'Zealotry plain and simple': e-cigarettes to be banned from Glasgow's Commonwealth Games

So says the Scotsman leader today. The games organisers, after taking advice from the public health community, announced their intention to ban e-cigarettes at the games, having last year announced their intention to ban tobacco.

Public health illuminary Sheila Duffy said:

“The Commonwealth Games will showcase excellence and aim to build a healthy legacy for the next generation. Providing smoke-free environments during events will help deliver on that commitment, and the decision to exclude e-cigarette use should make enforcement more straightforward and also help put the appearance of smoking cigarettes out of fashion.”

And from Health Minister Michael Matheson:

“I welcome this, as e-cigarettes are not regulated, nor have they been proven to be safe and effective.”

This is nonsensical: Matheson's doubts about the 'effectiveness' of smoking are based on the assumption that they are designed as a smoking cessation tool. As an alternative to smoking there is no doubt of their effectiveness. You just put down a roll-up and pick up an e-cig: job done. As to the appearance of smoking cigarettes, these devices appear more like inhalers than cigarettes these days.

These people, especially Duffy, have made a career choice out of the desire to stop people smoking. You would have thought that an anti-smoking sports event would be a lifetime's opportunity to encourage people to quit smoking because 'the single best thing you can do for your health is to stop smoking'. But that's not good enough, because it's not actually enough to stop smoking – you must do so in the approved way.

A Scotsman reader also remarks:

Clever of them to wait until all the tickets have been sold before imposing this ban - and whatever others will be announced before the summer.

For the avoidance of doubt, I don't approve of a smoking ban at the Commonwealth Games either. The public health community only seems to count as public health hazards things that they can blame on the general public: habits, including eating, drinking and smoking. The biggest offender in public health terms is multiple deprivation, and the Commonwealth Games stirred up controversy by accepting sponsorship from ATOS, the company notorious for declaring people of all shades of invalidity fit to work. Clearly there is more to this event than a friendly opportunity to compete internationally in sports, and even the public health community is set on laying unhelpful conditions to participation.

They decide that you will not smoke!

How odd a heading is this?

Health campaigners say smoke-free generation a matter of political will

Political will? The future of smokers is the business of the political class, not of the smokers. Apparently the will of the smoker – of any age – is irrelevant. According to this mindset, once a smoker you are helpless, and you have no will. Most people want to quit, says the political class, and there lies their justication for pouring health budget money away with very little result.

Sheila Duffy and her cohorts in the health (sic) industry have written to the Scotsman in support of their ambitions. The Commonwealth games must be smokefree. Let's think about cars, and let's be second in the race to plain packaging. (Don't let's fall behind Northern Ireland or Wales.) Can we license tobacco products? We need to help every smoker who wants to quit.

Who are these people? There is nothing wrong in a little health education, but this ratcheting up of proposed legislation is quite ridiculous. Coercion is no substitute for health education.

Wanting to wipe out an industry is not compatible with achievable public health goals. It suggests an obsession with tobacco that is a convenient smokescreen for other environmental health hazards – allowing the authorities to blame people for their own ill health – as well as being an obvious cash cow for pharmaceutical nicotine replacement products.

Smokers have their own political will!