Update on the GFN whodunnit mystery
Sunday, May 15, 2016 at 10:18 Further to previous posts we are a little closer to solving the great GFN whodunnit mystery.
A week ago I pointed out that the Global Forum on Nicotine has introduced a vaping policy that bans the use of e-cigarettes in any "plenary or parallel" session.
Last year, apparently, "non-vaping delegates" complained they felt "trapped" by a "fog bank" of vapour.
On Wednesday I highlighted comments by delegates who were actually there. To a man they denied there was excessive vapour in any session.
So who complained and why? Well, thanks to Aaron Biebert, director of the pro-vaping documentary A Billion Lives, we are a little closer to solving the mystery.
Commenting on my earlier post, Aaron wrote:
I was there and it was a European public health leader who complained. Obviously he was under the impression that you could get cancer from the vapor and was uncomfortable with it.
Since the GFN people are trying to bring people from all sides together, it makes sense to be respectful of uninformed people and ask people to vape outside of confined areas.
A little sniffily, he added:
Not worth multiple blog posts about it.
Thanks for shedding light on that, Aaron, but I disagree about the "multiple posts" (including this one!) because it's an important issue, I think.
In fact it's a classic example of the way tobacco control (and public health) works.
I've lost count of the number of regulations that have been introduced because one person gets a bee in their bonnet about something and decides to act.
They start to lobby other people (most of whom are apathetic or unwilling to get involved in a spat about something they have very little interest in) and before you know it the powers that be have rolled over and meakly met the complainant's demands.
From the comments I have read on this blog and elsewhere there was no "fog bank" of vapour at GFN.
Now Aaron is telling us that only one person complained. According to the organisers however the policy was introduced as a result of complaints from "non-smoking delegates" (plural).
Which is true? Perhaps the organisers could enlighten us.
Incredibly the policy prohibits the use of even low-powered devices during plenary sessions. What message does this send to owners of pubs, clubs and other enclosed public spaces when even the organisers of a "vaper-friendly" event like GFN choose to prohibit or severely restrict the use of e-cigarettes indoors?
It's all very well saying it makes sense because the organisers "are trying to bring people from all sides together" but why does everything always have to be on terms set by public health, in this case a single "European public health leader"?
Why concede so much ground on the basis of one complaint? Ask delegates not to use high-powered devices in plenary sessions – that would have made sense – and to use their common sense when using low-powered devices, but banning them? To me that makes no sense at all.
The organisers of GFN had an opportunity to take a stand on behalf of courteous vapers. They could and should have told the complainant that he or she was making a mountain out of a molehill and there is no evidence that vaping in enclosed public places is harmful to anyone.
In any case, that was last year. If only one person complained why have the organisers felt the need to introduce such a policy for 2016? Has the same person has been invited back and this is an attempt to appease him (or her)?
What the organisers have to understand is that appeasement doesn't work. Public health campaigners are never satisfied. They always want more.
No-smoking areas were an attempt to appease those who didn't like drinking or eating next to people who were smoking. They were often empty as smokers and non-smokers co-existed quite happily in the much larger areas where smoking was allowed.
Inevitably this didn't satisfy everyone. Some complained that no-smoking areas didn't work because smoke drifted from one area to another.
Forest patron Antony Worrall Thompson had a solution to this problem. He designated one floor of his restaurant in Notting Hill as the 'smoking' area. The other floor became the 'non-smoking' area. It worked brilliantly and everyone was happy.
Other establishments introduced smoking rooms but public health campaigners complained that when the door to a smoking room was opened a wisp of smoke could drift out. (The horror!)
Whatever compromise or solution was proposed it was never good enough. Eventually, even though 70 per cent of the public in Britain were opposed to a comprehensive smoking ban (figure courtesy of the Office for National Statistics), a small minority of intolerant anti-smoking activists got their way.
And they're still not happy. Having kicked smokers outside, tobacco control campaigners now want to stop people smoking around doorways or directly outside public buildings.
As night follows day the same thing will happen to vaping unless the "pro-vaping" lobby starts defending the practise.
I think that's worth a few blog posts, don't you?
Reader Comments (12)
respectful of uninformed people
No AB, here in Euroshire we refer to such people as 'wilfully ill-informed' or better still 'as thick as s**t'. But you keep on being 'respectful' of such people and let me know how that works out for you , maybe they'll consult with you as to the colour of the Vaping Licence..should it be dreary grey or drab green ?
a supply of gas masks, available upon request, would have been a simpler, less contencious option.
"not worth multiple blog posts"
From someone who is supposed to be fighting for vapers' rights!
With friends like that... !!
Aaron still doesn't understand how these things work - and he's done a F-ing film! Jeez!
*bangs head against wall*
I think that's worth a few blog posts, don't you?
I certainly do, Simon.
"I was there and it was a European public health leader who complained. Obviously he was under the impression that you could get cancer from the vapor and was uncomfortable with it."
Sometimes in this modern world it is so easy not to recognise ancient almost instinctive fears that people need to find a way to justify them.
The old theory of Miasma seems to have been transferred first to secondhand smoke and now even to vapour.
Miasma theory
"In miasma theory, diseases were caused by the presence in the air of a miasma, a poisonous vapour in which were suspended particles of decaying matter that was characterised by its foul smell. The theory originated in the Middle Ages and endured for several centuries. That a killer disease like malaria is so named - from the Italian mala ‘bad’ and aria ‘air’ - is evidence of its suspected miasmic origins.
In 19th-century England the miasma theory made sense to the sanitary reformers. Rapid industrialisation and urbanisation had created many poor, filthy and foul-smelling city neighbourhoods that tended to be the focal points of disease and epidemics. By improving the housing, sanitation and general cleanliness of these existing areas, levels of disease were seen to fall, an observation that lent weight to the theory.
The germ theory of disease emerged in the second half of the 1800s and gradually replaced miasma theory. Although it had been disproved and rejected, the miasma theory’s existence was not without its merits. By removing the causes of bad smells, reformers often inadvertently removed bacteria, the real cause of many diseases."
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/techniques/miasmatheory
But that doesn't mean that old fear has entirely gone.
I hope film director Aaron Beibert keeps his actors safe. Theatrical fog and e cigarette vapour are the same chemical, propylene glycol. PG is also used in asthma inhalers and is the "wet" in wet wipes for baby's bottoms. PG has been tested on rats to industrial levels with no ill effects. I know the Americans have passed PG for internal and external use since 1923.
Here, one restaurateur had two identical restaurants across the road from each other. One was smoking and the other non smoking. Inevitably, one went out of business.
Another restaurant I used to visit had segregation like AWT. After the smoking ban he sold up asap because he knew it wouldn't last without smokers. It has gone through several hands already and is again closed. Without smokers, it cannot maintain trade. Non smokers have more than enough choice already.
As I said on the post you mention, wherever smokers go anti-smokers will follow just so that they can complain about being "forced" to be there.
There was no need for the ban on health grounds and they knew it. Now they have dropped the mask and admit it was about stigmatising smokers and holding us up as abnormal freaks for still smoking.
They will do it to vapers. It is just a question of time. People who excuse their anti-social behaviour like Mr Beibert deserve all they get especially as it is that sort who led us to this point.
There is no satisfying these thugs.
"They could and should have told the complainant that he or she was making a mountain out of a molehill and there is no evidence that vaping in enclosed public places is harmful to anyone.." and, you should add, neither is there evidence that being near tobacco smoke is harmful, if it is unpleasant to a small minority who have a damn big voice.
That is smokerphobia, Simon. These anti-social phobics need to be exposed because of the harm they cause to others and the psychological harm they cause themselves. None of us should pander to these people whether vaper or smoker.
Well I "wasted" MY time on multiple blog posts about the same topic. I found the banning particularly offensive - and VERY sinister. Thanks for wasting YOUR time too. VERY worth it, to me.
The vaping bans should be removed; but then again smoking bans should be eliminated too!
A lose / lose situation. That said I believe that pandering to these people is absolutely the worst thing you can do. Being "reasonable and considerate" reinforces their beliefs, stand your ground and play into their hands. Ban vaping = agreeing there is a risk. Tell them to get stuffed = being painted as selfish ignorant vapers. Given those choices I believe the organisers should remain bullish.
Name and shame the EU public health advisor "Water vapour is harmless, you are supposed to be a health professional, yet your basic understanding is pathetic. You are unfit for office."
Appeasement will never win the fight.
Apparently some people still don't realise that you must never give an inch to the corrupt, their paid zealots, or their useful idiot minions: because once you have done so, you are on a slippery slope from which there is no escape.
There is no such thing as reasonable compromise here. They want it all. Once they have a wedge, they will hammer it mercilessly. Once they have eliminated one threat to their livelihoods, they move on to the next. There will never, ever, be an end to it - so the best policy is to never give an inch, if that is within your capability.
Some people will always just hear the words and never see the strategy.
Vapers, of all people, should know that if someone is, as Beibert states, “uninformed” the sensible thing to do is not, as he suggests, to tacitly agree with their “uninformed-ness” by banning a harmless activity, but instead to take the bull by the horns and “inform” them so that they don’t have to worry about it any more. And where better to do this than at a conference specifically designed to discuss nicotine products, including new ones such as e-cigarettes?
As Bemused says, vapers have been manoeuvred (as predicted on here, but with surprising speed, it seems!) into the classic lose/lose situation that smokers before them faced. As smokers, just like vapers now, we adopted the “appeasement” method – sticking rigidly to our permitted smoking areas or smoking rooms and actively not lighting up anywhere where we knew others wouldn’t like it - and look where that got us. Of course, adopting a different tactic may not work, either, but it’s got to be worth trying, especially – perhaps entirely – because, having adopted the same tactics of “reasonable-ness” as vapers are now applying, with the benefit of hindsight, we can tell vapers with complete certainty that it, err, doesn’t work. This is, in essence, because although the activity they are defending is a different one, the “enemy” that they are fighting are the self same vocal, capnophic minority as ours was. So it’s lunacy for vapers to adopt the same approach as we did, but expect a different result, because they won’t get it. That's part of the game. Have they really not worked that out yet???
Smokers made the mistake of trying to compromise, to be reasonable and to be considerate, but at least we had the excuse of not having had a precedent before us which we could - or should - have learned from. Vapers have no such excuse.