A non-smoker's view of vaping

I do not lay claim to the following article, nor have I had a part in its creation. It is an honest attempt by a non-smoking, non-vaping private citizen to put the commonsense point of view on smoking and not smoking. I commend it for its honesty and its lack of spin (which is more than I can do for the outpourings of the anti-tobacco zealots)!                                                                                                                                 Geoff Cliff.

Views of a non smoker

I am in my mid sixties and have never smoked. My father was a heavy smoker and my mother a ‘social smoker’. She occasionally smoked cocktail cigarettes which were in pastel shades and quite pretty and feminine looking. My grandmother occasionally smoked Woodbines. So in spite of being in regular contact with smokers, how come I have never smoked? I tried it once in my teens thinking I would try one of gran’s Woodbines and I sneaked one into the bathroom with a box of matches and lit up. It was awful and I coughed, choked and retched. That was the one and only time I ever tried smoking.

My best friend at school smoked, as did all her parents and two sisters. I used to call for her in the morning on the way to school and I recall the horrible, thick smoky atmosphere when I went into her house. Also her two elder sisters liked the perfume Revlon’s Intimate, which they sprayed liberally on themselves. That smell combined with the dense smoke from four smokers was enough to put me off smoking (and Intimate perfume) for life.

My friend and I had quite a long walk to school and she would be struggling to light a cigarette whilst gasping for breath to keep up with me. I never felt under any pressure to ‘have a fag’ as I had made up my own mind not to smoke.

In my later teens when I had started work I had quite a long bus journey into Birmingham. On the occasions when there was no room downstairs and I had to go upstairs I hated the smell of stale smoke that lingered on the seats and the thick fug of smoke that clung to my clothes and my hair. Even opening a window brought no relief from the smell.

My boyfriend at the time was a smoker and although I hated the lingering smell, at that time smoking was accepted socially, so I just put up with it. In spite of seeing him smoke and enjoy his cigarettes I still never wanted to smoke. My parents and boyfriend would smoke in the house and it was just accepted. The only time there was a problem was when my boyfriend fell asleep on the sofa and dropped his cigarette, which burned a hole in the settee.

We married and had two children and he continued to smoke in the house. My younger son was born eleven weeks prematurely and was very ill for a long time. He spent the first six months of life in hospital and was on a ventilator for ten weeks due to problems with his lungs. It was at this time that the dangers of smoking were made apparent by one of his doctors who said that under no circumstances should the baby be in a situation where he could breathe in cigarette smoke due to the breathing problems he had experienced. My husband didn’t like being told this, but for a while didn’t smoke when the baby was in the room. I hadn’t really considered the dangers of smoking or even passive smoking until then. My main objections were the smell that lingered, the yellowing of the paintwork and wallpaper in the house, and the cost.

We divorced after sixteen years of marriage, after he had met someone else. Subsequently I met and fell in love with the man who became my second husband. Unfortunately he was a smoker too, but in the heady days of new love I didn’t let it bother me too much. Once we had settled down to married life I did object to him smoking. He smoked in the house, which I didn’t like, and, as we had both been through messy divorces and were short of money, I objected to the cost of smoking and also the possible effect on his health. He had been a smoker for thirty years or so since he was a young teenager and, as I knew he was a smoker when I met him, he would counter any of my objections with this argument. He had a smoker’s cough and this, coupled with what the doctors had said when my son was a baby, made me again realise the possible dangers to health. Also my mum had died aged seventy of secondary lung cancer although she had given up smoking twenty years before she died. My dad had given up smoking when mom had been diagnosed with breast cancer some five years before she died. My dad died from a heart attack aged eighty-six and up until his early eighties had always been fit and well.

Neither of my two sons has ever smoked in spite of being subject to it in the home environment and in pubs and clubs during their teens and twenties.

My husband and I moved to Cornwall in our mid fifties to ‘live the dream’. My husband still smoked but as the cottage we moved into had low ceilings and small rooms, he would go outside to smoke. I worried about the effect smoking had on his health. If he was working outside he would frequently have a cigarette clenched in his teeth while using both hands to build a wall or mix cement. I hated to see this as it seemed to me he was doubly inhaling the noxious smoke.

Eighteen months after our move I was diagnosed with breast cancer. My husband gave up smoking of his own accord and supported me throughout all my treatment. I really appreciated this and knew how difficult it must have been for him. Sadly he started smoking again when he was with his brother (a smoker) on a long and tiring car journey. His brother smoked cigarettes in the car and the temptation to have one became too much. Following this, for a while he smoked less than he had before but in time it became as many as before.

When we bought a newer car he said he wouldn’t smoke in the car as it was pristine inside but before long he did start smoking in the car, which I hated. The car smelt of stale smoke, ash was dropped on the floor and a couple of cigarette burns appeared in the upholstery. On occasions when I would kiss or cuddle our dog after she had been in the car, I could smell stale smoke on her. I know my husband thought I was a nag and probably I was, but he smelt of cigarettes most of the time and even when he had been outside for a smoke when he came back in the lounge I could smell it on him and his breath.

Last year, with retirement looming and with reduced income and the constant bad press about smoking, my husband decided to give electronic cigarettes a try. He bought the necessary items, which cost probably a tenth of what he had been spending on cigarettes a month, and initially I was quite impressed. I must admit I thought it would just be a ‘flash in the pan’, a short-lived fad, but no, nine months later he is still sticking with the e-cig. He can use it in the house as there is very little ‘smoke’ or smell apart from the lovely aromas of his chosen flavour of the day.

Throughout my life I have always been anti smoking and I was really pleased that my husband had found an alternative to smoking that is socially acceptable - or so we thought. Now it seems that Wales could be the first part of the UK to ban the use of electronic cigarettes in enclosed public places. Ministers say they are responding to concern that the devices normalise smoking and so undermine the smoking ban. Ministers also argue that children could be tempted to try them, which may then lead them to cigarette smoking.

For years now smokers have been told about the dangers of smoking (whilst the government carry on reaping the tax benefits). Now that a successful aid to help smokers quit has been found, Welsh ministers want it banned in enclosed public places. I feel this is a real slap in the face to smokers who have quit smoking. Rather than implement this ban, ministers should applaud smokers for giving up smoking and just let them get on with their smoke free lives.

There are so many temptations that children are more likely to want to try. With alcohol, drugs, sex, and processed fast food on offer, who would want an electronic cigarette?

So leave the vapers alone and let them enjoy their new cigarette-free existence wherever they choose to use them. My husband no longer has a ‘smoker’s cough’, nor does he reek of cigarette smoke. He is much fitter since becoming a vaper and we can enjoy long walks without him becoming short of breath. He enjoys his vapes in the same way that I enjoy eating chocolate! (We have to have some pleasure in this life!) Neither of us are overweight and are within the normal BMI .

I would suggest to these faceless ministers who tell us how we should run our lives to back off and let us choose for ourselves how we live. Smokers have been the outcasts of society for many years and now that over two million of them are vapers, leave them to enjoy their smoke free existence.

“O Lorde, have mercy upon us miserable offendours”

Very little, it seems, has changed in many centuries of human history. Even in the modern world of scientific research and immense knowledge, the same old arguments are still being put forward by the self-appointed guardians of our social, moral, and spiritual welfare as they ever were. The difference now is that the guardians do not only stand in the pulpit of the village church, or the chapel, to deliver their sermons since too few are there to listen, and they need their message to ring loud and clear to all humankind. So one thing that has changed is the launching-point for their words of salvation - they now concentrate their efforts on the media; film, TV, radio, the press, the internet and the paid disciples of their cause, the holy army of health practitioners.

But the message they carry has not changed. The Book of Common Prayer, as published in 1559 contains words that were drummed into our brains as children:-

“we have erred and straied from thy waies, lyke lost shepee we have folowed to much the devises and desires of our owne hartes. We have offended against thy holy lawes: We have left undone those thinges whiche we ought to have done, and we have done those thinges which we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us”.

I am sure that most of us remember those words, albeit in a more modern form and with standardised spelling. Even more sure am I that you recognise the message contained within them. Read any leaflet that you will find at your doctor's or dentist's surgery, or at a hospital or clinic, and you will see the very same message. Open any newspaper or magazine, and it is there too. Pick up a packet of cigarettes, and a highly graphic version of the message will stare accusingly at you. Light a cigarette in the street (while you still can!), and there's a very good chance that a herald angel in a grubby grey suit will approach you with a wagging finger to deliver the same message. Even if you do not smoke because you have already heeded the warning, but choose to vape your nicotine instead, you still cannot avoid it.

In the new, disease-free, pollution-free, sterile world granted us by the good offices of bodies such as the World Health Organisation, science has largely taken over as the religion of the thinking man (and woman, of course), except for certain groups who still accept dogma over data, spiritualism over science and theism over thought. For them the world will always be flat, only six thousand years old, and non-evolving. For most of the world, however, scientific explanation and reason have taken over from scripture in guiding our lives. But science can be a two-edged sword (or scalpel), that, like religion, can be manipulated and interpreted in several different ways, depending on the personal beliefs, ambitions or politics of our leaders and guides. By their methodology life, the universe and everything can be analysed, categorised, documented and theorised like never before, yet apparently still devolve to the statement, “we have done those things which we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us”!

Every day we are assailed with further evidence of that statement. We eat too much, drink too much, smoke too much, sit too much, sleep too much, stay awake too much, consume too many resources, listen to too much music, watch too much television, play too many games, breed too much, et cetera, et cetera – and there is no health in us. The facts, of course, are that we are born at great risk to ourselves and our mothers, we face multiple hazards, contract childhood diseases, learn how to survive the world as best we can. If successful so far, we breed, then get ill or have an accident and die. For there is no health in us. Like every living creature on earth, we are mortal, we are dying, we are born to die. Sorry, folks, that's just the way life is; we cannot change it!

However, it would appear that august bodies such as the WHO have such faith in their own abilities that they believe it is we ourselves who are causing our morbidity and mortality, by doing all those things that we should not do, or by not doing all those things that we should do. That is why there is no health in us! If only we were to follow all their guidelines, and live our lives according to their rules, we could eradicate all our illnesses, avoid all accidents and solve our own problems! They have never yet claimed to give us life everlasting, but they seem to to have decided for us, on our behalf, how long our lives should be. How else can they tell me that, by smoking, I am reducing my life by ten years? I recently read that sitting is four times as dangerous as smoking, so by sitting at my keyboard typing this essay, it seems that I am reducing my life by forty years. But I am 65, so was I granted 105 years (or 115 given that I also smoked), and I should drop dead tomorrow?

I was always led to believe that I could expect three-score and ten (seventy) years of life, so did the health authorities, by their efforts, give me an extra thirty or forty years? Or have I been dead without realising it for some years now? The fact is, of course, that life is a lottery. Illness and accident can terminate a life at any stage. I remember schoolmates who died before even reaching their teens, and I had uncles and cousins I never knew because they were killed in war. I have relatives in their nineties who smoke, and I have lost much younger relatives who never did. To further confound matters, I believe that I am healthy, that is to say I have no life-threatening or disabling conditions as yet diagnosed or suspected, but I have partaken of salt, sugar, fats, caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, sunshine and so on freely through my life. How can I be healthy – especially since I know that I am destined to die?

These arguments naturally tend to weaken the consensus of the health police. That is why they have invoked the moral support of my peers in order to bring me to heel. They have re-written the Book of Common Prayer so that it now reads “We have done those things that we should not have done, and there is no health in our neighbours, or in our cheeldren.” By this means they can justify raising taxes and duties on anything that people like, they can ban us doing anything that might be considered 'sinful', they can ride roughshod over our civil rights, pass illogical laws and regulations, twist science, law and common sense to breaking point, protect their jobs and their sources of income, maintain their moral high ground and keep us all within their power for eternity. If all of that sounds familiar, then you probably had a similar religious upbringing to mine!

Eulogy

Dearly beloved, let us join together to remember, and to mourn, the many victims of the War On Smoking. Let us take a few moments of quiet contemplation to commemorate the ultimate sacrifice that was made by them, for the benefit of mankind. Some of their names will not be known to the current generation, since their demise happened many years ago, but most shared our lives until recently, and just a few are with us still, but not for much longer. Let us at this time speak together their names, that their memory may be carried forth to future generations who will otherwise not know of them.

Let us remember Truth, Justice, Fairness, Goodness, Compassion, Logic, Honesty, Tolerance, Humanity, Good Sense, Forbearance, Empathy, Virtue, Perspicacity, Clarity, Simplicity, Decency, Morality, Integrity, Rectitude, Veracity, Honour and Righteousness.

Let us remember too Freedom; of Choice, of Expression, of Speech, of Thought, of Science, and of Information.

And, as we humbly remember their names, let us also remember that those who sought in the past to erase their memory have almost always themselves been brought to account – usually violently, and with much rejoicing!

What IS Safe in This Crazy World?

Dangerous, Unsafe, Safe, Safer, Safest?

What do these words mean to you? I mean, given that life inevitably leads to death, can life ever be safe? I know that we can make life safer – by taking care over the things we do, for example, or by not doing things that are patently dangerous, but who should decide what is unsafe, and what is safe to do? I was told from an early age not to put my fingers into an electric socket, so I don't for I understand that electricity can kill. But I learned from experience that electricity in small quantities is relatively harmless, so I will play around with 12-volt circuits quite happily. In certain situations, of course, even 12 volts can be harmful, but one learns the rules. This is mitigation of danger, or harm reduction, or choosing a safer option. No governmental body or agency has ever found it necessary to legislate and prevent me from tinkering with the electrics on my car, or indeed, with lightning if I wish.

So why are there people in the world determined to stop me inhaling nicotine, if that is what I choose to do? They let me drink coffee, or tea, or alcohol. They let me ride a bike, drive a car, go swimming, climb mountains, bungee jump or fly gliders. Nobody could possibly say that these have no dangers, but there are no laws to stop me, just rules for my guidance, to lessen the likelihood of harm. But nicotine? 'Thou must not!' seems to be the cry! And, should I reply, 'This is what I wish to do', I am declared an 'addict' and thought unfit to make rational decisions, it seems. I must face a barrage of propaganda, be lectured non-stop by medical practitioners, even dentists and opticians, as to the dangers of smoking. When that does not make me quit, public opinion is turned against me by propaganda that suggests my 'addiction' is killing my wife, my children, my neighbours, my workmates, the barmaid at the pub, and the family dog. Even when the evidence for this is flimsy, misleading, ambiguous and blatantly false, the lies must be continued, for someone has decided that smoking must be ended, once and for all, for the public good.

What can one do? Well, turn to safer alternatives; cleaner nicotine that has none of the toxins in smoke; patches, chewing gum or inhalers, but I don't find them helpful for they do not give me the 'buzz' that cigarettes do. But wait, what's this on the horizon? A method of taking a nip of nicotine without the dirty, toxic, carcinogenic chemicals I was warned of – an electronic cigarette! It's clean, it's hygienic, it smells good, it tastes good, it mimics the hand-to-mouth actions of smoking. It produces no smoke, it contains no tobacco, so it's legal to use indoors. At last, after fifty years of getting my nicotine from tobacco, I am free to enjoy it in a clean and fresh-smelling way, and it cannot harm my family, or the barmaids, or the dog! It seems I have found safe nicotine.

So, as I had been advised was good for me, I no longer smoke. My lungs have cleared, my blood pressure dropped, I have more energy, my clothes are fresh-smelling and so is my breath. I no longer go in fear of an early death because I am a non-smoker, and I have been told ad nauseam that non-smokers live for ever, whereas smokers die after as few as fifteen cigarettes.

But the euphoria is short-lived, for it was not my smoke that the puritans wanted to ban, that was just the excuse. Nor was it my smoking that they did not like, since that was only the visible sign of my failing. No, it is my consumption of nicotine that is the problem, and that must be expunged and exorcised from the world. No matter that what I do now is orders of magnitude safer than smoking, the army is already on the march, and only unconditional surrender will save me and my like from their retribution. No matter that nicotine is only as toxic and addictive as caffeine, and less so than alcohol, its association to smoking is too strong to be ignored. It must be banned, it must be highly regulated, to save me from myself. There is no longer any danger to those around me, for I do not smoke, but I exhale nicotine, and nicotine is in tobacco, so cannot possibly be safe, can it? Well, it seems that it is safe in tomatoes, and potatoes, and peppers, and aubergines, and cauliflowers, and probably in many other foodstuffs. It must also be safe in patches and gums and inhalers, else my doctor would not have prescribed them for me. But nobody can, or will, say that it is safe in the atmosphere, unlike traffic fumes, industrial fallout, natural and man-made pollution for which 'acceptable' and 'safe' levels have been set.

As if that argument were not silly enough, it seems that nicotine consumption must be expunged in order that no-one else will ever make the same 'mistake' that I did, and develop a taste for it. For that would lead inexorably to smoking tobacco, with all its dangers! In some strangely twisted logic, the argument goes, “People like nicotine, coffee, tea, sugar, alcohol, excitement etc. They seek more of what they enjoy – we can refer to this as 'addiction', especially when speaking of nicotine. Nicotine is associated with tobacco, but the others aren't, so can be ignored (for now!). To get nicotine out of tobacco, it is commonly smoked. The smoke is dangerous to health. Ban smoking where it may harm others, but tolerate it otherwise and collect taxes off the smoker. If nicotine can be consumed without smoking (which may be very much safer) we must ban it in case people enjoy it, for if they enjoy it, they will choose the most dangerous method of consumption! And our young people will be too stupid to take the safer option, so the option must be banned'. Problem solved!”

And so we have our 'Final Solution'. No matter how 'dangerous' smoking may be to the smoker, it is the 'unsafe' nature to the bystander of 'passive smoking' that prompted a ban in public places. But a 'safer' option like e-cigarettes cannot be absolutely guaranteed to be 'safe', so the 'safest' option is to ban the very thing that offers the best solution ever found to the problem of smoking, and ride roughshod over public opinion to do it. However, this too is far from being 'safe', since there are now over two million former smokers who have taken the step to safer alternatives, and many more current smokers who might, and they are all voters. If you are a politician in anything other than the safest seat, be afraid, be very afraid!

Neo-nazism and nicotine; the war for freedom goes on!

Is it just my imagination, or is the campaign against nicotine taking on an increasingly sinister twist? There’s an ongoing barrage of propaganda in the press, with selected snippets of research demonising everything to do with tobacco. Government (i.e. taxpayer) funded research pours out poisonous and often nonsensical facts and figures on smoking. Television and film show negative and inflammatory imagery of smokers. Segregation of smokers from non-smokers is enforced by law. Stringent restrictions on advertising (i.e. censorship) are in place. Secretive, unknown bodies enact new regulations daily, and put them in place without consultation, and brook no opposition – and all for the public good, we are told, ad nauseam.

I find it frightening. It reminds me too much of the system employed by German authorities under the National Socialist ideology in the 1920s, '30s and 40's. The target then, of course, was the Jewish community, whom Adolf Hitler blamed, one way or another, for most of the world’s ills. It was, of course, a ridiculous indictment, but one to which Hitler’s cohorts devoted much attention to ‘proving’. And the very same methodology is now at work on ‘proving’ the case against nicotine.

I am not defending tobacco. I accept that smoking it can do great harm to the smoker. However, I defend his or her right to smoke, if that’s what he or she wants to do. I accept, too, the argument that smoking releases toxins into the air, which may harm bystanders, although I believe that the danger from so-called ‘passive smoking’ has been grossly over-exaggerated. Where I diverge from the establishment view is when I see the demonisation of nicotine, a very minor constituent of tobacco, using inaccurate, misleading, false and inflammatory ‘facts’, simply to reinforce the war on tobacco – for the public good, of course.

Nicotine exists naturally in many fruits and vegetables that are part of our everyday diet; potatoes, tomatoes, aubergines, red and green peppers, cauliflower et cetera. It does us no harm. It also occurs in tobacco, and many researchers have declared that it is the one component of tobacco that smokers seek, the whole reason for smoking. This totally ignores the fact that there are many hundreds of compounds in tobacco smoke, but it is nicotine, and nicotine alone, that is claimed to give smokers a ‘buzz’, and make them want to continue smoking. Because of this, nicotine has been declared to be addictive, by some authorities as highly addictive, by some as being as addictive as heroin, and therefore a dangerous drug. A moment’s thought will surely beg the question, “If nicotine is so highly addictive, why is no-one addicted to tomatoes or potatoes?” Nicotine has also been described as a deadly poison, with antagonists pointing out that it is found in poisonous berries, such as Deadly Nightshade. As we have seen, it also exists in common foods, but the anti-tobacco literature commonly omits this point. Nicotine is a natural insecticide, as are many alkaloids secreted in plants. That does not mean it is toxic to humans in small doses. Large doses can cause vomiting and headaches, exactly like caffeine in coffee. Very large doses can cause death, as can very large doses of caffeine, salt, aspirin, paracetamol, alcohol, even water and oxygen! In fact, the only true reason for considering nicotine a dangerous substance, is its link to the tobacco plant and hence to the harm caused by the other constituents of tobacco smoke.

Anti-smoking activists continue to attack nicotine even when faced with clear evidence of its innocence. Yet they are happy to see smokers ‘treated’ with nicotine in order to help them quit the tobacco habit. As if giving an alcoholic a beer will cure his drinking addiction! As if giving a heroin addict a ‘fix’ will cure his drug addiction! As if a trip to the local shops will ‘cure’ a serial shoplifter! In their thinking, a prescription from a doctor for nicotine will be far more effective than any amount of propaganda from any number of doctors on the dangers of smoking. The fact is, of course, that humans like some substances more than others, and sometimes more than is good for them. That does not mean that they must be ‘cured’ of their tastes. We can mostly live with the fact that people drink alcohol, even though some would rather it were prohibited. We live with those who gamble, who have a sexual preference different to our own, who take part in sports or pastimes with which we cannot identify, but we have become conditioned to view smokers as pariahs, who befoul our air, who damage our genes, our children, our society – in exactly the same way that Jews were viewed in the hideous Nazi ideology – for the public good.

So it has come about that smokers have become alienated from mainstream society, segregated in their ‘ghetto’ at the back of pubs and restaurants, on the pavement outside the cinema, on the steps of their place of work, where they can be further vilified by the ‘pure’ population as they pass by. A smoker near to a school is likely to be attacked as a kind of child molester. Having previously been permitted to smoke in designated places, in special railway carriages, in segregated parts of aircraft and ships, these places have gradually been withdrawn from him. Employment has been denied to him by some organisations. Even his wealth has been sequestered by special taxation in exactly the same way that Jews were stripped of their assets in the past.

Not surprisingly, many smokers have bowed to the intense pressure, and have decided to quit; exactly as the anti-smoking bodies wanted, but many still seek their ‘buzz’. This is hardly surprising, if they have smoked for many years. This is not due to ‘addiction’, but to custom. Someone who had a taste for bananas would continue to yearn for them if his source was denied him. So it is that former smokers have sought a source of nicotine that does not involve smoking tobacco. In recent years they have had recourse to electric cigarettes, which do not contain tobacco, do not produce noxious smoke, have no identified side effects, and present no danger to the wider population. So they are not, in any sense, smokers; they are ex-smokers, former smokers, but they do not smoke. They have become exactly what the anti-smoking brigade wanted, for the public good, of course, – non-smokers.

But this seems to be insufficient victory for the zealots. Just as Hitler wanted to rid not just his land of Jews, but the whole world, and not just of Jews but of Judaism itself, the crusade continues apace. In the brave new world of the World Heath Organisation, aided by its puppet organisations like ASH, funded by industrialists, pharmaceutical companies, and anyone else who sees an opportunity for profit or power, the fight against tobacco has become a fight against nicotine. The target now is the ‘final solution’; not the eradication of smoking, nor the eradication of tobacco, but the eradication of every aspect of nicotine usage – except, of course, under strict licensing and taxation regimes as have been applied with such good effect in the case of alcohol. For the public good, of course.

So it is that, in a campaign that Josef Goebbels would have applauded, e-cigarettes are vilified as the “new smoking”, as ‘normalising’ the act of smoking tobacco, of seeking to attract young people into nicotine addiction, and hence lifelong servitude to tobacco. Every single one of these is a specious argument, with no validity at all. Can anyone really believe that our young people are incapable of telling the difference between a cigarette and a plastic or metal tube? Are sweet flavourings only attractive to children? Does NOT doing something ‘normalise’ doing the same thing? In what area of the justice system can ‘looking guilty’ be proof of guilt? Yet legislators are at this very moment considering banning electronic cigarettes because they emit harmless water vapour that vaguely resembles toxic smoke.

Decisions regarding electronic cigarettes, as well as further regulations against tobacco, are now made by nameless and faceless bureaucrats, in closed sessions, with no representation of those who will be affected. The ’verdict’ has invariably been decided before the ‘trial’ begins. Prosecution evidence is the evidence gathered by and approved by the legislature. Witness for the defence is prohibited by regulations that prohibit criticism of the legislature. It is a travesty of justice from beginning to end. But it is all said to be for the public good, just as such crazy laws were allowed to be passed by legislators in the Third Reich.

There is much more here than simply a search to improve public health. There is a concerted attack on the right of citizens to make their own decisions on their own health and safety. If this is allowed to continue, there will soon come a time when there will be no freedom whatever for the common man; whatever he wants to do will be controlled by the killjoys who sit in judgement over him – for the public good? Or for the self-satisfaction of the ideological dictators that now hold more power than is good for them – or the public good?

Methinks He Doth Profess Too Much!

It was once thought that, in order to become a professor, a person had to prove himself to have fully functioning reasoning ability. It was further thought that high office of any description needed someone with responsibility and intelligence. Such cannot be the case any more. Consider Professor Mark Drakeford, Minister for Health and Social Services in the Welsh Assembly, who fails on all three counts.

He obviously cannot differentiate between concepts as different as matter and anti-matter, or smokers and non-smokers. For his guidance, I shall simply say that smokers set fire to tobacco and suck in the ensuing smoke. Non-smokers do not. It's that simple. Smokers, by their actions, might risk harming themselves; that is their choice, and their right. Non-smokers have made a choice not to smoke, as is their right. Furthermore, non-smokers have won the right not to be exposed to second-hand tobacco smoke in enclosed public places by virtue of the Health Act 2006. We shall leave aside for the moment, so as not to confuse the honourable gentleman, the question of whether non-smokers have any choice at all about what other atmospheric pollutants they might be subjected to in places they choose to frequent.

Non-smokers have the right not to smoke in any place they choose, and, for absolute clarity, I shall say that non-smokers also have the right to not smoke in any place they choose. In any location, they can choose to undertake, or not undertake, any legal activity that is generally permitted in such places. Legal means that which is not prohibited by any law or laws currently in force. Permitted means that which is not proscribed by rules of the establishment. Thus, for example, eating an apple is a legal act just about anywhere. However, playing a violin may require the issue of a music license in certain venues, but is perfectly legal in most others, but might require permission from a responsible person in, say, a church or a courtroom, or a workplace. Generally, society functions perfectly well with such simple rules. Only when someone's action causes serious annoyance to others, or harms them, do we enact laws to alleviate the annoyance or harm. Thus we do not have laws to prevent the consumption in public places of apples, nor oranges, onions, garlic, etc. We have no laws to circumscribe the use of scents, after-shaves, deodorants and the like, or to forbid our fellows to have halitosis, in any of the places where we go about our daily routines (much as we may sometimes wish that we did). Instead, we allow people do what it is their right as citizens to do, without let or hindrance, unless there is proven harm to others, or realistic risk of such, from an activity.

In Professor Drakeford's universe, though, things appear to be different. Here, it seems, legal activities are those that are approved of by Professor Drakeford. He seeks to enact regulations that prohibit acts that have never proved harmful, that have little or no potential for harm, simply because he has failed to note the difference between smokers and non-smokers. I shall explain it again, with emphasis, “Smokers smoke. Non-smokers do not smoke!”

Non-smokers do not generate second-hand smoke, they do not put toxic chemicals into the air. They do not spread carcinogens around, they do not drop ash on the floor, or burn clothing, or leave cigarette ends around. So we leave non-smokers alone to get on with their lives. Unfortunately, we do not know what they eat, or drink, what they use to wash their clothes, or themselves, or whether they even do! We do not care about their personal hygiene, unless it causes us annoyance, but, even then, we do not compel them to meet our standards. We really do not care that they are non-smokers; they are our fellow workers, fellow commuters, fellow drinkers, fellow drivers, well, our fellows. Unless, it seems, they like a nip of nicotine. Alcohol we can live with, coffee, chocolate, chicken soup, curry, kebabs, the ripest cheeses, but not nicotine! They can take nicotine, of course, as a way of giving up smoking. They may be wearing a patch, or chewing gum, or sucking a plastic tube or puffing a spray that contains nicotine, for smoking cessation, and they will be welcomed everywhere. But in the good professor's universe, if they pick up an e-cig they move into another dimension; matter becomes anti-matter, the non-smoker suddenly metamorphoses into a smoker! Most of the world would recognise that an e-cig user is not a smoker – for he does not use tobacco, he does not set fire to tobacco, he does not smoke. Most will now say that he is 'vaping', for he inhales nicotine not from smoke (for he is a non-smoker), but from a vapour of propylene glycol or glycerine, a mist that is as definitely not smoke as Snowdon is not Everest.

Professor Drakeford, of course, as an erudite man, can explain this enigma. It is that by vaping, the non-smoking nicotine user 'renormalises' the act of smoking. That by breathing out mist, he may look vaguely like a smoker. (On a cold morning, the good professor himself probably looks like a smoker, too!) And he explains that vaping undermines the warnings about the dangers of smoking, since someone seen to be not smoking clearly suggests to others that smoking is not harmful! And he further makes it seem that young people are too poorly educated to be able to tell the difference between steam and bonfire smoke. Furthermore he explains that vaping may be a 'gateway' to smoking, that a non-smoker may try an e-cig, be instantly addicted to nicotine, and embark on a lifetime of – smoking? Not for him is the concept of a one-way gate; that the e-cig offers a safer alternative to smoking, that smokers use e-cigs to move away from tobacco, and not non-smokers into smoking.

So it is that Professor Drakeford wants e-cigs to be included in the ban on smoking in public places, even though there is absolutely no evidence that they have caused harm to anyone; not to the users and certainly not to non-users. But he vehemently denies that this is 'nannying' by his department. “When seatbelts were put in cars,” he says, “that debate was vigorously played out, but we would never go back now to the position where we had all those deaths.” But he fails to mention that there are absolutely no deaths attributable to vaping; not one.

The frightening thing to me is that there are quite a few such people as the professor making decisions as ridiculous and ludicrous as his. Their specious arguments are trotted out daily and interpreted by our law makers into unjust and ridiculous laws that will almost certainly have exactly the reverse effect to their stated intention. Instead of preventing death and disease from smoking, they will serve only to prevent non-smoking vapers from taking their rightful place with other non-smokers in the clean, fresh non-smoking world that they profess to be creating. And one where citizens' rights count for nothing, and natural law is in second place to bigoted thinking.