Monday 26 August 2013

Midlands Marvels

It's more than likely that these pages will be sparse in the coming days as we Puddlecotes are on our hols. However - especially for Junican - I must report some encouraging e-cig sightings on our travels so far.

A couple with two kids vaping what looked like eGo Twists while driving a weathered red car through a safari park next to us; a woman throwing out some impressive vapour from a cig-alike at a theme park yesterday; and - most impressive of all this afternoon - a forty-something couple using tank systems in the gardens of Shakespeare's birthplace while watching actors taking requests for favourite passages ... just before we adjourned to a pub garden where, out of the six occupied tables, the tally was two with smokers, two with non-smokers and two with a combined total of four vapers. One even being advanced enough to be using a 'mod' which he stood on the table between puffs.

Now, I see quite a few e-cig users in and around Puddlecoteville, but the Midlands appear to be a thriving hotbed of e-cig revolution activity. Bravo!

What's more, there was no perceivable reaction from anyone in their vicinity - it's like e-cigs are now accepted as just another normal facet of life round here.

Hence, presumably, the recent furious drives to ban them and the accompanying lies and deceit, as reported by the Times today.
Health experts who recommended that the Government tighten the regulation of electronic cigarettes failed to declare their financial interests in Big Pharma’s rival products. 
A panel of academics met twice to discuss licensing e-cigarettes before the medicines regulator decided this summer to classify them as medicines rather than as consumer products. 
Against the wishes of much of the nascent e-cigarette industry, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency ruled that e-cigarettes, which contain liquid nicotine and not tobacco, do not meet safety and quality standards. 
At the meetings held at the MHRA’s London headquarters in May 2011 and January this year, the chairman asked the expert panel to declare any interests. Minutes of the meeting in 2011 obtained by The Times under the Freedom of Information Act show that “no interests were declared by members”. However, some members of the panel worked as consultants for big pharmaceuticals companies and advised on nicotine.
And they try to tell us that the tobacco industry is corrupt? Sheesh.


6 comments:

DP said...

Dear Mr Puddlecote

"Against the wishes of much of the nascent e-cigarette industry, the Medicines and Healthcare
Products Regulatory Agency ruled that e-cigarettes, which contain
liquid nicotine and not tobacco, do not meet safety and quality
standards."


Do not those awfully nice people at MHPRA have to produce proof that something does not meet 'safety and quality standards' before ruling that they don't?

What safety standards do they not meet. What quality standards do they not meet?

They
obviously meet the standards of safety and quality demanded by the
consumers who buy and use these products. Who are those awfully nice
people at the MHPRA
to gainsay the purchasers, who incidentally also pay the salaries of
the said awfully nice people, who seem to be determined to stop them
using a product which is demonstrably safer than smoking cigarettes?

As
you have mentioned before the knowledge of the benefits of e-cigarettes
is well established. By conspiring to ban them, the awfully nice people
at MHPRA
are party to all damages suffered by those who wish to use
e-cigarettes. Since those awfully nice people at ASH consider that the
tobacco companies are guilty of killing their customers, presumably the
ASH folk must think very dimly indeed of the taxpayer-funded MHPRA's attempts to keep people smoking. I mean it's not as if taxpayer-funded ASH are against e-cigarettes, is it?

DP

Midlands Vaping said...

Was it us lol

Dick_Puddlecote said...

Most certainly one (or six, actually) of your catchment area. Top bombing. :)

Dick_Puddlecote said...

I make you correct, DP. I said as much myself in the article below.

http://dickpuddlecote.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/the-date-of-guilty-knowledge-is-past.html

Junican said...

Funny you should mention it at this precise time, DP, since I saw a couple using eigs outside me local only this Friday night gone. Oddly enough, I have seen people using them inside as well, though somewhat surreptitiously. Having said that, how else do you use one? Take out of pocket, puff, put back in pocket (substitute handbag for ladies).

Starship Fighter said...

Like yourself I am extremely encouraged by the number of vapers who I see in Sheffield and Chesterfield, the two towns in which I spend the majority of my time. The numbers have really accelerated since numerous enterprising individuals have opened shops dedicated to e-cigarettes. There are at least half a dozen in Sheffield and three or four in the much smaller Chesterfield. I have visited as many as I can and every owner with whom I have been able to talk is reporting a roaring trade. I remain optimistic that we are reaching a tipping point; every time I use my Tesla mod in public it draws in several interested smokers or vapers, many of whom might just want to discuss their own devices and experiences with vaping but also those smokers curious about making the switch. Truly we are becoming mainstream. For a couple of years e-cigs were a very niche and appealed to a more intellectual personality as you were required to do much of the research yourself via the net. However in recent times I have noted how their use has blossomed amongst the sort of people who don't spend their time on the Internet; the traditional pub-going working man. I know the Government doesn't give even half a shit about them in general, but by Christ there are a lot of them! I haven't really done more than a couple of letters to Clegg, my MP, but I believe that continued advocacy amongst ordinary smokers to be the duty of every committed vaper. I intend to xontinue to do my part.