Anybody up for a class action suit against Banzhaf?

In a recent press release, John Banzhaf is encouraging any and all to pursue legal actions against electronic cigarette distributors on the basis of them being presented as absolutely clean products when an FDA study found trace quantities in a few units of a small sample. These same contaminants have been found to be present in pharmaceutical nicotine products. (And as is quite widely known, these elements exist in much greater quantities in cigarettes, the product they are typically replacing and the product that Banzhaf, and his organization, ASH, supposedly are fighting against).

As Michael Siegel points out in his blog today, Banzhaf is not calling for suits against any pharmaceutical companies and suggests that at the very least he should have disclosed that much of the funding of his group comes from the distributors of nicotine replace products (which of course could be threatened by any growth in the e-cigarette market).

All I can say is that I am somewhat relieved that Banzhaf did not use the early studies on airbags and seatbelts and the few instances of related injury to keep these products from the market.

Of course at the core this is simple self aggrandizement. I can think of no other example where the signatory of the letter refers to himself in the third person so many times and so magnificently. (In nine out of the thirteen paragraphs of his release, he refers to himself at least once, and even bestows upon himself a title: the Dean of Public Interest Lawyers).

You just have to wonder how this blowhard survived grade school.

-PLB