Wow. Didn't see that coming.

The Freedom Association has launched a campaign, Freedom to Vape, that will make the "positive case for vaping" as well as promoting "vapers' rights".

Nothing wrong with that. Curiously however the explanation for this anti nanny state campaign could have come straight from the tobacco control handbook:

E-cigarettes have the potential to save millions of lives. Public Health England has urged employers to have separate vaping rooms to encourage staff to move away from smoking cigarettes, and along with the Royal College of Physicians, has said that they are 95% safer than smoking combustible tobacco.

There has been talk of the NHS prescribing e-cigarettes as one of their stop smoking aids. What is the point of banning people from using e-cigarettes, making them go out into the cold, and not only breathe in the cold air, but also the second hand smoke of other smokers? It makes them less likely to quit smoking. Encouraging pubs and restaurants to say that vapers are welcome in their establishment not only gives more freedom to vapers, it is better for public health and encourages more vapers to frequent those businesses.

According to a recent article in the Daily Mail, since e-cigarettes went on sale, they have reduced smoking-related deaths in the US by more than a fifth in those born after their introduction. Let’s encourage their use before either the bureaucrats regulate them into a slow death, or the nanny statists put them to the sword more quickly.

"Encourage their use"? What, by repeating the mantra that if smokers switch to vaping it will save "millions of lives"?

Or suggesting, on the basis of a single report based on "computer modelling", that e-cigarettes have already reduced smoking-related deaths in the US by a fifth?

Or implying that "second hand" smoke, even outside, is a risk to other people's health?

What other fallacies will they promote on behalf of "vapers' rights"?

I like Andrew Allison, the man behind the campaign, but I can't help feeling that The Freedom Association is jumping on the pro-vaping, anti-smoking bandwagon – and there's nothing libertarian about that.

If I'm wrong I'll hold my hands up. For now the jury is out.

PS. The campaign's Twitter account has tweeted this article, E-cigarettes are a critical tool in the war on smoking. Just saying.