Public authorities in Scotland ban e-cigarettes in public buildings

This escalation of banning e-cigarettes does look odd, doesn't it? They are even banned in some outdoor areas around public buildings.

The fear seems to be as expressed by a Glasgow health board spokesperson: 

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said: “The use of e-cigarettes in NHS grounds perpetuates the idea smoking is acceptable in public areas.”

But this approach seems very unscientific. E-cigarette use is not smoking. People are using e-cigarettes instead of smoking, either on a selective basis or completely. After being told more times than most of us have had hot dinners that there is nothing better for your health than stopping smoking, the device people are turning to in their thousands is now facing significant restrictions, and EU legislation still hovers over them.

The only thing that needs to be done is regulation. Tobacco is regulated, and all consumer products require some regulatory oversight to protect consumers. There is no call whatever for a ban.

Health authorities who ban e-cigarettes because they make users look like smokers should take a good hard look at themselves. Having derided tobacco companies for the alleged health records of smoking for over 30 years, it seems perverse to ban the use of a product that can eliminate the most hazardous elements of smoking, namely the absorption of tar and smoke. If smokers can use this product at less than the cost of smoking, they may not return to smoking.

Anti-smokers have little to be complacent about. Illicit tobacco is becoming more plentiful on our streets, and can remove any price advantage that the less harmful product has.

Scottish public authorities need to get a grip on themselves. They provide a valuable service but they are not (or should not be) empowered to pronounce what recreational products the public should find 'acceptable'; or to assert ownership of 'public areas'.

Plain packaging may not work, but that's not the point

Can't say I have ever been a fan of Ian Paisley (whichever), but the logic in this piece is risible.

Maybe plain packaging on fags isn't going to stop them being bought. Maybe it will make smuggling easier if all branding is removed. I don't know. But that's not the point.

Of course it's the point. The author admits that the policy may not have its desired effect (indeed may have an adverse health outcome) once passed into law. But her message is that this doesn't matter: what matters is being politically on-message and knocking tobacco companies because 'reputable person' knows how bad smoking is.

But Nuala, really, what is the point of an anti-tobacco policy that assists the sale of illegal and even less safe cigarettes? What kind of a health outcome is that?

She argues that a campaign based on threats to jobs could be unethical because if all jobs mattered people could get paid to dangle babies over cliff tops for fun. Somehow laws are made to prevent such unethical forms of employment:

But that's why we have laws, isn't it? To impose a consensus about what's acceptable and what's not, on the general public.

That's not my understanding of a law: this is as much as to say that the government is there to tell us what to think, and tell us what our values should be. Impose a consensus? Can anyone advise where she learned that? Is it recognisable legal theory?


Nuala's conclusion?

Smoking belongs in the past. God help people who are addicted, it's hard to give up. But that doesn't mean we should keep making the things and profiting from another generation's misery. 

Having just declared that a growth in illicit sales doesn't really matter, this line of argument is hard to swallow.     Nuala clearly has gripes with the influence of Paisley when she mentions the burning of Irish flags (she may have a point there), but you don't need to support Paisley to realise that this is totalitarian nonsense of the first order.