tim's experiment

During my occasional run-ins with the anti-smoking loonies I have occasionally suggested that they were by now so addicted to making decisions for other people that they would be opposed to smoking even if a version of it emerged which was entirely healthy. This was necessarily a hypothetical statement, and one which I did not really expect to see in the real world. Traditional snuff is quite harmless compared with the inhaled versions, but that did not save it from being banned. Still it does at least have nicotine in it.

Happily, however, on Tuesday my point was elegantly demonstrated. A company called Shortcut has begun to market a rather expensive gadget which looks like a cigarette, but isn’t one. There is no tobacco in it whatsoever. The user inhales flavoured water vapour. I suppose some people might go on to the real thing. But then some people might not. Some smokers might find that sucking something else helped them to quit. Despite these uncertainties, though, the Post’s intrepid reporter had no difficulty in finding members of the tobacco Taliban who wanted the new gadget to be regulated, or better still banned.   An assistant professor at the HKU School of Public Health (was no real professor available?) said there was “no good evidence that e-cigarettes were safe to use”.

I fear the School of Public Health and the rest of us are not going to see eye to eye until the school gets its head round the idea that we ban things which are proven dangerous. We do not ban things because they have not been proven to be safe to use, at least when ostensibly harmless activities like inhaling water vapour are concerned. Of course what was bothering the True Believers was the effect of the new gadget on young people. Puritans who wish to curb adults’ freedom of choice always claim to be motivated by the desire to protect young people. Heavens, they might get the idea that sticking something in your mouth and sucking it was pleasant. On this basis we shall I suppose soon see calls for a ban on oral sex…