Some thoughts prompted by last week’s Budget.
Yes, the vape tax is stupid and sends the wrong message about the risk of vaping, but will former smokers who now vape really go back to smoking tobacco, as vaping advocates claim?
The answer, quite simply, is no.
After all, how weak-willed do you have to be that, having stopped smoking by switching to vapes, you then revert to what is still a substantially more expensive and riskier product when the price of vaping goes up?
You may conceivably quit vaping, but why would you go back to a much more expensive habit? Unfortunately this is the type of non sequitur vaping advocates love to advance.
Exactly the same argument is used in relation to a ban on disposable vapes. Prohibit them, we are told, and vapers will go back to smoking and more lives will be lost. Allegedly.
Look, I'm strongly opposed to a ban on single use vapes, but not for that reason because I simply don’t accept it.
Prohibition of disposable vapes might discourage existing smokers from switching because they are convenient and easy to use (much like cigarettes, in fact), but why would anyone revert to a product that, as I say, is vastly more expensive and far more harmful, potentially, when other options, including rechargeable vapes, are still widely available on the high street?
It doesn't make sense but it's typical of the 'vapers as victims' narrative that vaping advocates often promote.
One of the worst is that vapers cannot be expected to share an outdoor smoking area with, heaven forbid, smokers because the smell of tobacco smoke, and the sight of people smoking, might send them back into the arms of their former love.
Oh, please!!!
A similar argument was made by some ex-smokers ahead of the public smoking ban.
It was said that smoking should be banned in every pub in the country because it wasn’t fair to expose ex-smokers to other people smoking because the temptation to smoke might be too much for them.
I remember being interviewed alongside former smokers who made exactly that point, but it’s a bit like banning alcohol in pubs because the urge to drink might be too much for a recovering alcoholic.
The temptation argument may have some validity for the very weak-willed, but it’s not sufficient reason to ban the public consumption of alcohol, or tobacco.
If you’re an alcoholic or a former smoker it’s up to you, not the rest of society, to avoid situations where you might be encouraged to drink or smoke. Own your addiction, don’t expect others to change their lifestyle too.
But back to vaping.
I’m opposed to most public vaping bans, which seem unnecessary to me, but if you’re against excessive restrictions on vaping I would suggest that it’s in your interest to oppose excessive restrictions on smoking too because one will inevitably lead to the other.
Every time I write about this I seem to annoy a handful of vapers who insist they support smokers’ rights too. Unfortunately there’s not a lot of evidence to support this.
Many people who used to be outspoken opponents of anti-smoking legislation are now virtually mute on the subject, but woe betide anything that threatens their new love, vaping.
Moreover, while there are some vapers who are opposed to excessive regulations on tobacco and smoking, I challenge anyone to name any pro-vaping organisation that has EVER publicly opposed any anti-smoking measure, whether it be smoking bans, plain packaging, the ban on menthol cigarettes, or the generational tobacco ban.
I’m sorry, but I can’t think of a single one.
They may think they’re being clever or politically prudent, but I am convinced that, long-term, it’s self-defeating, and the moral cowardice of not standing up for adults who prefer to smoke is one of the reasons I find some members of the vaping lobby more than a bit pathetic.
The truth is, the pro-vaping argument will never be won on health grounds alone. Even though there is currently little evidence to suggest that vaping is a serious threat to health, history tells us that it’s irrelevant.
I guarantee that sufficient 'evidence' will be found, sooner or later, that will make redundant all the arguments about vaping being 95 per cent less harmful than smoking tobacco.
At that point, vaping advocates who have focussed exclusively on the health benefits of vaping (compared to smoking) will have nowhere to turn. They will be up a cul-de-sac of their own making.
If, on the other hand, they also promoted the freedom of choice argument (the same argument Forest has used for 45 years to defend an adult’s right to smoke and, more recently, vape), they would at least have a consistent and coherent position to fall back on.
That position, to be clear, is this: whatever the health risks of smoking or vaping, as long as consumers are informed about the potential and relative risks of either habit, adults must be free to practise either habit without punitive restrictions and taxation, or, worse, prohibition.
The same argument applies to drinking alcohol, consuming sugar, or eating meat, fatty foods and dairy products – and anything else that might conceivably be 'bad' for us over a long period.
Instead, vaping advocates have put their entire case in one basket - the one that says vaping is significantly ‘safer’ than smoking.
I don’t dispute that argument, by the way, but remember the 'debate' about passive smoking?
To this day I would contend that, based on the evidence, the risk of harm from environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) has been greatly exaggerated and still doesn’t justify the comprehensive public smoking bans that have swept the world.
Despite that we lost the public and political battle because we faced a tsunami of 'evidence', much of it unsubstantiated or anecdotal, and most of it statistically insignificant in terms of risk, but none of that mattered. It was the perception of harm that counted, not the scientific reality.
Meanwhile organisations like the World Vapers Alliance continue to talk openly of ‘beating’ smoking, as if smoking is the enemy, ignoring the inconvenient truth that millions of adults enjoy the habit and don’t want to quit or switch to an alternative nicotine product.
(This US-based organisation was at it again only last week, with a press release commenting on the UK Government’s proposed vape tax headlined, 'The UK’s announced increased vaping tax jeopardises the country’s success in beating smoking'.)
Sadly we’re living in an age where governments – aided and abetted by a ravenous public health industry that sees excise duty on vaping products as a future source of income for its work – want to create the impossible, a risk free society in which everyday decisions about our private health and welfare are taken not by individual citizens but by politicians and faceless bureaucrats.
To justify government intervention, the anti-smoking lobby argues that ‘helping’ smokers quit will save the taxpayer money, but will it?
Not for one second do I believe the claims that smoking costs society in Britain 15, 50 or, even more absurdly, 150 billion pounds a year.
The only figures that matter are the estimated cost of treating smoking-related illnesses on the NHS (said to be £2.5b annually but almost certainly exaggerated, like everything else), and the recorded annual income from tobacco duty and VAT - around £9-11 billion a year.
Viewed dispassionately, smokers are therefore a net benefit to the taxpayer, a fact that should never be forgotten by government, anti-smoking campaigners, and vapers who will one day have to pick up the tab as revenue from tobacco declines thanks to a thriving generational ban black market allied to Britain's self-imposed, and self-defeating, 'smoke-free' status.
In fact, to those complaining about the Chancellor's vape tax, all I can say is ... you ain't seen nothing yet.
This is just the start of a cash grab on your habit and the closer government gets to its smoke-free ambition the more vapers will be forced to pay.