Mr Monger! Why are you now shilling for Big Tobacco?
After being a Monsanto stooge, have you no integrity left?

Risk-Monger and Firebreak followers are starting to notice a larger number of my articles on tobacco harm reduction. Is he now shilling for Big Tobacco or is something else going on?

While readers coming to my pages to see my investigations on precaution, NGO funding, the litigation industry, pesticides, plastics and chemicals issues may not see the relevance, I see the same issues and problems with the attacks on vaping and other nicotine alternative products today as I had seen with attacks on glyphosate a decade ago.

• In the mid-2010s, I saw how a group of politicised activist scientists were leading the attack to ban glyphosate with bad science, special interests and cheap chemophobic fearmongering. They abused the WHO via a little-known quasi-independent body called the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) to produce a monograph that cherry-picked evidence to link the herbicide of the century with a cancer. With millions of dollars flowing in from the US litigation industry, an organic food industry sponsored band of NGOs, an evil industry piñata that no one dared to defend and an army of angry Moms, there were very few people in Brussels willing to stand up and defend sustainable farming and consumers. Worse, as the weak EU regulatory process was ripe for exploitation, American activist carpetbaggers and lawyers were flooding the Brussels lobbying arena.
• A decade later and another group of activist scientists and interest groups have co-opted another compromised WHO body, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) to advance their prohibition campaign against alternative nicotine products like vaping and nicotine pouches. With billions flowing from foundations like Bloomberg Philanthropies (having personally committed $2 billion) to operate a flotilla of NGOs and health advocates, add another evil industry piñata (Big Tobacco), and there are very few people standing up in Brussels to secure tobacco harm reduction strategies that actually work in getting smokers to quit.

So here we go again. Another case of risk management ignorance, negative consequences from zealot dogma and enriched opportunists and, once again, I can feel the pull of the rabbit hole as the Brussels regulatory meat grinder prepares for a flood of American-funded anti-nicotine carpetbaggers. Give me six months and I promise to kick up some dust, rattle some cages and piss off some well-moneyed interest groups.

The Risk-Monger is getting too old for this shit … but he just can’t seem to look away. So buckle up.

It’s About Risk Management, Stupid

With no skin in either the glyphosate or tobacco harm reduction games, people may wonder why I have been spilling so much ink on these issues (activists just conclude, without any evidence, that I must be paid by Monsanto or Big Tobacco). These issues represent two classic case studies in the failure of proper risk management and confirm my call for the need for the European Commission to conduct a White Paper on Risk Management.

Hazard v Risk

The Glyposate Gameplan was concocted by a group of litigation-industry funded activist scientists tied to the Collegium Ramazzini and interconnected within IARC. IARC monographs are hazard assessments meaning they are only concerned with whether a substance, product or process can be determined, at any level, as a carcinogen, regardless of the dose level or exposure means. Originally, hazard assessments were intended as a first step, for the risk assessors (regulators) to then determine the tolerable exposure levels (risks) according to wider factors. Risk assessment agencies like the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) looked at the IARC conclusion on glyphosate, the dose levels that consumers or operators would need to be exposed to, and promptly ignored the hazard assessment.

What happened though with glyphosate was that the US litigation industry was behind several scientists involved in the IARC monograph from the outset with the purpose of using the WHO-affiliated agency’s conclusion as sufficient evidence to file hundreds of thousands of lawsuits to try to extort a settlement from Monsanto and then Bayer. Employing an army of activist scientists, NGOs, lobbyists and low-integrity reporters, while exploiting the poor understanding of the risk/hazard assessment distinction and scientific illiteracy, and glyphosate litigation became an industry on its own, earning billions of dollars for shady Predatorts.

Harm Reduction v Precaution and Prohibition

With tobacco harm reduction, something went very wrong with our regulators’ understanding of the concept of risk. No one is questioning the health risks from smoking combustible tobacco (not even the tobacco industry). The sooner risk managers can get to a “smoke-free” rate (below 5%), the sooner this health scourge can be committed to the ashtray of history, with cigarettes eventually being taken off of the market.

But the opposite seems to be happening. The tobacco control movement, with large cash infusions from foundations like Bloomberg Philanthropies (having committed $2 billion to this single issue), has shifted from the goal of saving lives and reducing smoking levels to imposing restrictive, prohibition demands on the very tools that have enabled progress in reducing smoking rates. E-cigarettes and nicotine pouches have been shown to be 95% safer than smoking tobacco and effective smoking cessation strategies, but the mostly Bloomberg-funded WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) has refocused its strategy on the addictive nature of nicotine and industry involvement in the transition. With disinformation campaigns on unfounded risks, confused consumers continued smoking.

These health zealots are demanding a perfect world where everyone is kept 100% safe via precautionary prohibition measures. Risk managers seeing the enormous gains from tobacco harm reduction tools (making people safer with alternative nicotine products) are now worrying about the threats from unregulated black markets and bemoan the continued prevalence of smoking. Except for leaders in Sweden, New Zealand and until recently, the United Kingdom, the power and influence of the Bloomberg/WHO alliance is overpowering rational regulatory risk management measures.

Also, as the glyphosate and nicotine issues are not guided by scientific evidence but by emotional outrage, they fall under what I have categorised as “righteous risks”. An environmental health risk analysis looks at the scientific evidence of the hazard and the data behind the exposure and draws conclusions on the risk level and any risk reduction measures needed. A righteous risk is where regulators are exposed to ethical hazards that create outrage that may influence reactions to their risk management decisions. Scientific evidence and exposure data matter very little in analysing righteous risks.

Children exposed to pesticide residues on their morning cereal, however minute, create righteous outrage, as do teenagers becoming attracted to vaping packages and flavours. These issues can be managed from a normal regulatory risk management process, but not as righteous risks. It doesn’t help that the supposed perpetrators of these “health crimes” are highly reviled corporate giants from the pesticide and tobacco industries.

Evil Strawman

The Risk-Monger worked for industry for 17 years, meaning he understands how ethical codes of conduct, CSR, product stewardship and sustainability strategies work. But most people don’t and have fallen into the well-communicated narrative that the capitalist system exploits the majority for the benefit of a select few, that industry destroys the environment and harms public health and that the solution is to deindustrialise. There is an incredible hypocrisy when societies, having benefited enormously from the innovations and opportunities provided by industry and capitalism, use these benefits to try to destroy the system. Even worse, those in foundations and the litigation industry are exploiting this disconnect to advance their opportunities and influence within the naïve activist communities.

With the glyphosate and tobacco harm reduction issues, you don’t target any bigger strawmen than Monsanto and Big Tobacco. And here is a further strategy: by focusing on the corporate caricatures of evil, the debate is distorted from the facts like the relative safety of glyphosate or nicotine alternatives.

• Farmers need herbicides to protect their soil, increase yields and farm sustainably. You cannot have effective no-till farming or benefit from complex cover crops without herbicides like glyphosate (cheap, effective and only lightly toxic). Glyphosate is off-patent, meaning there are many manufacturers, but litigators and activists focused on the much-maligned Monsanto brand (even after it disappeared following the Bayer takeover) because of its emotional strawman value.
• Many companies, large and small, produce e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches. A decade ago, many of these small upstarts were a threat to the large tobacco companies. There was no longer any long-term sustainability for the tobacco market, so tobacco companies, like any industry, had to innovate to survive. As they moved into the alternative nicotine product markets, the anti-smoking activists saw an opportunity to distort the harm reduction / risk management argument with the strawman of Big Tobacco coming, once again, for your children.

But what would happen if these large companies did not exist in these markets, with their large research and development budgets? Farmers would not be getting the support and follow-up they need, nor new innovative products to meet future challenges. Consumers would not avail of better vaping technologies or programmes that could help move toward our smoke-free goal. Ironically, Big Tobacco would profit from the failure of tobacco harm reduction measures, more than companies only producing e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches, so I am really quite impressed that they continue to promote their alternative nicotine products despite all of the well-funded health lobbyists attacking them.

Political Opportunists

What has motivated me most into getting involved in both of these issues is the offensive opportunism, extortion and exploitation exhibited quite vilely and vulgarly by the activist interest groups.

Imagine how those fighting for trust in science would feel seeing a group of arrogant Collegium Ramazzini fellows with no research experience on glyphosate enriching themselves as litigation consultants for US tort law firms (at an average fee of $500 per hour), while lying and destroying public trust in science, technology and safety in the food chain. These “academics with one-person consulting firms” will hold their nose while working with NGOs, tainted reporters and the Mom’s movements, hide financial disclosures in a maze of dark front groups or donor-advised funds and then spend their free time trying to discredit industry research and data for being “corrupted” by corporate funding.

But the Ramazzini activist science is junk and not a single government risk assessment agency has accepted IARC’s conclusions on glyphosate.

On tobacco control, it is mystifying to track how Michael Bloomberg’s billions have been spread through a flotilla of NGOs and non-existent organizations managed out of non-transparent fiscal sponsors. These groups distribute hundreds of millions of dollars in Bloomberg Philanthropies funds within an interconnected network, keeping each group beholden to the whole. Eight Bloomberg anti-nicotine groups have essentially taken over the WHO tobacco control unit via its backroom operations of the WHO’s MPOWER programme. The WHO is unable to speak out as, practically bankrupt, they would have no tobacco control programme without Michael Bloomberg.

At the same time, the top ten directors in each of these NGOs takes home more than $25,000 a month, ensuring they will never speak out against the anti-nicotine orthodox dogma. So when the WHO is pressuring its member states to reject tobacco harm reduction strategies that actually work, they are not speaking on behalf of the scientific establishment, but on behalf of the billionaire paying the rent.

But the Bloomberg-funded science on nicotine risks is baseless. The mainstream scientific community has dispelled their campaign materials disguised as research.

It’s All About Integrity

The most ridiculous thing about these activist opportunists voraciously feeding from the trough of Predatorts and Philanthro-capitalists is that they are pushing the narrative that it is industry funding that is distorting the issue. How do these people sleep at night? Oh yeah, they are paid obscene amounts to lie.

But as they cash their tainted cheques, they keep repeating to themselves, proudly, that they have not sold out by working for industry. Many of the true believers have convinced themselves they are on a mission against evil to save humanity. I have written often about how these zealots and cults think.

So yes, the Risk-Monger is again going down that rabbit hole and joining the tobacco harm reduction regulatory debate, not to enrich himself, not for career advancement and not for public attention (the type no one would welcome), but because not doing it and “letting the bastards grind us all down”, would be worse.

It is all about integrity and being able to sleep at night.