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?