The Local Government Authority (LGA) wants disposable vapes banned by 2024.
On Saturday the story led the BBC News website (Disposable vapes: Councils call for total ban by 2024) and was reported widely by other media.
ASH, naturally, was prominent among the voices that responded to the LGA, but was I alone in detecting a new and subtle equivocation from their previous position on disposable vapes?
According to deputy CEO Hazel Cheeseman:
"ASH is sympathetic [my emphasis] to calls by local councils and children’s doctors to ban single-use disposable e-cigarettes, but the risk of unintended consequences is too great for us to support a ban."
That's a bit like Forest saying, when the debate about a public smoking ban was at its height:
"Forest is sympathetic to calls to ban smoking in pubs and clubs, but the risk of unintended consequences [eg pub closures and the loss of jobs] is too great for us to support a ban."
Can you imagine?!
Nevertheless, Clive Bates, the former director of ASH and a prominent vaping advocate, was quick to tweet his approval:
The most essential discipline in nicotine and tobacco policymaking is the recognition of trade-offs and unintended consequences. Something you will never hear discussed by anti-vaping activists.
So this is spot on from @HazelCheeseman at @AshOrgUK
👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
Spot on? I read it as ASH having their cake and eating it. On the one hand they say they are opposed to a ban on disposable vapes, but at the same time they are “sympathetic” to the idea.
That doesn't bode well because I’m pretty sure I can remember a time when ASH was sympathetic to the idea of a ban on smoking in restaurants and chose instead to call for a less radical option - more smoke free areas - because taking little steps was a better way to achieve their ultimate ambition of smoke-free public places.
The reality, as I keep saying, is that the long-term goal of ASH and their chums in the tobacco control industry is not a smoke-free future, but a world in which the sale and consumption of all forms of recreational nicotine is severely restricted or, worse, outlawed.
ASH, in my view, are playing the long game. Unlike their trigger happy counterparts in Scotland who, like the LGA, are actively calling for a ban on disposable vapes NOW, ASH at least recognise that disposable vapes have an important role to play if the aim is to encourage adult smokers to quit smoking.
It doesn’t alter the fact, though, that their ultimate ambition is a world in which no-one smokes or vapes, a goal they share with every other Tom, Dick, and Harry in the tobacco control industry.
PS. Talking of the Local Government Association, it’s worth noting that exactly three years ago, in July 2020, the LGA urged the Government to ban smoking in the new outdoor licensed pavement areas that were springing up following the first Covid lockdown.
A combination of forces, including Forest, stopped that from happening, but a new threat to smoking outside pubs and restaurants has recently emerged.
I'll explain more later, but it demonstrates that bad ideas never go away. They merely hibernate until reactivated.