In an interview, Alexander said e-cigarettes are being “used to usurp the smoking ban.”
“It is smoking, is an inhalant and it’s similar to smoking,” said Alexander, chairwoman of the Health Committee. “We don’t know what the ill effects of this are, and it’s still a bother to some people.”Usurp the smoking ban? Similar to smoking? A 'bother'? Is that what is defined as compelling evidence worthy of a comprehensive illiberal ban these days?
Well, yes, Mill be damned. This is just about the extent of justification against e-cigs in enclosed spaces, and is the desperately flimsy reason being promoted globally to ban vaping indoors. Just ask the BMA.
The BMA is worried that the more people start using e-cigarettes the more it will normalise something that looks like smoking. They have called for the ban on smoking in public places to be extended to e-cigarettes.It's utter garbage, of course, but when has anything tobacco controllers say since the late 90s not been?
Yet when it is pointed out to the tobacco control industry that smoking rates have ceased to decline after smoking bans in just about every jurisdiction, we are told that it was never about making people quit, oh no. It was solely to deliver salvation to bar workers, so it was.
I sense some disingenuous mission creep here, and a lot of having cakes and eating them.
I'm also concerned about this sudden lack of concern for bar staff. They were, after all, the poor put-upon people being Sarin-gassed every night which made a comprehensive smoking ban urgently necessary for the UK in 2006. MPs weren't swayed by pub customers being 'bothered', or by shocking tales of smokers putting their hand to their mouth occasionally. It was the mythical menace of dozens of barmaids popping their clogs in the line of duty wot swung it.
Now bans on completely harmless e-cigs are being urged simply because users can get round the smoking ban?
Silly me. I thought it was supposed to be about health.
