There was a time when vaping – the practice of using a small, electronic device to inhale vapor – was thought to be the public health miracle of the half-century. While not quite up there with the polio vaccine or the still elusive cure for cancer, it proved a successful substitute for cigarette smokers among whom more traditional cessation therapies had failed.

Now, for reasons that are not entirely clear, the anti-smoking bureaucrats embedded within the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (who seem to think they have a say over anything people inhale) and the corporate entities are known collectively as “Big Tobacco” are making common cause on efforts to crush the emerging vaping industry.

The complaints being lodged – that vaping liquids are offer in flavors attractive to children, that vaping devices are too easy for minors to obtain, and that vaping is unhealthy in and of itself – are of the kind the denizens of the Nannystate are fond of making. They say things like that all the time about consumer products they have in their sights.

What they’re not saying is that vaping – which, like cigarettes, can be a nicotine delivery system – is perhaps a hundred times safer than traditional smoking. It literally saves lives, as a new study funded by Cancer Research UK demonstrates.

Loren Kock, a Ph.D. research in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London, observes that “E-cigarettes have the potential either to decrease or increase health inequalities depending on levels of smoking cessation.” The study he directed, published in mid-October in Addiction, is the first to look at the link between socioeconomic status and vaping devices.

What they found, Kock said, was from 2014 to 2016 e-cigarette use among smokers was generally higher among those from more affluent socioeconomic groups, while those from so-called disadvantaged groups were around half as likely to use one. By 2017, however, as products became both cheaper and more readily available, the gap disappeared.

Interestingly, the research uncovered different patterns among long-term ex-smokers, with those from “socioeconomically disadvantaged groups” at least twice as likely to be using e-cigarettes and other devices as smoking cessation aides. Those from upper-income cohorts, one may presume, have other alternatives available to them like hypnotherapy and directed action under a doctor’s care made possible by their having greater discretion in how their income is allocated.

The study has lessons for us here in the United States, chiefly that making vaping more expensive and making the materials harder to obtain may lead to an increase in smoking-related illness and death. If those on the lower end of the economic spectrum are, as the UCL study indicates, more reliant on vaping devices to stop smoking then more of them will contract lung cancer and other illnesses linked to cigarette smoking. And, being from the lower economic cohorts, expense related to their care are more likely to be borne by the taxpayer – since their healthcare is more likely to be provided to this group through Medicare and Medicaid.

It all may seem like circular logic. Some politicians want to tax vaping as cigarettes are taxed, banking on the revenue it will generate to fund all kinds of programs. Others want to destroy it before it becomes ubiquitous because they imagine it to be a health risk, never mind that the health risks connected to cigarette smoking are much greater and more expensive. And some want to regulate this emerging industry because that’s just what they do – sort of like the guy who worked for the EPA in the original Ghostbusters.

Cancer Research UK Policy Manager George Butterworth said of the study that “The evidence so far shows that e-cigarettes are far less harmful than tobacco and can be effective in helping people to stop smoking.”

He’s right – and the government should be doing everything it can to help this new technology take root and save lives rather than trying to put it back on the shelf to gather dust.

A farm bill passed in the House and Senate including provisions for industrialized hemp meaning small farmers could be seeing more green.

This farm bill is said to empower struggling farmers through industrialized hemp cultivation, and Kentucky farmers are not newcomers to this game.

Many farmers have been waiting to add a new crop to their bag, and with U.S, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell’s backing of the bill among others Kentucky farmers could see a boost through industrialized hemp production.

“How does a small farmer like me make a living,” says NE Farm and 5 Mile Marker owner Paul Glover.

Some Kentucky farmers are struggling, but with a farm bill passing industrialized hemp could be added to their list of crops helping small farmers compete with big corporations.

Paul Glover owns Ne farms and Mile Marker No. 5 in Hawesville and says the farm bill would help small farmers, and others.

“We produce an oil a tincture if you will that helps people with any neurological disease. Parkinson’s disease, children that have epilepsy it has stopped their seizures cold, and that is one of the big reasons I have been doing this for the past five years,” says Glover.

Kentucky isn’t new to the industrialized hemp world with research and pilot programs in recent years.

“Kentucky did have a four or five year advantage over other states such as North Carolina and Tennessee and if a few of the other states, but they have been climbing up the ladder extremely rapidly. We are still plotting along and we are still trying to figure out the program,” says Glover.

With the bill moving forward things could be looking up for farmers watching the bill closely for years.

Glover says, “I’m sure it will help keep competitive with these other states who are coming out of the wood work.”

The farm bill would also add crop insurance helping farmers like Glover who have taken big hits over the years.

“I was out probably about $12,000 dollars of my product which runs into a substantial amount of money I had no recourse. Crop insurance will help and it will also help the regulatory people in the U.S.D.A to help the farmer,” says Glover.

Industrialized hemp could be the green cash cow Kentucky farmers need.

“They can grow industrial hemp and if they market it correctly or sell it to the right individual or the right processor they can once again have a viable small farm,” says Glover.

Aside from the hemp stipulations the farm bill also fully protects crop insurance, makes significant improvements to rural broadband, and implements key changes to SNAP the supplemental nutrition assistance program.

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Anti-Semitism And The Left

By Richard Moss, MD

Since the tragic killing of 11 elderly Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh the American Jewish left, along with allies in the Democrat party, and the media have been unrelenting in their efforts to pin this on President Donald Trump.  But even a cursory exam of the record will demonstrate that Trump is the most pro-Israel, pro-Jewish president we have ever had.  Given the rhetoric, however, it might be useful to compare the records of Trump, President Barack Hussein Obama, the Democrat Party, and the Jewish left regarding their treatment of the Jewish people and the state of Israel and to determine the true epicenter of anti-Semitism in America and around the world today.    

To begin, Trump has a high-profile Jewish daughter, Ivanka, who converted to Orthodox Judaism. His Jewish son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is a trusted envoy and advisor.  Trump has Jewish grandchildren that he adores.  Jews have been influential consultants and advisors throughout his long career in business and now in his administration.  While the broad American Jewish community did not support Trump in 2016, he was very popular among observant Orthodox Jews and nearly 75% of Israelis approve of Trump.

Acting on his promise, Trump moved the American Embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing it as the eternal capital of the Jewish people.  Obama refused.  

Trump ended the Iran nuclear deal forged by Obama.  This deal paved the way for a nuclear-armed Iran within 10 years, a nation that is pledged to the annihilation of Israel.  Iran is the leading state sponsor of terror and funds terrorist proxies Hamas and Hezbollah, which, like their Iranian patrons, espouse genocidal ambitions towards Israel.  But the Jewish left, the Democratic Party, and the media defended the Iran nuclear deal even as it represented an existential threat to the Jewish state. 

The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) is a terrorist entity stained with Jewish and American blood.  It pays stipends to families of terrorists responsible for killing Jews and is the most successful Jew-killing operation since World War II.  Trump closed its diplomatic mission in Washington DC.  Obama upgraded it. Obama also increased US funding to the PLO while Trump cut it. 

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is an anti-Semitic body that supports Hamas and indoctrinates young Palestinians to hate Jews.  Trump stopped funding the organization while Obama expanded it.  Trump pulled the United States out of the anti-Semitic UN Human Rights Council.  Obama joined it.

Obama spent 20 years in the Trinity Church of Jeremiah Wright, an anti-Semite, and bigot.  Wright and Obama were associates of black nationalist, racist, and anti-Semite, Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the nation of Islam, who recently referred to Jews as “termites.” Farrakhan has spoken of his admiration of Hitler for killing millions of Jews (as has Hamas).  

The first two Muslim women elected to Congress, Ilhan Omar, a Somali from Minnesota, and Rashid Tlaib a Palestinian from Michigan, are both Democrats and support the anti-Semitic Boycott Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement, which promotes economic and legal warfare against Israel. 

The deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Keith Ellison, Congressman for Minnesota’s 5^th district and Attorney General-elect for Minnesota was a member of the anti-Semitic Nation of Islam and defender of Louis Farrakhan and has himself attacked Israel and the Jews. 

Al Sharpton, a black supremacist, and anti-Semite has referred to Jews as “bloodsucking Jews,” “Jew bastards,” and “white interlopers.”  His demagoguery incited violence, riots, and the murder of a 29-year-old Yeshiva student and two others in the Crown Heights Section of Brooklyn in 1991, referred to as the “Crown Heights Pogrom.”  This pogromist host a news show on MSNBC spoke at the Democratic National Convention and was a frequent guest at Obama’s White House.  

Franklin Foer, Julia Ioffe, Dana Milbank, Roger Cohen, Peter Beinart, and others represent a coterie of powerful left-wing Jewish commentators and columnists who attack Israel routinely and condemn Trump for his defense of Israel.  Some support Hamas and the BDS movement.

George Soros is a wealthy Jewish financier originally from Hungary, a former Nazi collaborator, who dedicates himself to undermining Israel by funding anti-Semitic left-wing Jewish groups (J Street, Jewish Voice for Peace, New Israel Fund, If Not Now, Breaking The Silence, B’Tselem) engaged in anti-Israel projects including on college campuses.  He is a leading contributor to the Democrat Party.

Leftism has infected many non-orthodox synagogues.  Many American Jews derive their values from leftism not from the Jewish Bible although some strain to connect their ideology with Judaism.  In the last year, the leaders of the reform and conservative movements have delivered their flagship institutions into the hands of Jewish anti-Semites. The Reform movement invited novelist Michael Chabon, the outspoken hater of Israel, as their keynote speaker at the Hebrew Union College annual convention.  Conservative movement leadership invited the radical Jewish anti-Zionist group “If Not Now” to train counselors at one of its largest summer camps.

We would be remiss to ignore one of history’s greatest Jewish anti-Semites, cherished by the left even today despite the misery and death his philosophy has spawned: in his anti-Semitic treatise, “On The Jewish Question,” Karl Marx wrote, in 1844, that “Money is the jealous God of Israel” and that “the emancipation of Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.”

In the wake of the Tree of Life massacre, Trump said, “the scourge of anti-Semitism cannot be ignored, cannot be tolerated and cannot be allowed to continue.”  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that no non-Israeli leader has ever made such a strong commitment to combating Jew-hatred.

So are leftist Jews, the media, the Democrat Party, and other haters of Trump serving American Jews by condemning the most supportive President the state of Israel and the Jewish people have ever had?  Of course not.  Their hateful rhetoric and policies are divisive and expose Jews to increasing levels of anti-Semitism.  They reveal themselves as partisans that will stop at nothing to advance their political interests despite the damage they inflict on the nation, American Jews, and Israel.  Their record demonstrates that the core of anti-Semitism in America and around the world is on the left and in particular amongst high-profile left-wing Jews, in many of our non-orthodox synagogues, college campuses, Hollywood, and the Democrat Party. While anti-Semites exist on the right, Republicans and conservatives reject them unequivocally.  That is not the case for the leftist establishment, which embraces its anti-Semites – to their lasting shame.

FOOTNOTE: Dr. Richard Moss is a board certified head and neck cancer surgeon and was a candidate for Congress in 2016 and 2018. He graduated from the Indiana University School of Medicine and has been in practice in Jasper and Washington, IN for over 20 years. He is married with four children.  

For more information visit richardmossmd.com.  Find Richard Moss, M.D. on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The City-County Observer post this article without opinion, bias or editing.