It's Not About Health In Italy Either

Just two weeks ago, I wrote about how the French had gone off message and admitted that tobacco control has nothing to do with health.

The French government could be set to ban the use of electronic cigarettes in public places and at work because of health precautions, it emerged on Monday. The ban threat comes as the nicotine-filled ‘vaporisers’ experience a boom in sales in France.

This blog's official France-based official theologian commented at the time that a truly bizarre debate was going on over there.

I did read or hear that it was because people with visible e-cigarettes 'do not set a very good example' to the general public.

How naughty of them to disobey their masters like errant schoolkids, eh?

Bans are needed to "protect workers"? Pah! That Trojan horse is long gone.

Well, now it is becoming a European epidemic of idiocy. Italy has also come out of the closet and decided the coast is clear enough to admit health justification is nothing but a sham.

Rome: The Italian health ministry's top advisory body has recommended a ban on the smoking of electronic cigarettes in public places and their sale to pregnant women and minors. 

The recommendation by the ministry's Superior (?) Health Council came after France's Health Minister Marisol Touraine said she was planning similar restrictions.

So the Italian government is also either run by idiots or driven by wads of cash in pharma industry brown envelopes, then (As an aside, I don't believe I've ever seen the word 'superior' used in more undeserving context!).

Such a shame after visual evidence that Italy's emerging e-cig market was making great strides during their Six Nations match against, yes, the French in February (click to enlarge).

The advertising hoardings say "Fumare Digitale" or, electronic cigarettes

How dare 'Smokie's' rub the Italian government's nose in it, eh? Something obviously had to be done about the impudent upstarts.

We are living through significant times. One day, history will view utterly incompetent policies like these in the same way we laugh at the stupidity of medieval quacks.