Via Glasgow, A Window On The Future Denormalisation of E-Cigs

Last week, TFE pointed out a potential add-on to any legislation tabled on smoking in cars vehicles (inc. yachts, caravans, canal boats) with children.

I feel that their slippery slope of bans would come to a halt without a ban on E-cigs. After all how can you tell that a driver passing you with a child onboard is smoking or vaping? 

As we all know this ban is just the start. I personally think that the ban on smoking in cars with children would be impossible to police anyway and would soon be amended to no smoking in cars at any time. Just to get around the vaping issue. That’s why they have to ban vapers from enclosed spaces.

Quite. Because mission creep is just how anti-smokers roll.

As we know from history, Labour's 2005 manifesto exempted pubs from the smoking ban if they didn't sell food. It also exempted members-only clubs but, once the public had exercised their five-yearly pretence of being involved in what happens in Westminster, the exemptions were kicked out and we were left with what we now suffer - the most totalitarian nationwide smoking ban in the EU, if not the world. Completely devoid of democratic mandate.

So it is almost certain that the tobacco control industry will attempt to crowbar e-cigs into the final draft of the smoking in cars vehicles legislation if they possibly can, and today has shown us some of the oleaginous language they will use to justify it.

ELECTRONIC cigarettes are to be banned in and around Commonwealth Games venues in Scotland, it has been revealed. 

Last year, the Glasgow 2014 organisers said smoking would not be allowed in the vicinity of sites hosting sporting events. They have now decided that e-cigarettes will also be banned.

This is quite a development.

You see, do you remember when bans were only considered worthy of trumping freedoms if they protected bystanders from the instant death of, for example, passive smoking in enclosed spaces after deep, rigorous 'research' complete with relative risk ratios from long-term studies and shit? Well, there is not so much as a hint of that in the Glasgow 2014 announcement. This is protecting, err, no-one. From non-existent health threats.

Proudly exhibited today by the new Soviet Republic of Scotland is the already perverted mission creep of a ban on tobacco indoors being imposed on outdoor areas where there is - and never will be - any evidence, however faked, of threat to the health of anyone. But on top of this, we now see e-cigs added to a ban - which has nothing whatsoever to do with health - despite their not being remotely dangerous even to the user, let alone someone standing (or sitting) near them in the windswept open spaces of Scotland's Commonwealth Games venues.

Considering, then, that this is an insult to civil liberties and pointless gesture politics worthy of a banana republic, state-funded ASH Scotland are naturally ecstatic.

The decision was backed by campaign group Action on Smoking and Health Scotland. Chief executive 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.”

It's never been about health, but at least they used to pretend.