Postscript to yesterday's piece about the New Nicotine Alliance webinar that featured two confirmed smokers and smoking cessation campaigner (and NNA vice-chair) Louise Ross.
One of the smokers, Liz Barber, says that the NNA cut her comments about Deborah Arnott, CEO of ASH, from the video posted on YouTube "possibly because I named her joint equal as my most loathed people ever, the other being a certain female Tory PM."
According to Liz:
I also made the point that ASH, having created and ENCOURAGED the antipathy towards smokers, have only themselves to blame that pub, cafe owners and non/anti-smokers make no distinction between smokers and vapers or cigarette smoke and e-cig vapour, which is why so few premises will allow them inside, which is why so many like myself simply see no point in even considering them.
I’ve made this point myself, and not just about ASH.
Every vaping advocate and public health professional who has ever fuelled the public’s fear of passive smoking must take responsibility for the many vaping bans that have been introduced in recent years.
Having created an almost pathological intolerance of tobacco smoke among some people, it was inevitable that vaping bans would follow because anything resembling tobacco smoke was bound to be an issue.
Vaping advocates will argue there is no justification on health grounds to ban vaping indoors but that’s not the point. As soon as smoking was banned indoors the die was cast.
When ‘smoke free’ pubs and cafes became the norm, non-smokers - even the more tolerant ones - suddenly became extremely sensitive to even a wisp of tobacco smoke, including the smell.
Then along came vapers. Having just got used to a ‘smoke free’ environment is it any wonder that many non-smokers don’t want it 'polluted' by vapour or the smells widely associated with vaping?
The idea that we should all work and socialise in a sterile, risk-free environment is nonsense of course, but who is responsible for this unhappy state of affairs? I’ll tell you - many of the activists now advocating the use of e-cigarettes as a quit smoking aid.
Unfortunately vaping advocates prefer not to be reminded of this inconvenient truth, let alone discuss it.
Update: NNA chairman Martin Cullip writes:
Sorry to burst your bubble, Simon, but absolutely nothing was cut from the webinar footage. Those comments by Liz came afterwards in a completely separate Zoom meeting post-webinar chat with me and our tech director and as such were not recorded because ... they were not part of the webinar.
Thanks, Martin. Happy to put the record straight.