So. It is happening. As most of us have always thought. You will, of course, remember (at least for the UK) the chatter about disposable vapes started gathering momentum with some commentary from a Green MSP and now the current “Conservative” Prime Minister has decided that his Government is going to implement a variety of measures for “A smoke-free generation”.
It would seem that Sunak has been taking lessons from former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair in targeting, what is now, a highly stigmatised portion of society (albeit a slowly dwindling portion, thanks - of course - to the various anti-smoker policies introduced over the years; many of which had little to no direct impact).
We’ve all seen the recent news about the lowest smoking prevalence on record and all that. Some quangos are of course claiming that this lowest rate is largely thanks to policies (obviously they mean bans and tax hikes among other ludicrous measures, such as banning smoking in your car) and plain packaging (which while passed hasn’t become a reality nationwide yet).
With a few exceptions, the elephant in the room hadn’t been discussed and that is of course the role that e-cigarettes have played.
Yes, I know. Another post on rules and stuff. Sorry about that, but I’ve been doing my usual reading and thinking. I also watched Brexit: The Movie where I discovered a few things I hadn’t known previously - none of which made any kind of difference to how I’m going to be voting, but they were interesting nevertheless.
The thing is, and this is from Brexit: The Movie, post-war Britain was a shambles.
Ban. It is such a short, yet thoroughly Orwellian word. In short, ban is a simple word for prohibition. Prohibition has been attempted on numerous occasions and frankly, it never does turn out well.
Why do I want to talk about bans? Well there are a number of reasons actually, but the one that stuck in my craw was the utter insanity currently proposed by Nottinghamshire County Council. Just recently a friend asked me for some advice on countering, or at least informing a university smoke-free policy and it got me thinking.
Sometimes, I struggle to fathom the motives behind certain organisations. I truly do. Here we have a supposedly respectable organisation in the American Lung Association saying that e-cigarettes are a “new” tobacco product that have still largely unknown health effects. Then there’s a link to this page, which I wouldn’t click on if I were you; you’ll probably get asked to donate to them like the American Cancer Society (quick tip, don’t).
December 23rd 2015, a date that has been ingrained in my brain since the Totally Wicked Legal Challenge was heard in the Court of Justice of the European Union on October 1st. As the old saying goes – “hope for the best, prepare for the worst” – as many people suggested that the challenge appeared to be very strong, but it seems that many folks were content to hinge everything on Totally Wicked being 110% successful.
This is going to be a first. Normally, my posts (with one exception so far) are written entirely by me and me alone. They reflect my thoughts, feelings and opinions on the variety of subjects, points of view and “science” surrounding the topic of vaping. This time, I’ve enlisted the aid of a few other advocates and vapers to help me compile this post, as I feel this is actually a pretty big topic for just one person to cover. So, without any further ado let’s get started with commentary kindly provided with permission from Lorien, Shannon, and Fergus. The views provided by the guest commentators are their individual views and do not necessarily reflect the views of any affiliated organisations.
What follows here is purely my opinion on what seems to be a subject that is becoming the flash point for a lot of debate, argument and bickering. I’ll try to be as coherent as possible.
Most of you know that the All Party Parliamentary Group on ecigs met last week and a lot of good things came from that, there is already a very good write-up on the meeting from James Dunworth over on the Ashtray Blog, after all he was there.
Late last night various tweets were being posted by the media with previews of today’s papers front pages from i, _Daily Telegraph, Daily Mirror _and The Times. All four were based on an impending publication from Public Health England (PHE), but as is the norm for the media, the headlines didn’t actually reflect the contents of the publication.
I’ll admit to being a little wary of today’s news based on those previews alone, despite assurances from Lorien Jollye that the report from PHE was actually a very very good thing. As with anything related to vaping and smoking I’m very cynical and the preview headlines all had a common theme which sadly led me to believe the wrong thing.
When I woke up this morning I wasn’t expecting a whole host of shenanigans to be floating around the media. I knew that something was coming at some point thanks to some very good friends in the know, all very secret squirrel like. What I didn’t expect was the sheer insanity of it all.
