Quick update to an earlier post about the vaping policy at next month's Global Forum on Nicotine.

To recap, the organisers have banned vaping in all plenary and parallel sessions (ie most of the conference) because last year "non-vaping delegates" at this self-styled "vaper-friendly" event complained that they felt "trapped" by the "fog bank" of vapour.

You couldn't make it up.

Vapingpoint Liz mentioned it on her blog and received the following comments from people who were actually there.

Liam Bryan (Vapers In Power) wrote:

I was there last year, Liz, I obviously wasn't in all the sessions (some run concurrently) but in all the rooms I was in there was no "fog bank". The vapers, myself included, were only occasionally vaping and most of us had chosen older devices which don't produce much vapour anyway. I had my mini nautilus for the conference events for instance. I think whoever complained would have felt "trapped" by any amount of visible exhale!

Peter Stigaard wrote:

I was in Warsaw last year too and I also didn't witness banks of fog or clouds of vapours. People were taking quiet puffs during the sessions/plenaries and during breaks people had a vape in the conference lobby. Making a blanket ban on vaping will only result in the consumers not turning up for the GFN this year, I'm sad to say.

Intriguingly David Dorn (Vaper Trails TV) added:

It wasn't "friends" who complained ...

So if it wasn't 'pro-vaping' advocates who complained, who was it and why have the organisers rolled over to meet their demands when eye witness reports claim there was no "fog bank" of vapour.

Who exactly is running this conference and why have they imposed a policy on vaping that can only undermine the argument that vaping should be allowed in pubs and other enclosed public places.

Meanwhile Liz (a vaper) has posted a further piece about GFN, The Global Nicotine Forum – an inconvenient truth.

Liz notes that the "whole conference" is really about stopping people smoking:

The only talk that would interest ME is on the last day. 'Are vaping advocates throwing smokers under the bus by making alliances with public health?'.

In my cynical way, I would assume that after a whole conference of all sorts of academics and public health employees offering their nuggets to a crowd of like-minded people, the answer will be "no".

Oh Liz, that is cynical.

You're absolutely right, though. The answer will undoubtedly be a loud and indignant 'NO!' and afterwards everyone will skip off to the bar, swathed in a warm glow, happy to have convinced themselves (if no-one else) that they are not throwing smokers under a bus.

Update: On the subject of a "fog bank" at GFN15 my colleague Rob Lyons, who was there representing Action on Consumer Choice, tells me:

"I wasn't aware of one, no. I was sat in the middle most of the time so there might have been a few sub-ohmers sat at the back puffing away more voluminously. But it certainly didn't affect the plenary room as a whole nor the workshop room I was in."

That new vaping policy is beginning to look, at best, ridiculous. At worst ... I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.