Further to my previous post, which highlighted the fact that ASH is calling for a ban on the promotion and display of e-cigarettes in shops, the Independent today reports that:
In a survey of 12,271 adults carried out for ASH by YouGov, 43% thought vaping was as dangerous or more dangerous than smoking cigarettes.
Hazel Cheeseman, the increasingly high profile deputy CEO of ASH, said:
“The Government has backed a vaping strategy as its path to reduce rates of smoking, but this approach will be undermined if smokers don’t try vapes due to safety fears, or stop vaping too soon and revert to smoking.
“The Government must act quickly to improve public understanding that vaping poses a fraction of the risk of smoking.”
Forgive me, but I’m confused.
On the one hand, ASH is worried that the Government’s vaping strategy will be undermined if smokers don’t switch because of concerns about the safety of vapes.
On the other, they are lobbying the Government to ban the promotion and display of e-cigarettes in shops.
I get that the latter is designed primarily to stop children seeing and therefore buying vapes.
But if you hide e-cigarettes behind shutters, like tobacco, what message would that send out to consumers, young and old, including current smokers, about the safety of e-cigarettes?
You can’t have it both ways. If ASH, and the Government, believe e-cigarettes are a much safer alternative to combustible cigarettes, then you have to permit the display of e-cigarettes in shops.
Anything else would be like taking a shotgun and shooting yourself in the foot.
The irony is that while ASH is bleating about the Government’s vaping strategy being undermined by a lack of public understanding about the relative risks of smoking and vaping, it’s the tobacco control lobby, led by ASH, that could do more harm by railroading the Government into a measure that will almost certainly be counter-productive in terms of smokers switching to vapes.
The problem is that the knee-jerk reaction of campaigners like ASH is to ban, ban, and ban again. Demanding prohibition of one sort or another is their default setting and they seem powerless to turn it off.
That said, it makes me happy (and hopeful) that they’re not as clever as they think they are.
See: More than 40% of smokers think vaping is more harmful than cigarettes (Independent)
PS. The lunacy is not restricted to ASH. See also: We need “much heavier restrictions” on vapes, says former health minister (New Statesman)