E-cigarettes should be banned from school premises to stop children assuming they are safe, heads say.
Head teachers' union NAHT is worried pupils may want to copy parents they see using them in the playground.Personally, I'd always assumed products were safe until conclusively proven otherwise in this modern huge state world we have to suffer - especially those regulated by 21 different EU directives - but it's clear that the recent BBC-led barrage of tobacco control industry misinformation has done its job, with e-cigs now considered evil and not fit for use in some public areas.
I'm very surprised, though, that this kind of attitude has been so easy to cultivate in such a short space of time. You see, even tobacco smoking is only now - after decades of denormalisation - being treated as a pastime which kids should be prevented from seeing.
For example, Chippenham Council recently installed a 'voluntary ban' on smoking in parks where children might see and also plans to bring it in for their High Street. We're way beyond the passive smoking excuse now, and beyond the looking glass into what smoking bans were always all about (hint: it's not health).
BBC Wiltshire held a discussion about this subject which I think you'll enjoy. The whole piece can be heard here, but below is the meat of a debate between Fiona Andrews of Smokefree South West and Dave Atherton of Freedom 2 Choose.
You see, Dave asked if Fiona thought e-cigs should also be included in this "think of the chiiildren" ban, to which she had no answer except to mutter her industry's weak and corrupt weasel words. She did think, though, that the initiative was perfectly acceptable because, I kid you not, we already ban dogs in case they shit in the play area. Seriously, it's less than five minutes long, do have a listen.
Note also that kids seeing a beer can is now considered unacceptable, but anyone suggesting that a similar principle might be applied to fizzy drinks - you know, containing "sugar, the new tobacco" - is being an alarmist. Like worrying about kids merely seeing smokers or vapers isn't, of course. Perish the thought!
Now, I can understand a bovine public falling for this after being bombarded by fake charities, trouser-filling state-funded hysterics and daft cranks bearing junk studies and lie-ridden sound bites for years. But with e-cigs, we're talking a matter of months between most people not having a clue as to what they are to now buying into an urgent situation whereby kids should never even see one.
The one thread running through all this is the state. Because, as we see from the BBC article yesterday, our fuckwitted overlords in Westminster seem to have made their minds up already.
The Department for Education said: "The government plans to introduce legislation that will ban the sale of e-cigarettes to children under 18 and make it illegal for adults to buy cigarettes for them. This will help parents protect their children from the dangers of smoking."The wording in these releases is pored over by civil servants so that each utterance is crystal clear in its intention. If they wanted to differentiate their crusade against smoking with the approach to e-cigs, they would have done so. But they didn't. They were both lumped together in an all-encompassing comment which implied that banning sales of e-cigs to kids was part of helping "parents protect their children from the dangers of smoking".
The mythical gateway theory - for which there is no evidence and which isn't worrisome anyway - has been swallowed hook line and sinker by the state.
And when the state has made its mind up, those they fund will parrot likewise. Because vapers are just smokers who haven't fallen into line yet, according to ASH's latest accounts (page 6).
Fiona Andrews (see more of her nonsense here) was no more able to deny e-cigs are to be included in a vindictive, pointless, evidence-free voluntary outdoor smoking ban than she would be to tell her NHS funders to withhold her wages for the good of the country's debt problems. Preferable that she finance her new kitchen and bill the public than exhibit honesty and integrity, eh? She's not in the game for her health you know nor, it would seem, anyone else's.
Likewise, it's little wonder that state-adoring unionised teachers have been terrorised into calling for bans on harmless e-cigs being used by parents - parents, for chrissakes, the employers of fucking teachers - in front of children.
Smoker, vaper, it matters not. Shut the gate on your way out, won't you doggies? Just remember to leave your taxes behind, they're needed to kick you harder the next time you try to exercise your freedom of choice.
H/T to Tony W for the recording
