Wednesday 2 April 2014

Miserable Welsh puritans want to ban e-cigarettes in enclosed public spaces – malign compassion at work

I haven’t smoked a cigar for two months (pause for applause – not a sausage). I was only puffing on those little Café Crème things, but my habit had crept up from two to seven a day, and I knew that if I didn’t do something I’d be up to 15 or 20 before long. Inevitably, I’ve put on half a stone, but I’ve stopped coughing and my breathing’s better. It’s been about 100 times easier than giving up my 40 a day cigarette habit 13 years’ ago. Back then, I used Nicorette gum and nicotine patches: this time it’s been gum and E-Lites electronic cigarettes.

I’ve been addicted to nicotine since I was thirteen. I basically switched cigarettes for nicotine gum, of which I get through between 10 and twenty a day. I managed to cut back to the 2mg version for many years, but I moved back up to 4mg variety two years’ ago (I can't remember why). I did check with a pharmacist (who turned out to be an expert on the subject) whether Nicorette gum might be doing me long-term harm. “Only to your wallet – you’re chewing the most expensive gum in the world,” he replied. “But it’s cheaper and better for you than smoking, so don’t worry too much about it.”

My system’s still flooded with soothing, concentration-boosting nicotine but there’s no tar or thousands of potentially harmful chemicals going into my lungs. That’ll do for now.

Electronic cigarettes, as you know, produce harmless, nicotine-drenched vapour when “smoked”. They don’t taste much like the real thing (and even less like cigars), but they replicate the physical sensation of smoking tobacco. The nicotine hits the central nervous system in a comforting fashion within a few seconds, and – importantly - there’s that familiar abrasive catch in the throat when the vapour is inhaled, you get to expand your lungs and the “smoke” does look satisfyingly like the real thing as it’s exhaled (although it disperses much more quickly and doesn’t leave any odour behind).

It could turn out that e-cigarette vapour causes mouth, throat, oesophogal and lung cancer in some people, plus any number of other horrific side-effects. But the chances of it being as harmful as tobacco seem slim, and – from my experience so far – they’re far less addictive (if I leave my e-cigarette upstairs, I can’t be bothered fetching it, whereas in the past I would willingly have crossed a minefield if there had been a packet of Benson & Hedges on the other side).

Several countries and American states have banned electronic cigarettes altogether, and they’re banned from public spaces (enclosed or otherwise) in other places. The reasons given range from the suspicion that they could turn out to be harmful to users in ways yet undreamt of to the fear that non-smokers will start using them and graduate to cigarettes – and, of course, children keep being mentioned as a “vulnerable” group.

Today, Wales has joined the hysterical health Nazi contingent by proposing to outlaw the use of electronic cigarettes in confined public spaces (I suppose they mean pubs, restaurants and offices) on the grounds that they could have an impact “on the enforcement of Wales' smoking ban” and that they could “normalise smoking behaviour”.

The medical and political establishments are at sixes and sevens over whether to further restrict their use or not. The antis want tighter controls over what manufacturers can put into e-cigarettes, and for a ban on children being allowed to buy them, and for more research to be undertaken into their effects etc. The e-cigarette industry supports all of these proposals, the government has already announced a ban on under-18s buying them, and, according to the BBC, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency is expected to license e-cigarettes as a medicine in the UK from 2016, which will mean tighter checks on the manufacturing process. So it’s being sorted.

What the extreme antis need to decide is whether they actually want adults to quit smoking tobacco or not. If they do, then they really should be encouraging pubs, restaurants and offices not to ban e-cigarettes. The argument that they'll encourage people who would otherwise not have smoked to become addicted to nicotine strikes me as absurd: is there any proof that any non-smoker has ever been tempted to start chewing nicotine gum to see what it’s like (it tastes horrible, by the way)? And is there any proof that a single one of the 1.3 million Britons currently using e-cigarettes wasn’t a smoker to start with?

I suspect the real problem for purse-lipped puritans is that electronic cigarettes make giving up tobacco too easy: they want us to suffer for our sins – they want quitting to be difficult. The problem is that smoking tobacco is just so damned pleasurable: there is almost nothing on earth to compare with lighting up a cigarette after a meal. And you can indulge the habit for years without suffering any ill-effects (apart from financial ones, of course). Unlike alcohol, over-indulgence doesn’t result in you making a right tit of yourself. I’ve known people who were able to quit smoking without much bother, but the vast majority of us simply can’t. As a naturally addictive (i.e. weak-willed) person, I want all the help I can get. Electronic cigarettes are an absolutely wonderful invention, and our puritan authorities need to unpurse their prim little mouths and cut us some slack.

8 comments:

  1. There's a damn good book to be written about the dire effects of neo-puritanism on society. I'm willing to admit there is a positive side to it, but its dismal shadow falls across far too much medical and scientific research, obscuring truth for the sake of satisfaction.

    E-gaspers are one, ten-a-day-soon-to-be-twenty is another. It is a quality we British sadly have rather a lot of and it is greatly to our detriment.

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    1. I think Climate Change is the area where neo-puritans have revealed their true colours. They don't really care if what they're claiming is true, and they certainly don't care how bad the supposed "cure" is for poor people in poor countries or the world economy as a whole just as long as they can occupy the moral high ground and make the rest of feel really bad about what our selfishness and greed is doing to the planet. I honestly believe it's our duty to blow raspberries and mock these blisters whenever we get the opportunity. Yes, Britain is stuffed with neopuritans, but they're everywhere, really. Regular commenter and fellow-blogger Erik Bartlam is really good on American neopuritans.

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  2. I knew you when we were young teenagers and we were ever so cool -puffing at those cheap Number 6 fags. I have dallied with the gaspers on and off for forty years or so and just stopped entirely last summer when I found I had no tobacco in the house, became slightly frantic and then thought - sod it , I'll just have another whisky and foreswear the 'gold dust', as my grand-father used to call it.

    Most of my friends and acquaintances do not now smoke and I now find the smell of cigarette smoke most unattractive, if not repellent.

    At 1 am it's too late in the day for me to embark on a moral argument regarding e- cigarettes but those of my chums who have tried this substitute have found it wanting and have either stopped smoking altogether or reverted to a packet of fags at about £8 a time - holy smoke - 20 a day means about £60 a week....bugger that.

    If those e-fags work for you, press on, far better than twenty Bensons a day, you will be richer and you will not be a social pariah, unless you go to Wales.

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    1. If I ever have cause to return to Wales I may have to revert to smoking real cigarettes while I'm there just to annoy them.

      I suspect we would be astonished if we were to smoke a Number 6 now to discover how truly horrible they were. Mind you, they were only 3/6 a packet, if I remember correctly (there's something about having to scramble together pennies to afford your fags that makes the price stick in one's head). Used to be the No.1 cigarette in the UK, but new EU fag pricing rules in 1978 resulted in a mere 5p price difference between them and B&H King Size, and No.6 all but disappeared, finally coughing to a halt in 1993. I moved on to Benson & Hedges as soon as my salary rose to a dizzy £2000 a year - those beautiful gold boxes made every cigarette a special occasion. They now cost £8.61 for 20 in Tesco.

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  3. Nice post your blog. Thanks to many information get this blog. If you find same related blog or electronic cigarette so visit today.

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    1. Welcome you Hency and nice words for this blog many information. Goodbye you.

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  4. We have recently had a new garden fence erected. As a result, the back gate looks downright slummy. I have prevailed upon Julian, one of the thought leaders on the fencing job, to paint our coat of arms on the gate – a tipped Virginia fumant with Mars bar, and the family motto entwined with delicate wisps of smoke, cravena

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    1. Sounds very distinguished. I must have tried Craven A at some stage, but can't remember what they were like - old fashioned by 1965, I suspect. I did once spend a few weeks on Capstan Full Strength trying to prove how manly I was, but even as a callow youth I could tell that this was the cigarette-smoking equivalent of injecting heroin and reverted to No. 6. Passing Clouds were an occasional treat, mainly for that fabulous pink box, but definitely not a manly brand. I've decided that when I'm I'm too old to care I'm going to start smoking a pipe and sod the stained teeth.

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