Thread by @MadMeathead

So Jennifer May, Vice President of Health Promotion & Govt. Relations for @LungSK gave the following OUTSTANDING quote to @ctvsaskatoon regarding vapour products taxation in Saskatchewan... (1/x)

Of course, no one thought to apply the basic principles of math and logic to the statement... so let us do that here shall we? I actually think I can make my point with just one publication from the Daily on the 2020 CTNS data www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quoti… (2/x)

Two things to note to get started... 1: Adults aged 25 and up. 854,600 said they had vaped in the last 30 days, 20-24 (legally permitted access) was 309,100 (3/x)

2) 53% of those "Old fogeys" of 25 or greater reported they were vaping to reduce or quit smoking so that's 452,938. (4/x)

Now, @lungsk is gonna say "well you don't know how many actually quit", and they'd be correct. However, those who try and fail usually go back to smoking so these self-reports are either still trying or have switched. but I'm going to throw you a bone... (5/x)

Hajek et al ( 2019) pegged 1 yr abstinence rates of e-cig users at 18% in their blind clinical trial, it was a little less than double the success rate of NRT at 9.9. But I'll give @lungsk the benefit of the doubt, assuming only 10% of that 452,938 are successful "Quitters" (6/x)

so that's 45,290 (see that I even rounded down) adults that quit smoking. remember now, we haven't accounted for the 20-24-year-old's who have legal access who wanted to quit smoking (22% or 68,000) Just the nice safe old fuddy-duddies with fully developed neural pathways (7/x)

so if 80 kids start vaping for every smoker who transitioned to vaping... That'll be ... (counts fingers... grabs abacus... scratches notes on paper) 3.623,200 kids due to be chucking clouds any moment now... (8/x)

That's a lot of kids, a SCARY number of kids. A - "We are going to need to build bigger bathrooms in every middle school, every high school, and more than a few elementary schools" number of kids... SOUND THE ALARM! (9/x)

The population estimate for 15-19-year-olds in the 2020 CTNS study is 2,015,900.

291,300 (14.4%) of them reported vaping in the last 30 days. The other 3.3 million of them are a figment of an over-excited imagination, ideologically driven fibbery and faulty logic (Fin)

Post Script: she actually said 80 youth vapers would start smoking. I'm not even sure how to do the math on that. It was tough enough with only one degree of absurdity, now it's like, absurdity squared. 3.6 million invisible smokers from a pool of non-existant vaping children.

Post Script continued: @lungsk has gone full-on past ridiculous. Blown by ludicrous like it wasn't there...

Ladies and gentlemen. Spaceballs fans... @lungsk has gone...

They've gone "Plaid"