According to Euractive, the EU wants to ban smoking and vaping in outdoor areas. Quelle surprise!
The story followed an exclusive report in Euronews that revealed that:
The European Commission will recommend smoking bans in cafe terraces, bus stops, and zoos, and plans also cover nicotine-free products …
I’m not going to labour this but I’ve always said that politicians, unelected bureaucrats, and the public health lobby will never be satisfied with a ban on smoking in public places (indoors and outdoors).
The next target would be vaping - e-cigarettes and heated tobacco.
Despite that, the vaping industry and most vaping advocates have chosen, repeatedly, not to get involved in opposing public smoking bans or say anything that might align themselves with those smokers who (God forbid) don’t want to quit.
The irony is that by remaining silent when plans to ban smoking in outdoor public places are being drawn up, they are inevitably bringing forward the day when vaping will be outlawed in public places too.
Although I support vaping as an alternative to smoking, and will continue to defend vaping in public places as a matter of principle, my contempt for those pro-vaping activists who choose to sit behind their keyboards and say nothing about the latest anti-smoking measures is growing by the day.
Even writing this raises my blood pressure, which is high enough already (two pills a day!).
Perhaps they think the use of e-cigarettes and heated tobacco will escape prohibition, but the evidence suggests otherwise.
Even though vaping has not been banned by the UK government in indoor public places, many businesses - including pubs and restaurants - have chosen to ban it anyway, so it’s clear that one ban leads to another, and the same will apply to outdoor spaces as well.
It’s clear too that the overwhelming majority of vaping activists are so myopic, or convinced by their own self-righteousness (many having quit smoking for a ‘safer’ alternative), that they will never publicly oppose a single anti-smoking measure.
In my eyes that makes them anti-smoking and no amount of protestation that they aren’t will persuade me otherwise. Their silence speaks volumes.
What their lack of response to any anti-smoking measure really amounts to, though, is a total betrayal of the one thing many of them claim to support - freedom of choice.
Today, freedom of choice is defined by vaping advocates as the freedom to choose to switch from smoking to reduced risk products. (Restricting flavours, for example, or banning disposable vapes, is an attack on that freedom.)
The idea however that the freedom to choose to smoke is worth defending as well is anathema to most of them.
(I’ve written about this many times, so apologies for repeating myself, but occasionally I need to get it off my chest, and this is one of those days.)
Ironically, the Global Tobacco and Nicotine Forum (originally the Global Tobacco Network Forum before it embraced e-cigarettes and other 'innovative' products) takes place in Athens next week, and looking at the list of speakers I can see only one advocate of the right to smoke, and he’s speaking principally as an investment analyst.
I may return to the subject of the GTNF next week, but I’ve covered that many times before too and I’m not sure I can be bothered any more.
Having supported GTNF for more than a decade, travelling around the world to speak on many panels, it’s sad to see an agenda that fails to mention the two major issues currently facing consumers in the UK (a generational tobacco sales ban) and Europe generally (outdoor smoking bans).
Perhaps they will be raised by one or two speakers, but I wouldn't bet on it. Addressing an adult's right to buy combustible tobacco or smoke in public places doesn't seem to be a priority for GTNF these days.
But, hey, why does my opinion matter? Together with Forest I’m only out there – at all times of day and night – fighting these issues, unlike 99 per cent of this year’s speakers.