Chapter 10

SUBSTITUTES DON’T WORK

IN THIS CHAPTER

• The Big Tobacco Problem • No Illusions • Increasing The Dose • Why We Even Consider Substitutes

As you prepare yourself to smoke your final cigarette or e-cigarette, it’s time to decide what it is you really want. Are you looking for a way to keep taking nicotine without the life-threatening side effects, or are you looking to be free from nicotine addiction altogether?

THE BIG TOBACCO PROBLEM

No one other than those with vested interests disputes that smoking is a major problem. Even the tobacco companies have been forced to admit to the terrible health risks associated with their product and carry graphic warnings on their packs, leaving smokers in no doubt about what they’re letting themselves in for. The fact that these revolting images fail to dissuade people from buying cigarettes proves that trying to convince smokers to quit by frightening them simply doesn’t work.

Over the years, the tobacco companies have invested heavily in trying to develop alternatives to cigarettes. It’s easy to understand why. The industry makes staggering amounts of money from peddling a product that everybody is terrified of; imagine what it could make from a product that had the same irresistible qualities but didn’t disable its customers

quite so quickly. Current smokers would pay even more than they spend now on cigarettes, and all those non-smokers who avoided becoming addicts because of the health risks would rush to join them.

Big Tobacco began by trying to introduce a nicotine-free cigarette. It flopped. If you’ve ever tried herbal cigarettes, you’ll know why. Herbal cigarettes are foul, smelly things that give no illusion of satisfaction at all. Your favourite brand of cigarettes smelled and tasted foul too when you first started smoking, but you persevered. Nobody persevered with herbal cigarettes. It quickly became apparent that you could smoke these things for the rest of your life without ever believing that you were enjoying them. Why? Because they contained no nicotine.

Big Tobacco learned from its experiment that nicotine addiction isn’t just a hazard of smoking; it is the ONLY REASON people continue to smoke. The fact that they, and Big Pharma, have used this experience to justify the use of e-cigarettes as an ‘aid to quitting’ is telling. By providing ‘0 per cent nicotine’ vape liquid, they maintain the myth that the idea is for the smoker to switch to vaping, then gradually move towards so-called ‘vape juice’ that has zero nicotine content. The fact is, very few, if any, vapers ever actually achieve that. If you’re a vaper, do you know anyone that has? They remain hooked on nicotine and continue to consume nicotine in ever-increasing (rather than decreasing) doses. That’s the way drug addiction always works.

Sadly, the majority of people who exclusively vape without smoking at all, are youngsters who are just falling into the trap laid by the films, Netflix shows and Big Tobacco’s and JUUL’s advertising and marketing ‘geniuses’

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Doctors faced with patients smoking themselves to death prescribed nicotine alternatives, such as nicotine gum and nicotine patches, in the hope these products would satisfy their patients’ drug addiction while sparing them the appalling effects of smoking.

The tobacco companies weren’t so interested in patients’ health. They had spotted another opportunity. As governments began to get tough on smoking, banning it in public places, smokeless nicotine products enabled Big Tobacco and Big Pharma to keep peddling their drugs and keeping their customers hooked.

Since then, all sorts of new nicotine products have come on to the market. There’s snus from Scandinavia, a teabag-like pouch of ground tobacco that’s placed in the mouth, passing the drug into the bloodstream through the gums. Snus is sold in flavours like cranberry, eucalyptus and peppermint, which give it the appearance of confectionery. It’s anything but.

Snus is sold with the following warning: ‘This tobacco product damages your health and is addictive.’ Hardly a harmless alternative to smoking.

Another fairly recent development is dissolvable tobacco. R.J. Reynolds makes a range of Camel-branded dissolvable tobacco products, including Orbs, Sticks and Strips. There are also Marlboro-branded Sticks. All these products are tobacco in an alternative form, sweetened, flavoured and designed to dissolve in the mouth. Like snus, they are an evolution of the cruder chewing tobacco popular among cowboys in the Wild West (and baseball players), the difference being that you don’t have to spit. The flavouring makes your tobacco-infused saliva more palatable. But the principle is the same: nicotine passes into your bloodstream through the thin membrane of the gums.

These products may not deliver the toxic fumes of smoking, but they do deliver a bigger dose of the drug. Camel dissolvables

deliver up to 3.1mg, nicotine gum up to 4mg. Smokers typically inhale 1mg per cigarette. So whether you’re getting your substitutes from Big Tobacco or the doctor, the effect is the same:

Both increase your nicotine addiction

The pharmaceutical industry and the tobacco industry are both involved in the production, marketing and sale of e-cigarettes. That fact alone should make you aware you face a big choice: stay trapped inside the nicotine prison and keep filling the bulging pockets of the nicotine industry (and pay a fortune to government in sales taxes on the products), or simply set yourself free.

As an example, UK tax revenues from tobacco sales are over £12 billion a year. No wonder the UK government has made it so easy for vaping companies to sell their wares… they’re desperate to keep making money from the addiction.

The Treasury departments that raise taxes on tobacco and nicotine, along with Big Tobacco and Big Pharma, want you, and your kids, to remain lifelong nicotine addicts. You don’t need any further motivation to escape from the nicotine trap, but if one were required, denying the tax departments and the pushers of nicotine your hard-earned money is a sweet one. Who wants to pay more taxes or have less disposable income?

NO ILLUSIONS

Smokers make up all sorts of spurious reasons why they smoke. They think it looks cool, sophisticated, glamorous. They think it’s sociable. They like the ritual. All these illusions go out of the window when you’re taking your nicotine in pellets, pods or via a weird-looking ‘vape tank’.

A nicotine junkie getting their fix is no different from a heroin

addict sticking a needle in their arm. Do you think heroin addicts enjoy giving themselves injections? Most people hate needles. Some faint at the sight of them. But heroin addicts can’t wait for the needle to find a vein. Is that because they’re anticipating a tremendous high? Or is it because they know that the panic and misery they’re suffering is about to be relieved? The fact is, they no longer know the difference.

Watch the reaction of a heroin addict as the drug enters their bloodstream. It’s not pleasure; it’s relief, like the relief of taking off tight shoes. It’s not the beginning of something good; it’s the ending of something bad – albeit for just a short time. It’s the thief giving his victim £10 back from the £100 he stole, and the victim being fooled into gratitude.

Heroin addicts don’t enjoy the needle going into their arm. That’s just the way they get their drug. Without going into graphic detail, the process of finding a vein anywhere in their body eventually becomes a truly humiliating, shameful and degrading process for the addict. There are clear similarities between all drug addictions. However, there is one key difference: heroin addicts know they inject themselves only in order to get the heroin, whereas nicotine addicts believe they smoke because they enjoy smoking for its own sake. The same goes for vaping.

The way smoking traps the smoker is much more subtle than the way heroin traps the heroin addict. Smokers think they enjoy smoking because it appears to relieve the empty, insecure feeling that they perceive to be part of normal life. Non-smokers don’t suffer it and neither did you before you started smoking. But because of the gradual decline that they experience, smokers regard the empty, insecure feeling of nicotine withdrawal as ‘normal’, and as they slide further into the trap, they continually adjust their perception of ‘normal’,

not realizing that they’re slipping way below a genuinely normal, healthy level of wellbeing.

When you quit, you will be amazed how far below a genuine level of normality smoking or vaping dragged you down. Without the panic of nicotine addiction, you will feel more relaxed, confident, happy and healthy ALL THE TIME.

A couple of centuries ago, nicotine addicts got their fix by sniffing dust up their nose in the form of snuff. In the Wild West and on the baseball pitch, they stuck a plug of tobacco between their cheek and gum and continually spat out the repulsive juice. If you’ve ever tried chewing tobacco and made the mistake of swallowing, you’ll understand the need to keep spitting. The taste is pure poison.

Be under no illusions, whether you sniff snuff, chew tobacco, smoke cigarettes, use snus, suck nicotine sticks, chew nicotine gum, stick a patch on your skin or vape, the methods of taking nicotine have nothing to do with pleasure. It’s all about getting the drug into your bloodstream and keeping you hooked.

Easyway worked for me and about 20 of my friends. Seriously.

Jason Mraz

INCREASING THE DOSE

I’ve talked about the fact that cigarette substitutes deliver a higher dose of nicotine than cigarettes. In addition, most smokers who use e-cigarettes in an attempt to quit will continue to smoke as well. They smoke when they can and vape when they can’t. The result? They take in even more nicotine than they did before

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The addiction isn’t getting weaker and the nicotine industry makes money at both ends. What a racket!

It hardly takes a genius to realize that giving a drug addict the drug they’re addicted to in bigger doses can’t possibly help them to break their addiction.

Yet governments and the medical community, egged on by the pharmaceutical companies that manufacture nicotine patches and gum, have ploughed millions into developing more and more such products that line the pockets of the super-rich drugs companies and keep nicotine addicts trapped in the prison. It’s a scandal. Much of the money is public funding, paid for by taxpayers.

Meanwhile, more and more nicotine products are finding their way to market which don’t even pretend to help you quit but are marketed as a permanent alternative to cigarettes. Do you really want a permanent alternative to cigarettes? Or would you rather be free of addiction?

WHY WE EVEN CONSIDER SUBSTITUTES

‘Whatever vaping may or may not do to smokers, at least it spares them the carcinogenic fumes of smoking.’ That’s one of the main arguments put forward by the medical profession when promoting nicotine products which aren’t burned. And if you’re happy to remain a nicotine addict for the rest of your life, they might have a point. But isn’t your reason for reading this book to get free from being controlled by nicotine? It will be decades before the true extent of vaping or JUULing’s harmful effects are known.

Deep down inside, though, you know, don’t you? You’re not a fool. You instinctively know that vaping isn’t the solution. Otherwise, you simply wouldn’t be reading this book

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As long as you stay hooked on nicotine, you’ll always be vulnerable to becoming a smoker again. Remember, the only reason anyone smokes is to get the nicotine. So if you’re craving nicotine and you’re offered a cigarette, do you think you’ll be able to resist the temptation?

With Easyway, you don’t have to resist the temptation. We remove the temptation altogether by helping you to escape the slavery to nicotine.

The other medical argument is that vaping or other nicotine products help to ease smokers off their addiction by giving you something to keep you topped up with nicotine while you deal with whatever it is that you think keeps you wanting to smoke. Then, when you think you’ve kicked the habit, you gradually reduce the nicotine dose until you’re off it completely and you don’t miss it anymore.

But of course, it’s not that simple. If it was, nicotine patches and gum would have been a resounding success, e-cigarettes would be increasingly rare as their users successfully weaned themselves off the addiction, and the world would be cured of smoking. Clearly, it’s been an abject failure.

Vaping doesn’t work as a cure for nicotine addiction because it is based on three false beliefs:

1. That the physical withdrawal is painful.

2. That smoking, vaping/JUULing, chewing, dipping, snusing is a habit.

3. That people don’t mind being addicted.

The physical withdrawal is almost imperceptible; smoking and other nicotine use is not a habit – it’s drug addiction; no one wants to be addicted to anythin

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The fabulous thing about understanding the addiction is that, although highly effective in hooking its victims, it is actually extremely weak and easy to break free from… as long as you know how.

For anyone who still believes that smoking or vaping gives them some sort of benefit or crutch, cutting down gradually is a real struggle. It goes against everything their mind and body are crying out for. As you’ve learned already, the nicotine trap takes you on a downward spiral because each cigarette never fully satisfies the craving created by the one before, so you are always wanting to increase the dose.

The tendency with all drugs is to take more, not less