Vaping

I know. I’ve been terribly shoddy at posting recently. Fact of the matter is, work has been a royal pain and has subsequently kept me from doing what I do. There just aren’t enough hours in the day. Anyway, on to the point of this post. Following on from a previous post and various discussions on VapourTrails.tv and of course twitter, the ol’ grey matter started churning away.

See, the thing is one of the key arguments against vaping is all about the dreaded, super-evil Nick O’Teen. There are also some parties that would like to see vapour products used only for cessation - which, by the way, they can stuff where the sun shineth not - so when I combined those two “arguments” in my head, I asked myself what is wrong here?

“Much has changed since we ran the inaugural Summit in 2013, when calls for medicinal licensing and outright bans on e-cigarettes were dominant”.

Reading that in the introduction and welcoming statement in the e-cigarette summit programme highlights, at least in the UK, just how far things have come. When you have the likes of Professor Ann McNeill, Professor Robert West, Professor Linda Bauld, Professor Marcus Munafò, Dr Konstantinos Farsalinos, Professor John Britton, Professor Peter Hajek, Professor Ricardo Polosa talking about e-cigarettes folk sit up and listen. The list of names that gave talks is far longer. Including Clive Bates, Louise Ross, Lorien Jollye, Sarah Jakes, Professor David Abrams, Oliver Kershaw, Andy Morrison, the Department of Health represented by Alette Addison, Public Health England by Rosanna O’Connor.

Back in August I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Nicky from the Harrow Stop Smoking Service to talk about all things vaping. Talking about the devices, reasons for using them, differences, experiences and all that. It was a really good positive meeting and could quite easily have gone on for far longer than the time allotted.

The recent event was a heavily condensed version of that meeting with a guest speaker, Jessica Harding and myself. It was publicised as a ‘Stop Smoking Service Annual Update Meeting’ which would include the latest information on vaping, with an emphasis on the PHE Review. This post will include commentary from Jessica along with both our thoughts and impressions on the event and those who attended.

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 commentary on “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.

There is a saying on Twitter, “If you can’t debate in 140 characters or less, you’ve lost the argument”. Sometimes this could be true, but in others the character limit is incredibly, well, limiting, even with character substitutions and abbreviations it is incredibly difficult to get your point across on a complex subject.

This is one of the reasons I have a blog, so I can take my time and be as wordy as I need to be to explain the things I’m writing about.

It has definitely been an interesting few days all said and done. A televised debate took place over the weekend on vaping which kicked off the usual shenanigans with many folks sending the usual tweets to the person on the negative side of the debate. Of course, this was aired on Fox which has a certain reputation for being a little unusual, to put it mildly.

Who was involved in this debate? Well Greg Gutfield obviously who, as it transpires is a former smoker through vaping, and one Doctor Nina Radcliff. Being in the UK I missed out on the show itself so I had to play catch-up on Monday after it had aired in the US (really beginning to loathe these time differences) and frankly I was stunned. If you haven’t seen it the video is below.

For this post, I’m going to bring in a very special guest. Most of you will know who this is, the southern candidate for Vapers In Power. Dear readers, I pass this page on to Liam Bryan.

My First Hustings

So, two days before I was really nervous - I mean, we’re a single issue party and I’d pretty much insisted that “Protect Our NHS” give me an equal voice. They didn’t want to at first, they said there wasn’t enough time for the “major” candidates as it was. I think it was me suggesting I go as a member of the audience that swung it.

As we all know, vaping and electronic cigarettes are under increasing scrutiny. Some of it is surprisingly the good kind of scrutiny, the majority of it is not. We all have our stories as to why we vape. Some of us wanted to reduce harm to our own bodies. Others were looking to give up tobacco cigarettes. Mostly it’s the former.

What doesn’t help us in the ongoing, slow fight against the various regulations and legislation being brought up in the various political arenas is when vendors do stupid stuff. You know. Like this.