Over the weekend I spoke to several journalists about e-cigarettes.
This is just the tip of the iceberg of time I have spent supporting their use.
I have criticised councils, hospitals and others who want to see them banned, and I have attacked those who want their sale, promotion or manufacture severely restricted.
This evening, via this blog, I read a letter from eleven e-cig associations that allegedly represent the "vapers of Europe".
One of them is the Electronic Cigarette Consumer Association of the United Kingdom, better known as ECCA UK.
The letter calls on MEPs to "remove from the TPD [Tobacco Products Directive] any reference that treats electronic cigarettes as tobacco products".
Fair enough. What bothered me was this:
All recent evidence shows that [electronic cigarettes] should be welcomed and encouraged as a unique opportunity potentially to rid the world of tobacco [my italics].
So that's the end game, is it?
While Forest supports the development of e-cigs and other nicotine delivery systems because we are committed to choice, ECCA, their allies and their cheerleaders in the blogosphere sound more like Tobacco Control every day.
Who could have predicted that?!