The UK Labour government mentioned is that of Wales. One of the advantages of devolution is that it allows people to compare the results of different laws in the various constituent countries of the UK. The Welsh Government wants to promote and protect the health of Welsh people in the same way that it has promoted their education since devolution. Very badly.
Wales to introduce e-cigarette ban
Electronic cigarettes are to be banned in enclosed public spaces and workplaces as part of a raft of radical health plans announced by the Welsh government.
The law would be the first such restriction in the UK and would be hugely controversial among thousands of users, producers and campaigners who believe the use of e-cigarettes can help smokers of conventional cigarettes quit.
Other measures proposed by the Labour-controlled government is the creation of a compulsory national licensing system in relation to acupuncture, body-piercing, electrolysis and tattooing.
Weirdly, or perhaps not so weirdly, the archetypal fake charity ‘Action on Smoking and Health’, which gets less than 2% of its funding from public donations, is actually on the side of health:
Action on Smoking and Health a charity that works to eliminate the harm caused by tobacco, said it did not support the sort of ban proposed by the Welsh government.
It said there was emerging evidence that e-cigarettes helped people quit smoking and there was little evidence they encouraged “never smokers” to take it up. A spokesperson said: “We think they should be appropriately regulated. That does not include banning in public places.”
If you create more lawmakers you are going to get more laws.
I gave up smoking a year and a half ago, entirely down to using e fags. As with the secondary smoke ban, this proves that the bans are nothing to do with health and everything to do with power and control.
As Pete notes, if you establish pretendy wee parliaments, they will inevitably pass laws, both to justify their existence, and because it is fun for them. Why go into politics if you can’t boss people around a bit?
Thus in Scotland, they decided they would have a lower drink driving limit than the rest of the UK, and are pushing ahead with an insane plan to register air guns. Whether it is good or bad law is not the point: it is a law, and they are law makers. I wish someone could convince them to make jam instead, though if they did, it would be inedible.
My impression was that e-cigarettes administer nicotine by vaporizing it in some sort of water-vapor mist. Do they even *have* the same lung destroying properties that normal smoking does? (I don’t really know one way or the other, not having ever smoked.)
@ams: No, e-cigarettes are completely different, containing just propylene glycol, nicotine, flavouring and sometimes glycerin, they’re considered to be 95-99% safer than cigarettes, which means the ‘risks’ anti-smoking organisations refer to with e-cigs are negligible to the user, let alone bystanders. The Welsh law, perversely, can ONLY encourage more smoking of tobacco, because – like the 1.5 million other dual users in the UK – if I’m forced outside, I’m not going to vape, I’m going to smoke.
The cowardly and self-hating nature of the majority of smokers is the issue here. Just one letter to Cameron from each UK smoker–all 13 million of them- telling him to shut his gob about smoking (and see mouthy medical hacks are hit with gross misconduct charges for shooting their gobs off) or else UKIP gets the vote next time. That is the last that would be heardof the anti-smoking shite. Same in Wales.
@Mr Ecks – perhaps many of those 4 million votes that UKIP got were from disgruntled smokers.
As for it being weird that ASH should be behind e-cigs, I think the clue’s in “appropriately regulated” ie made as useless as Big Pharma’s inhalers. Cue vapers careering between smoking and vaping until smoking wins out and more funding for Debs “to do more to tackle the single preventable cause of death in the UK”.
We’re going to FORCE you to be healthy.
This is for your own good. Obviously you are too stupid to make good decisions ( we’ve known this for a LONG time ) so we are going to make good decisions FOR you.
By eventually making EVERYTHING that we believe is unhealthy for you illegal, ALL of you will be healthy and you will be happier about it !!
/so
Cigs vs. e-cigs
The Nicotine is the stimulant and the addictive part of cigs
The ‘tars’ are the part that cause lung diseases. There are over 4,000 chemicals that a cig smoker exhales.
I am an ex-cig smoker who picked up the habit in the US Army as a teenager. I totally approve of e-cigs. You get your stimulant and it doesn’t destroy you in the process.
Now if they just do the same with alcohol where we can get a buzz w/o liver damage and so forth.
OK I’m no scientist, I went cold turkey on smoking 30 years (and, sadly 28 pounds) ago.
I had a strong addiction to nicotine for years.
E-cigs contain nicotine, so how can stopping ordinary cigarettes and replacing them with another product containing nicotine assist in stopping the ingestion of the highly addictive nicotine?
Just asking.
(PS Stopping the habit was the single best thing I ever did for my health, just as starting the habit was the single worst thing I ever did for my health.)
Well how addictive is nicotine, really? Fellow vapers tell me of reducing their strength of nicotine to nothing, but still continue to vape because they like the sensation of drawing something into their lungs and exhaling it in a big cloud again.
And there by hangs the rub with self righteous bansturbators like Mark Drakeford, the Welsh Minister, who has no facts or research to hang his prejudices on, he just hates the sight of someone apparently smoking and enjoying it, whether they are doing themselves or anyone else any harm at all. He wants it out of his priggish sight, oh and kudos for banning it, of course.
The thing about ordinary cigarettes is that they are stuffed full of hundreds of chemicals that didn’t come with the raw tobacco plant. When I smoked Camels they had so much Potassium Nitrate in them, they practically smoked themselves. So why is vaping so bad when it is obvious that is 90% safer than proper fags? Because prod nosed bastards want to stop it and any lie will do in the furtherance of their cause.
They are assisted by Big Pharma, of course, who are kicking themselves that they didn’t think of e Fags first. Their vastly expensive patches and gums don’t work, and they know they don’t, but eFags do. And what of the hypocracy of Govts, who all want us to quit (for our own good) but are the biggest pimps in the business, taking 80% of the price of packet of fags in the UK straight off the top?
The socialists are nuts.
I’m beginning to hope that the British public is waking up. In a poll conducted by Populus (for Forest), over 50% of those polled agreed that ventilated smoking rooms should be permitted in pubs and private clubs. (NB. Populus is not YouGov, which is owned by Kilner, a member of the ASH board)
Perhaps the public is beginning to ask important questions, such as ‘why is it that ASH ET AL did not go for ‘smoking in places where cheeeldren are present’ first, rather than ‘pubs and clubs’? Perhaps the public is beginning to notice that ASH ET AL are constantly changing their ‘truths’ to suit the circumstances. EG. The switch from smoke to nicotine.
The SHS propaganda was shameful. Tobacco smoke disperses rapidly. The amount of smoke which a person inhales when he takes a puff is, maybe, one cubic centimetre. The majority of that smoke is blown out again, but some stays inside. What happens to that cubic centimetre when it is blown out? It rises and then disperses. The smoke contains positively charged ions, which drive particles away from each other and spreads them out. These ions are what cause tobacco smoke to stick to walls and ceilings. Calculations have shown that SHS is hundreds of times weaker than the packet of smoke which a smoker inhales.
Now, if ecigs are 99% (going on 100%) safer that tobacco cigs, what does that say about the safety of SHS when compared to a vaper inhaling ecig vapour? It stands to reason that SHS is in no way dangerous in the ordinary course of events.
Another point: Doll’s Doctors Study said that the longer a smoker smokes, and the heavier he smokes, the greater the risk of suffering some health affect. Thus, there is a timescale involved. It takes thirty years for such harm to occur. How much longer would a person have to inhale SHS before health affects are observed? Would they occur within the normal human lifespan? That is why SHS harm is only the product of computer simulations. Those simulations ignore the timescale.
If people want to swap smoking for vaping, and get the same pleasure from them, that is up to them, and good luck to them. What is important is the vapers hold ‘the high moral ground’ having done what they have been told and stopped smoking. The Zealots are trying to cut that ground from underneath them by swapping to nicotine. Vapers should stick to their guns. They have organisations, unlike smokers as such. They should organise sit-ins and make sure that the press is there to observe it. They should think in terms of the poll tax rebellion.
Okay, who is pretending to be Paul Marks? Did you really think you could fool us with your short sentences, and only one sentence per blog?
Who are you, and what have you done with the real Paul?!!!
Nicholas, I was just thinking the same thing. *g*
It’s extremely difficult for me to believe that nicotine is much of an addictive drug. For one thing, I am told that all of it is out of your system after 72 hours. For another, I’ve never heard nor read of anyone who underwent any sort of physically painful withdrawal. Maybe there are some who have plumbing trouble for awhile? …Not that I’ve ever heard of.
It is true that poundage tends to increase as cigarettes decrease, and some say that nicotine suppresses appetite to some extent. But I think that substitution is the chief reason for that. What do I do with my hands, and my mouth, and how do I substitute for the sensations in my chest that I got from smoking?
I smoked B&H menthol for 15 or 16 years, starting at age 18. In my early 30’s I thought it would be cool to quit, and I found an outfit (Smoke Enders — they may still be in business; they were excellent) that had a 10-week program where one was weaned off the gaspers, with the help of a weekly meeting with others in the program. This was led by an ex-smoker who had him- or herself been through the program, and who offered all sorts of tips and advice, and helped with individual problems as well.
At the end of it, I didn’t miss smoking at all. When others were smoking, it didn’t tempt me. It had nothing to do with me.
During the ten weeks there were a few difficult hours, but those weren’t anything physical: It was mostly, just as RAB says, that I missed the sensation of smoking, plus the fact that it’s not that easy to break any firmly established habit. You have to shut down a part of yourself to do it, or else find something to substitute for it.
I was a happy non-smoker for three years, and then, never mind why (but I know why!) I started again. And I smoked for another 25 years or so. B&H menthol, pack and a half. And just before Thanksgiving, 2005, my body said, That’s it, kid. No more. Well…I always knew the day would come.
Quitting at that point wasn’t very hard, because there was a built-in aversion therapy. The flesh was mighty unwilling, however weak the spirit. So I quit, this time for good.
At no time were there any physical withdrawal symptoms. Again, what I miss is the sensation, the feel of the menthol (more than the smoke, I think) going down my windpipe. By the way, I never did cotton to unmentholated cigarettes. More evidence that it was the menthol, not the tobacco nor the nicotine. (And back at the first quitting, in the mid-’70’s, we were told that menthol in fact is much more addictive than nicotine.)
Some years ago a book came out called Where Did They Put My Cheese? I only gave it a quick look-through, but the thesis was that if one of the regular things or outstandingly salient factors in our lives suddenly is no longer there, we are confused and stumble around for awhile trying to negotiate this new reality where there is nothing to smoke, there’s no drinking, no husband, no old familiar dump of a place to flop, no need to worry about lack of money, no mortgage payment to be made, no job to go to, and on and on and on.
It seems to me that’s the chief problem with quitting smoking.
Where did they put my ciggies?
Julie, it’s good to hear that you have quit for good.
Has anyone ever quit for bad, or evil?
RAB asked, “Well how addictive is nicotine, really?” and Julie near Chicago also wonders. The addictive effects depend on the subject to some extent but generally speaking nicotine is one of the most addictive substances known to man. It’s difficult to find a reference which is not from a source with an axe to grind one way or the other, particularly now that “medical science” is so politicised, but an article from 1987 in the New York Times is worth a read.
Of course this is not really the point; the physical harm caused by smoking is not the result of the nicotine, and e-fags are a far safer means of absorbing it than cigarettes. Patches and gum are also, but e-fags are more of a behavioural substitute, so are more effective as a smoking cessation tool. Also of relevance is the reason behind the choice to stop smoking; to avoid further lung damage or to break the addiction to nicotine (or both).
But this is also not the point; Governments will continue to make certain things illegal and other things compulsory for one very simple reason: they can.
Incidentally, I was never a heavy smoker (10 to 15 a day, for about 15 years), but I stopped, cold turkey, almost 25 years ago.
Nicholas, you are doing it again. *Ee-e-ew-w-www!!!*
. . .
Ian Bennett,
Yes, I’ve seen that claim too. As I say, I find it very, very hard to believe. I do believe that nicotine has some effect on the human system; but so does every other substance. Protein, musk, water….
One piece of evidence against the claim would be the fact (if it is a fact) that The Patch doesn’t work so well for the majority of people who are using it to try to quit. That is, you’re getting your nicotine fix (insofar as there is such a thing) but you still want to smoke. Why, if the addiction is to the nicotine?
The only fact I know to be a fact is that as with so many questions and issues, there are claims and counterclaims, studies and counterstudies, and of course the infamous Duelling Experts. And there is also one’s own experience, and there are the personal experiences that other people report.
Anyway, I agree that the real damage is done to the lungs, and it comes from inhaling tars and particulates and other stuff. I think also that a smoker’s blood is carrying a certain amount of carbon monoxide instead of oxygen, which does not sound healthy. It would be interesting to know whether one ends up with seriously oxygen-deprived brain cells, depending of course on how much one smokes.
By the way, when I quit 10 years ago, that was cold turkey. Not a problem.
I probably would have quit smoking years ago, but I am so incensed by the antics of the anti-smoking horde that I continue out sheer spite.
“He said: “The Welsh government has a responsibility to create the conditions which enable people to live healthy lives and avoid preventable harm to their health. Wales has a strong tradition of using legislation to improve public health and I am confident the measures in the public health bill will continue this.”
The sheer effrontery of these people makes me choke with rage. No, they really don’t have that responsibility. They need to provide the (few) goods that truly are best delivered collectively, and that’s /it/.
Julie, the addictive quality of cigarettes comprises two parts: The metabolism-changing nature of nicotine; and the habit-forming (cf Ivan Petrovich) hand-to-mouth action smokers associate with alleviating the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal. My own experience was that the latter was by far the harder to overcome but, in that e-cigs address neither, they probably aren’t the best means of giving up. Incidentally, there are a number of elements which determine how addictive a drug is, but one of the big ones is that, the quicker a drug leaves the body, the more addictive it tends to be.
But as Ian says, it is not the addiction that causes the physical damage (compare our dependency on oxygen) – but even if it were, so what?
Jason,
That’s not particularly at odds with anything I said. You’re only saying that the main difficulty of quitting smoking lay (in your experience) in the “psychological” factors of physical movements (“where did they put my cheese”) rather than in whatever metabolic or biochemical changes nicotine induces in our bodies. RAB and I spoke about missing the sensation of drawing in the smoke, which is the same sort of thing; not a change in body chemistry, within the context of chemical addiction. (Of course all movement and all sensations are both causes and effects of changes in body chemistry, but that is distinctly not our topic.)
“The quicker a drug leaves the body, the more addictive it tends to be.”
I would have to be a neurologist specializing in investigation of chemical addictions in order to judge the truth of that claim. I certainly can’t say you’re wrong, and maybe you are just such an expert for all I know; but on the face of it, suppose a chemical really is addictive, and leaves the body quickly. How do we know it’s not possible for the body to re-adjust quickly? For instance: imagine a case of a drug of whose presence the subject may be barely aware, to that point that however quickly or slowly it leaves the system the subject experiences little or no difference in the way he feels.
(Such as nicotine, for instance, when users become former users? Such is my experience of it, if we grant it’s addictive in the first place.)
In that case you’d have a drug that induces biochemical changes and leaves the body quickly, but that is only very mildly addictive chemically in that the body quickly re-adjusts to its absence.
By the way, I didn’t mention e-cigs at all, on the grounds that I don’t know anything about them except what I run across on the Web.
As to the real damage coming from abuse of the lungs and windpipe, no argument there at all. I do raise the issue of CO’s replacing O2 in the blood, though.
Also, the point that different people have different reactions to various chemicals is a good one.