[W]e are proud to say that we are the first stop smoking service in the country to officially announce that we are ‘e-cig friendly’.Ouch! That's gotta sting the anti-tobacco luddites who are desperately pretending that e-cigs are useless and are making up fake dangers to put people off.
Although we can’t actually supply e-cigarettes, we have listened to the many people who want to change their smoking behaviour. E-cigs are becoming increasingly popular, and we want to learn more about how effective they are in helping people stop smoking for good.
But it seems to have sparked off others to follow suit. Yesterday, 'Julia' from Hampshire's version made enquiries on the UK Vapers forum.
Hi, I am a service manager with the NHS stop smoking service in Hampshire.
We are trying to find out more about vaping and the products used to improve the support that we can offer to smokers who want to quit tobacco with an e cig / vaper.
I have read all the academic reports and papers on E cigs but we don't even understand the language used! How do the 'kits' vary, what the differences are between the products for the user and so on? Most of us used to smoke and know about tobacco but we have not used E Cigs.
If you are in Hampshire and could come in for a chat (office in Aldershot, Fareham or Ashurts) - we promise no lectures, group hugs or any of the strange things you may think the NHS get up to! Or perhaps we can visit you in a coffee shop where E Cigs are allowed to be used as they are not permitted on NHS sites at present?
We have heard about the great work done in Leicester with UK vapers - can we do this in Hampshire too?So interested are they in these "useless" devices that they are leaving the comfort zone of NHS premises - because the caring, sharing NHS has forced them to - in order to see what all the fuss is about.
On the same day, Hertfordshire announced on Twitter that they're looking kindly on e-cigs too.
@danmacdonald73 Yes. We will be training our staff to be able to include ecigs in our approach to quitting and cutting down smoking
— Jim McManus (@jimmcmanusph) March 27, 2014
@danmacdonald73 Our view-enough evidence ecigs no more harmful than NRT. We will develop policies for folk using ecigs to quit tobacco.
— Jim McManus (@jimmcmanusph) March 27, 2014
Common sense in spades, despite the fact that - as evidenced by Hampshire's admission of a ban on NHS property - the official health lobby line is to demonise them as demanded by pharmaceutical industry diktat.
Meanwhile, the tobacco control industry continues to fabricate misinformation and encourage scare stories against vaping, and has harried and whined so much over the years that it's still official MHRA policy to insist they are regulated as medicines from 2016.
There used to be a bunch of idiots who thought King Canute was so powerful that he could turn back the tide. The modern equivalent are haranguing the MHRA to do the same in resisting a product which will inevitably engulf them due to people power and overwhelming approval.
When even stop smoking services are implicitly laughing in their faces, it really is time for tobacco control and the MHRA to swallow their pride; give up their laughable crusade; and face reality.
SEE ALSO: Why e-cigs could be the saviour of ASH at the Free Society, published after I originally penned the article above.
