Tobacco control freaks
Wednesday, July 20, 2016 at 11:00 Public Health England is urging businesses to provide vaping rooms so vapers won't have to stand outside with the smokers and their nasty little cancer sticks.
Personally I've no problem with vaping rooms. Like smoking rooms (outlawed) this should be a matter for individual businesses.
What's more interesting is that PHE is also suggesting that workers who vape should be allowed additional breaks to top up their nicotine levels:
Vaping provides a generally lower blood nicotine level and takes longer to reach a desired level, requiring frequent interim top-ups,” PHE said in the guidelines for employers. “This difference should be taken into account, particularly when developing policies for workplaces.”
Yesterday the Scottish Sun invited Forest to respond. They also contacted vaping advocate Linda Bauld (currently on holiday in Canada) possibly because they thought we would take opposite positions - Linda in favour, Forest against (on account of it being 'unfair' to smokers who have to go outside).
I explained that our position on vaping at work is exactly the same as our attitude to smoking. Ultimately it should be a matter for the employer.
I did however query whether fellow workers would appreciate vapers being given extra breaks.
We were close to deadline so after a quick chat I sent the following response:
"Not all smokers wish to quit and their right to smoke outside during legitimate work breaks must be respected.
"But if employers want to encourage employees to quit smoking it makes sense to provide rooms where they can vape in comfort without having to stand outside with the smokers.
"Non-smokers might draw the line at allowing vapers additional breaks but in many ways it's no different to allowing people to have additional coffee breaks.
"What matters to any business is how effective you are as an employee. If you produce your best work by being allowed to smoke, vape or consume caffeine at regular intervals that's a matter for you and your employer.
"E-cigarettes are arguably the best smoking cessation tool ever invented because they mimic the act of smoking in a way that no other stop smoking aid can match.
"Ultimately, though, this is a matter for individual employers who must be allowed to devise a policy on vaping that best suits their business and the interests of all members of staff."
I don't expect them to use more than one or two sentences but it's an issue that I'm sure will run and run.
In the meantime it's worth noting - again - how public health groups are progressively taking control of vaping behaviour to the extent that they are now issuing 'guidelines' to employers.
There are some, I'm sure, who will welcome such initiatives as evidence of a more liberal approach by public health towards nicotine.
Perhaps it is.
What shouldn't be forgotten however is that these guidelines are simply the latest stage in a hugely illiberal tobacco control strategy designed to force adults to quit smoking.
As readers know (because I've repeated it often enough), Forest embraces e-cigarettes and other harm reduction products because we believe in choice, but a truly liberal society is one that accommodates those who want to smoke whilst educating consumers about the relative risks of using e-cigarettes, combustibles etc without hyperbole or scaremongering.
Btw, I notice that PHE isn't liberal enough to suggest that people might be allowed to vape at their desk or in any other communal area. Oh no, there has to be a separate vaping room with vapers "permitted " additional breaks.
Guidelines, regulations, legislation. However you look at it, they really are control freaks.
Reader Comments (4)
Another example of unwarranted totalitarian social control by the prohibitionists. Both vaping and smoking should be allowed indoors (in separate areas if the property owner desires) since there is virtually no health risk to others from either.
Completely agree with you, Vinny
The main problem is that in 2005 the bums on the green benches decided SHS was a health risk and should be banned from indoor public places. Everything else springs from that one thing. Disprove that and all else falls. How do we go about showing it isn't? Any ideas? Prove a negative?
The only thing I can think of is to show it was an overkill
I feared they would be used to beat smokers with. No doubt vapers couldn't care less if their use stigmatises us further. More and more I am becoming anti vaping and this is why.
Mixed feelings about this. I strongly suspect that there’s more to this than meets the eye, and certainly more than the “helping smokers quit” line touted by Public Health England. I wonder whether in fact the logic behind this is a desire to keep vapers and smokers apart. After all, nothing focusses the mind on an unfairness quite like being personally subject to it. So, for vapers to be exiled to the outdoors in the same way as smokers are is quite a dangerous situation for PHE (and their hangers-on). Because then you’ve got two groups subject to the same unfairness and – shock! horror! – many of them are (as they keep telling us) non-smokers! And the last thing that the anti-smoking movement wants – in fact the one thing which scares the life out of them - is the idea of smokers garnering any meaningful support from non-smokers. They know only too well that down through history, unfairness and prejudice has only ever been stopped or reversed once those falling victim to it are spoken up for, loudly and determinedly, by those who are not. Hence the reason why Tobacco Control has always gone to such pains to ensure that smokers remain isolated from other people.
It’s true, of course, that many vapers are as anti-smoking as any Tobacco Control stooge, but there’s a risk that by being hurled outside with the smokers, where, of course, they will chat and get to know each other and, no doubt, commiserate with each other about the unfairness of it all, vapers may gradually feel more united with smokers and start to adopt a fairer attitude and come to realise that we are fighting a common enemy which needs both groups – smokers and vapers - to unite to defeat it. It’s true, of course, that there are some vapers out there who already recognise this, but by treating both groups the same, the anti-smokers are running a risk that even more vapers will start to realise it, too. Perhaps PHE feels that this risk to their cherished anti-smoker crusade is too great to allow them to give into the tempting prospect of a bit of gratuitous vaper-bashing, no matter how satisfying that might be in the short term!
Then, of course, there’s the “denormalisation” thing. Denormalisation actually took quite a hit with the smoking ban, because it made smokers so much more visible than they had previously been. And vaping, even with a big clunky-looking gadget like most vapers use, does look, from a distance, very like smoking, particularly if the vaper has their back turned. So having vapers and smokers outside in their breaks makes it appear that even more people are smoking than is actually the case! It would actually be – shock! horror! (again) – a step away from the “denormalisation” so carefully nurtured and lovingly anticipated over the last few decades.
As I say. More than meets the eye. And, as usual, it’s certainly not about health.