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Tony Gwynn got salivary gland cancer but won't denounce chewing tobacco
As I said, you are an idiot. E-cigarette companies are mainly based in China and I have no idea nor does anyone in my org. who runs them or who funds them. The data on their success rate--hey you got something right!-is not published yet but it seems likely that they will help addicted smokers quit IMHO. I wish them every success! And that they do indeed become big-time ACSH supporters! Now go find someone else to stalk for a while. gr— March 15, 2012 5:41 a.m.
Tony Gwynn got salivary gland cancer but won't denounce chewing tobacco
Dear S-P----NOW you are correct, but in 1993 that was the sad and sorry situation, and why the overwhelming majority of fed. criminal defendants declined to testify to their own innocence! Unbelievable, right? I was warned, but chose to tell my version of those events anyway---and got the hammer afterwards. As I said, that process/policy has thankfully been deemed UNCONSTITUTIONAL and now judges must make a specific ruling after a specific hearing. gr— March 15, 2012 5:38 a.m.
Tony Gwynn got salivary gland cancer but won't denounce chewing tobacco
Thanks for your insights. Of course it's best to quit cold turkey as you did, congrats! And as with you, most successful quitters do it unaided--BUT it takes 7,8,9 or more attempts over the years to do it! And much willpower and many relapses. Smokeless as a substitute/cessation aid is NO guarantee against relapse for sure, but it seems to work more reliably than the patches etc etc. And yes, other tobacco products e.g. snus are NOT "harmless"--but snus is 98% or 99% safer than smoking, is all I'm saying. Ideally no one would use any tobacco product! For those who are addicted to cigarettes--45 M of us--smokeless is a potential short-cut to quitting cigs. I smoked for a long time and quit in 1990, but I still remember the pleasure of smoking! That's a powerful addiction--and potential quitters need all the help they can get. gr— March 15, 2012 5:35 a.m.
Tony Gwynn got salivary gland cancer but won't denounce chewing tobacco
I see my evidence-based arguments about the potential for smokeless tobacco as a harm reduction method are falling on willfully-deaf ears. Maybe a couple of your readers will learn something, even if you refuse to. Easy to spot such know-nothings by your references, repeatedly, to "spit" when I have noted that modern smokeless products are neither "chewed" nor "spit." Spittoons, really? Most quitters succeed unaided like your commenter--the patch helps so few. If ACSH were a wholly-owned subsidiary of some tobacco company, nothing that I have said would be untrue. I have offered to send you the literature, but you'd rather mindlessly toe the line. Brainfan so inaptly nicknamed, you are an idiot, as the "toxic chemicals" you so fear have killed few since Bhopal, while the toxic chemicals in cigarette smoke kill hundreds of thousands each year in our country alone, and are predicted to kill a billion people over this century, if current trends continue. But you keep railing about hypothetical toxins and "endocrine disrupters", while the cigarette makers rejoice in your distracting the public and the media from the real problem, as they did in the 1950s when the "cancer epidemic" was blamed on DDT. So, thanks to Rachel Carson and people like you, millions of African children die of malaria without it. Anyway, I am off this thread now, stew in your own juices.— March 14, 2012 5:30 p.m.
Tony Gwynn got salivary gland cancer but won't denounce chewing tobacco
NICOTINE ADDICTION (as addiction to anything) is BAD. NO ONE should smoke, spit, chew, or apply patches. However,the sad but true fact is that 45 000 000 smokers ARE addicted and a goodly segment of them will get cancers of all types, heart disease, emphysema, and will suffer prolonged agonies and die prematurely--because of their addiction to nicotine!! What shall we do about that, I ask you?? Ignore it? Pretend that patches and Zyban and Chantix work? Advise smokers to quit? Sure, but they don't. Let's tell them about the possibility that smokeless tobacco, e.g. snus, maybe can help them stay on this safer form of nicotine and be 99% less dangerous. What do you think? gr— March 14, 2012 1:47 p.m.
Tony Gwynn got salivary gland cancer but won't denounce chewing tobacco
Re: Generally, public health officials do not embrace use of smokeless tobacco, including snus, as a way to shed cancer risks from smoking cigarettes. Best, Don Bauder-- That's very true Don--worse even, none of them do! That is the received wisdom that is so hard to dislodge, given the stated adherence to the decades-old "no safe tobacco" (true, but there is safer and much safer) adage. All the big public health non-profits and our own governmental authorities have a huge blind spot on this issue, well-earned by the 20th century tactics of the cigarette companies, with their fraudulent deceptive science-corrupting machinations. NOW it's the tobacco companies who--having seen the handwriting on the wall in the form of declining cigarette usage and sales concomitantly with rising smokeless sales--have taken up the promotion of less harmful alternatives. But the CDC FDA CTFK ACS etc etc refuse to get past the antipathy and look for creative paths to reduce the still-dreadful toll of cigarettes. Can anyone dispute the recent studies proving that the current cast of NRT patches etc do not add to cold-turkey quitting---yet continue to generate huge sales for pharma while "helping" maybe 5% quit? Can anyone dispute the Swedish experience showing massive declines in smoking commensurate with rising snus use? So sticking to the failed mantra, "no safe tobacco alternative" condemns those aforementioned millions to "quit or die." The academic literature (which I can send you) shows that modern smokeless products do NOT cause oral cancer or heart or lung disease, and of course there is zero second-hand smoke. I hate to be repetitious and a bit officious, but some independent research as opposed to ad hominems and "the official agencies do not endorse" patter would justify your credentials as a journalist and not a copy-and-paster. With all due respect--I did not mean to blame you for the millions who smoke, but neither are you blameless when you conflate "terbacky" and snus sachets, neither chawed nor spit--you know better. GR— March 14, 2012 1:42 p.m.
Tony Gwynn got salivary gland cancer but won't denounce chewing tobacco
You can ad hominem me from dawn till dusk, but if you take a few minutes to actually look up my statements relating to snus and tobacco harm reduction, perhaps you'll see that your having fun with my history has the hopefully unintended consequence of keeping millions of addicted smokers on their deadly smokes, to the delight of the makers of useless nicotine patches and toxic pills. Or would you just rather stick to the personal anecdotes and ignore the public health aspects? I admit I'm disappointed Mr. Bauder given our discussions on email I had held you in higher regard. O well.— March 14, 2012 12:03 p.m.
Tony Gwynn got salivary gland cancer but won't denounce chewing tobacco
The "perjury" referred to by my pal and stalker "brainfan" was derived from the fact that I testified to my innocence at trial. Since I was convicted, the additional finding and penalty was routinely applied by the judge. That process has since been found to be unconstitutional, smacking more of Stalin-era justice than our American system. Just fyi. gr— March 14, 2012 11:59 a.m.
Tony Gwynn got salivary gland cancer but won't denounce chewing tobacco
Thanks are owed to Mr. Bauder for allowing me to weigh in this fraught but crucially important subject. His piece is unfortunately, however, laden with misinformation whose consequences will be to increase the toll of "tobacco" (actually smoking)-related disease and death. It's unfortunate that he and the "experts" quoted are apparently devoted to the mantra of anti-tobacco zealots in the abstinence-only, "quit or die" camp, who are given free rein to conflate the issue of "chewing tobacco," "spit," and "dip" with tobacco harm reduction efforts. These have been focused on truthfully informing addicted ADULT SMOKERS about almost-harmless modern smokeless products such as snus, which is neither chewed nor spit, as it's not "terbacky." Snus is used as a replacement, a cessation aid, for deadly cigarettes. Referring to harm reduction advocates (including by insinuation me and my organization) as "backed by Big Tobacco" ignores ACSH's 33-year history of advocacy against smoking, and insults the large majority of harm reduction adherents campaigning to save smokers' lives, fighting an uphill battle against the forces of dogma and zealotry apparently so admired by the writer. Mr. Bauder and his quoted "experts" fail to acknowledge these simple yet tragic realities: Despite the dramatic decline in overall smoking rates, there remain 46 MILLION adult smokers in the U.S.A., among whom about 450,000 die as a result--not from "tobacco," but from SMOKING. Three-quarters say they want to quit, but only a tiny fraction succeed. Scholarly articles prove that modern smokeless products are 99% less harmful than cigarettes, they are effective at helping smokers quit cigarettes, and the experience in Sweden over the past 50 years confirms that. Respected health organizations, aside from my own, have endorsed this policy, including the Royal College of Physicians in the UK and the American Association of Public Health Physicians. The fact is: the currently approved cessation products made by Big Pharma do not work. When one of these experts says, "there's no safe way to use tobacco, stick to the approved products," they are saying, in effect, "keep on smoking." Mr. Bauder quoted me correctly and often, but his background comments about my personal history seem to be an attempt to convince the reader that my assertions are suspect. Fine--look them up in the peer-reviewed literature, but don't use baseball's chaw and Tony Gwynn's salivary cancer as touchstones to mislead addicted smokers about the potential benefits of harm reduction to try to save them from their deadly addiction using nearly-risk-free snus-type products. Gil Ross MD/ACSH— March 14, 2012 11:56 a.m.