee of the month with the imminence of what they then faced under Australian government vaping reforms?
Wodak would probably say “because it will drive vapers back to smoking“. But there at least two small problems with this glib answer
- A huge proportion of those who vape are also smokers (dual users). So this group would not be “driven back” to smoking: they already smoke.
- In the latest national data available (2020-21), by far the largest group of people who have vaped in Australia are those who “formerly” tried vaping (1.428m) compared to those who currently vape (442,800 – which includes a majority who also still smoke). The overwhelming number of these lapsed vapers are not smokers who vaped then quit for good, but smokers who tried vaping but then quit vaping and continued smoking. And guess what? All this happened before prescription access policy was introduced.
Sandro Demaio replied to this vileness:
Wodak’s retweet was utterly shameless. He should delete the tweet, and prominently apologise to Demaio and to the public.
His righteous tweets about polite, civil and respectful dialogue need to be seen against the foreground of his regular unapologetic offensiveness.
Update: 31 Jan 2024
The doyen of decency, civility and respectful debate was at it again in late January 2024 tweeting the nasty and frankly unhinged little contribution below
His reasoning seems to go like this:
- Criminal gangs are extorting Victorian tobacconists to stock their illegal tobacco and vapes
- Refusal can result in their shops being firebombed and even death, presumably hoping news of this will persuade others to comply with their demands
- If duty-not-paid tobacco and vapes could instead be sold freely everywhere, there would be no black market
- Those named in the tweet are among many who have advocated for prescription access to vapes and for increased tobacco tax as a critical component of potent tobacco control. They are therefore culpable in causing the current spate of criminal extortion and standover violence
There are just a few small problems with this analysis. Criminals have long and often stood over a wide variety of enterprises throughout the last century (eg illicit drugs, firearms, liquor, prostitution, land development, car rebirthing) using bribery, corruption, extortion, violence and blackmail. Moreover, open supply is no barrier to black markets developing, usually via tax avoidance where smuggled goods can be sold at much lower prices than those where duty and sales taxes are paid. We have seen this for years with cigarettes, freely sold everywhere all around the world.
The view that criminality would disappear from the nicotine addiction industry if strong taxes were reduced or eliminated and vapes sold “responsibly” by the very retailers who have been openly ignoring the law for several years is beyond naive and would see smoking skyrocket commensurate with the fall in prices that would occur.
So this is all very inconvenient to his simplistic and childish narrative.
Also in this series
Vaping theology: 1 The Cancer Council Australia takes huge donations from
cigarette retailers. WordPress 30 Jul, 2020
Vaping theology: 2 Tobacco control advocates help Big Tobacco. WordPress 12 Aug, 2020
Vaping theology: 3 Australia’s prescribed vaping model “privileges” Big Tobacco WordPress Feb 15, 2020
Vaping theology: 4 Many in tobacco control do not support open access to vapes because they are just protecting their jobs. WordPress 27 Feb 2021
Vaping theology: 5 I take money from China and Bloomberg to conduct bogus studies. WordPress 6 Mar, 2021
Vaping theology: 6 There’s nicotine in potatoes and tomatoes so should we restrict or ban them too? WordPress 9 Mar, 2021
Vaping theology: 7 Vaping prohibitionists have been punished, hurt, suffered and damaged by Big Tobacco WordPress 2 Jun, 2021
Vaping theology: 8 I hide behind troll account. WordPress 29 Jun, 2021
Vaping theology: 9 “Won’t somebody please think of the children”. WordPress 6 Sep, 2021
Vaping theology: 10: Almost all young people who vape regularly are already smokers before they tried vaping. WordPress 10 Sep, 2021
Vaping theology: 11 The sky is about to fall in as nicotine vaping starts to require a prescription in Australia. WordPress 28 Sep, 2021
Vaping theology: 12 Nicotine is not very addictive WordPress 3 Jan 2022
Vaping theology 13: Kids who try vaping and then start smoking,would have started smoking regardless. WordPress 20 Jan, 2023
Vaping theology 14: Policies that strictly regulate vaping will drive huge
numbers of vapers back to smoking, causing many deaths. WordPress 13 Feb, 2023
Vaping theology 15: The government’s prescription vape access scheme has failed, so let’s regulate and reward illegal sellers for what they’ve been doing. WordPress 27 Mar 2023
Vaping theology 16: “Humans are not rats, so everybody calm down about nicotine being harmful to teenage brains”. WordPress 13 Jul, 2023
Vaping theology 17: “Vaping advocates need to be civil, polite and respectful” … oh wait. WordPress 3 Oct, 2023
Vaping theology 18: Vaping is a fatally disruptive “Kodak moment” for smoking. WordPress Oct 30, 2023
Simon Chapman AO 