As the response to COVID-19 continues, many of you will have heard that Royal Mail will not be delivering on Saturdays.

The issues affecting vapers is manifold: if the crime is committed against a store or manufacturer then the costs are passed down the line to us, and if it’s our things being liberated then the victim is obviously us once again. Whichever way it cuts, we have a vested interest in solving the ones that take place and preventing future ones from happening

In many ways we are like cinema chains; we have the power to prevent anybody suffering another Fantastic Four film. If someone says they hate superhero films then it’s almost definitely because they saw one of the FF franchise. Cinema owners could have got together and used their superpowers to prevent another screening – but did they? No, no they did not. They allowed the awfulness to continue and now we have a society where vapers have to act as vigilantes.

Damn you, 20th Century Fox. This is all on you.

Since the great switch from mech to regulated, devices lend themselves nicely to built-in protection. The numerous online bait bike videos illustrate how easy it would be to have a password function, or fingerprint ID, that if by-passed could release an inconvenient number of volts directly through the power button. An enterprising manufacturer would combine this with a video and wireless function so everybody could enjoy the event in real time.

That doesn’t help the shop. Some predictions for us leaving Europe include a massive financial slide and long unemployment queues. The quick-minded of you will realise this is a boon for vape crime fighting. Combining idle hands, piercings and valuable devices together, through the medium of a length of chain, gives you lock-down security. And, should the worst happen and a theft occurs, the store owner has a readymade witness to the event. Plus, if this was an art student then they’ll have the composite sketch whipped up before the Police response vehicle has stopped at Tesco, the off-licence and a doughnut shop. Don’t be critical, the police can’t function on free KFC, free McDs and free pizza alone.

If society does go to Hell in an unpatriotic handcart then at least it means all of the bank vaults will be lying empty. What better use could there be than to rent them out for vape collectors to store their devices? Clearly, neither of these solutions work if Brexit is a huge success and everyone is lighting cigars with £50 notes.

So we propose a trained Vaping Defence Force (VDF) to patrol vape stores and act as emergency first responders in the event of vape crime. It won’t come cheap but we reckon Big T will fund it. Your average company pulls in 68 billion per year, give or take, so something like this is a drop in the ocean and would be brilliant PR.

Vapers don’t wheeze as much as they used to when they smoked, which means they can creep up on crimes in progress more surreptitiously. Plus, like proper superheroes (not the Fantastic Four) they have utility belts and bags full of kit: two mods and a length of Kanthal makes for brilliant crime-fighting nunchaku.

Yep, you could do this…

For the benefit of people currently going out with, married to, or actually are men attempting to grow fantastic beards: we are referring to the 1980s, not the second rate Victorian wannabes. Like Disraeli and Gladstone knew anything about cool facial hair! Pfft.

OK, so it’s a digression, but what was so great about the Victorian times? What was happening in January 1880?  A bad fog in London. Big whoop, right? What happened in January 1980? The Specials were at Number 1 with Too Much Too Young. One-nil to the Twentieth Century, clearly.

Michael J. Fox could leap from one point in time to another, it’s true because I’ve seen the films. It actually happened. But then he stopped hanging about with his science mate and parts of the car went off to be repurposed for David Hasselhoff.

Then Michael starred in a show that was all about the politics and lies. It was now the late 90s and lies were more popular than the Princess of Wales. It was a time of Tony Blair and spin-doctors and Michael J. Fox’s Spin City.

Politicians lie, the news seems to lie, everything seems to be one big fat lie. And then there’s scientific research – these people are meant to be their country’s brightest and best. They spend year after year studying tough subjects and sitting impossible exams. Surely if anybody knows the right way to behave then clever people should?

But we know different, don’t we.

We know that, as has been pointed out in the recent ACSH article that gave this piece its inspiration, scientists are as happy to lie about their research as Gary from Marketing. Or John in Sales, when he makes out the boost in orders came from his endeavours and not some freak series of events. Or Ffiona in purchasing when she claims the reduction in costs were from her efforts and not the fact that a shift in the exchange rate benefitted the company.

People lie.

There’s ‘oh, I never realised I scratched that car’, through to ‘I really love that band you’re into‘, and culminating with ‘ecigs produce toxins and should be banned‘.

Where are we going here? To “‘Spin’ in published biomedical literature: A methodological systematic review“.  Piece of research that concludes: “Spin in biomedical research is prevalent across a range of study designs, including trials, observational studies, diagnostic accuracy studies, and systematic reviews.”

And there are those who beg us to accommodate the fact that scientists are human too, too excuse their willingness to adjust the truth. Which is all fine and well – but any child of the 80’s knows that You Spin Me was by Dead Or Alive…and that’s what harm reduction boils down to. There’s no room for spinning here.

Stan drove a pudgy finger into one of the seventeen folds hanging off his chin. The scratch sent dead skin tumbling onto his blank Mindmap sheet. Boys at school learn how to affect a certain expression, a practised look they summon up on command when a teacher asks the class a question. It says I’m thinking very hard about something so please don’t ask me directly.

Mart stroked his beard. Beard stroking is the international sign of a man who believes himself to be intellectually superior to everybody else in the room. Invariably, the absolute opposite is the case – but today, looking at Stan screwing up his face while pretending to think, Mart knew he really was the sharpest knife in this cutlery drawer. He began to doodle for inspiration.

“I think,” Stan spluttered, “that we might have come up with all the ideas. I think the reason we can’t think of anymore is that we have thought of all of the ideas and now there are none left.”

It was a reasonable guess. The pair of them had invented lies about flavours, brand names and colours being used to target children. They’d laughed until their tummies hurt when they came up with the whole nanoparticle thing. Then they hit gold with the idea they could simply copy every piece of vape research but make up some numbers so it says the opposite. Each time Stan hears “Opposite Land” now he has to go and put on dry underpants.

“Saying we’ve thought of everything isn’t an option,” admonished Mart. “And if we have thought of every thinkable thing then maybe it’s time to think the unthinkable.”

Stan nodded, his cheeks continued to wobble after he’d finished, but he really had no idea what Mart meant.

“We need a danger that smokers and vapers haven’t been scared about yet. We need something that scientists can’t disprove – like when we made up that rubbish about the gateway effect…that it ‘could’ lead to smoking. Try disproving that, scientific community!” And Mart laughed.

“Hang on a minute,” Mart shouted as he dropped his pencil. “Aliens!”

Stan’s expression changed to the one you find on a fat boy when a Greggs employee pulls a new tray of hot pies out of the oven. He could eat Martin up, every scrap.

“We simply say that electronic vaping nicotine delivery device systems give out sub frequencies, acting as beacons for warlike pan-galactic alien races. Using nicotine in this way will ENDS the planet – that’s how bloody selfish vapers are.”

The duo managed to publish three finely crafted research papers in the five minutes after generating the idea, using drawings instead of data tables, depicting the carnage and mayhem. Donald Trump tweeted his congratulations for their patriotic work.

Long-term vapers have witnessed a transition from something that was just about harm reduction then blossom into a product that is on-trend and fashionable. But, obviously, vapers can’t simply enjoy vaping without someone telling them why they ought to stop. This week it’s the turn of people who enjoy doing vape stunts and tricks.

Published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, researchers from RTI International are warning about “risk factors” associated with “vape trick behaviour“.

Lead author Jessica Pepper explained the rationale behind conducting the study: “Earlier studies have shown that some teens vape because they think it looks cool. Others want to try the fruit- and candy-flavoured e-liquids used to make vape clouds. Vape tricks may be another factor. I can see why teens might be interested. Some of the tricks are fascinating.”

The paper the team produced states: “Vape tricks are an emerging and understudied risk behaviour for adolescents. Given the potential association between vape trick behaviour, motivation to use [vape devices], and increased exposure to [vape] emissions due to using more advanced devices, it is important to understand what demographic, psychographic, or behavioural factors are associated with youth engagement in vape tricks.”

Unfortunately, the authors of the study are beginning from the premise that vaping poses a big danger and, secondly, that these teens wouldn’t have otherwise gone on to smoke.

Serious flaws exist in this study; teens were recruited online (using a $20 Amazon gift card inducement) and then completed questionnaires online. Such methodology places a huge question mark over the reliability of the data obtained – which carries on through to the dubious conclusions the team come to:

• “Research suggests that [ecig] use is not free of harm.
• Ecig users are more likely to progress to smoking combustible cigarettes.
• The nicotine in e-liquid can be harmful.
• Even e-liquid without nicotine produces harmful chemical emissions.
• Vape trick behaviour also could influence health. For example, vaping blogs suggest different configurations of batteries and different types of e-liquid to produce the biggest clouds or do the best tricks.”

The group failed to take any measurements and are therefore totally unable to quantify any perceived danger. They remain as ignorant as to the performance of a trick (duration of inhale, components of the vape, impact on lung tissue) as they were prior to the research program’s inception.

In fact, it’s a struggle to work out what the point of the work was given how it has failed, by any measure, to move understanding forward. It’s also amazing that the company can make the claim: “RTI is at the forefront of research on e-cigarettes. Because of our wide-ranging expertise, we are ideally positioned to provide insights on these products from a variety of scientific perspectives, including public health and policy, pharmacology and toxicology, aerosol technology, and health communications.”

The full research paper can be accessed here.