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won't somebody pleeease think of the plant?

steffijade

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The Welsh government are making their push to try and justify a ban on vaping in public places by using the tried and tested emotional blackmail/guilt tripping over children that the anti smoking lobby have used to great effect.

They've released a report that looks into exposure of children in cars to SHS and ecig use amongst 10-11 year olds in Wales, summary here :

http://wales.gov.uk/docs/caecd/rese...ette-use-among-10-11-year-olds-chets-2-en.pdf

Also reported on BBC news website, headlined as a gateway theory story rather than an exposure to second hand smoke in cars of children story.

Quelle suprise : BBC News - E-cigarette use by children concerns fuelled by research

The full text of the research references a certain Mr Glantz, again quelle surprise :

http://wales.gov.uk/docs/caecd/rese...use-among-10-11-year-olds-chets-2-main-en.pdf

The meat and bones of the gateway stuff can be found on pages 41 & 42. Basically, they're seeing a lower proportion of children that have used an ecig saying that they definitely won't be smoking in 2 years time.

Simply because more children are saying that they probably wont be smoking in years versus children saying that they definitely won't be smoking in 2 years, they've seized upon that as demonstrating a gateway effect.. or at least the possibility of one.

What I find interesting is that it isn't clear (at least to me) if there was a distinction made between ecig use and smoking for the purpose of defining future smoking. By that, I mean were the children told that when asked if they would be smoking in 2 years time, were they told to differentiate between vaping and smoking?

If they were told to differentiate, why is there no question asking if they would be vaping in 2 years time as opposed to smoking?

Or did the researchers carrying out the survey just decide that there was no difference between vaping and smoking and so decided to lump in the possibility of future vaping with future smoking?

The research is basically extrapolating what 10-11 year olds are saying they're going to be doing in 2 years time but who knows if those predictions turn out to be accurate? Will a follow up survey be carried out with the same children in 2 years to see if their predictions actually materialise? How many of the kids saying they definitely won't smoke at 11 will have gone on to smoke despite saying they wouldn't? How many of the kids who tried an ecig would go on to vape when they're 13 but wouldn't touch an analog with a barge pole?

And how many of the kids who'd tried an ecig had tried zero nic as opposed to nic ecigs?

To their credit, the researchers do (finally) admit that the potential gateway effect is extrapolated : " Finally, we were only able to demonstrate associations with behavioural intention, which is by no means a perfect predictor of future behaviour ".

The trouble is, media such as the BBC in the above example simply grasp what they see as the most attention grabbing aspect and push this as the headline when in actual fact, the researchers admit that it's just an extrapolation that could all be codswallop in a real world environment.

You couldn't make this shit up.

You could, however, carry out tailored surveys, cherry pick data and use it to extrapolate apocalyptic premonitions.
 
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I'm 51yrs old,when asked what I was going to start doing in the future by way of work,I just shrugged as I have absolutely no f*cking clue what I'll be doing in less than an hour let alone what I'll be doing in 2yrs so asking children what THEY'll be doing in 2yrs is likely just as much guesswork.
 
These Welsh politicians love to jump up and down and draw attention to themselves. You literally cannot get one to help you out unless there's a photo op involved and I speak from experience. I hope they realise sooner rather than later that the world will think of them as petty-minded morons in thrall to big business and come to their senses.
 
Well, I'm not surprised really. Wales has a long history of occulty type things (the druids etc) So this Mystic Meg research is all part of their cultural heritage and the children were probably asked their questions at dawn on the day of the summer solstice.
 
Why waste money on scientists and their expensive double-blind randomised controlled trials when you can just report what 10 year old children believe and get the media to quote it as "evidence"?


I look forward to future research from the Welsh government showing that Doctor Who really exists and the moon is populated with dinosaurs.
 
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