Smoking, NOT smoking and the law of the land.

[angryoldgit]

When did they change the law?



“Ignorance of the law,” they say, “is no excuse.” Is there then any excuse for those who make make and enforce the laws to twist those laws until they break? The law, of course, is “a ass” as one Charles Dickens knew only too well. But how well do the authorities know their own law? Pretty well, you might think, since they write it, uphold it, and enforce it.



Let us go back to a basic principle of law, “innocent until proven guilty”. Simple, yes? It is not for the accused to prove himself innocent, but for the accuser to prove him guilty. If guilt has not been proved then the defendant cannot be punished. How does that work with smoking? Let us see.



Smoking has been proved to be potentially harmful to the smoker. It is suspected of being harmful to non-smokers but evidence is unclear. Expert witnesses have been called for both sides, and they cannot agree. On the balance of probability, it has been decided that there may be some possibility of harm from second-hand tobacco smoke by virtue of 'passive smoking', so smoking has not been made illegal, but it has been banned in specified enclosed public places for the safety of the public by virtue of the Health Act 2006. The provisions of this Act prohibit the carrying of lit tobacco products in an enclosed or substantially enclosed place to which the public has access. Note that by this Act smokers have thus been denied their basic right to carry out a legal practice in places where they have a legal right to be, and when no guilt has been proved.



E-cigarettes are not made from tobacco but from metal and plastic or glass. They use a battery to heat a cartridge or atomiser to vapourise a very small amount of glycerine and/or propylene glycol, which usually contains a tiny drop of flavouring, none of which ingredients are tobacco products, and each of which can be found in foodstuffs, toothpaste and many products found in every home. This 'e-liquid' may (or may not) contain a very small amount of nicotine, a plant alkaloid found in tobacco, but also in many common foodstuffs of the Solanaceae family including potatoes and tomatoes, aubergines and peppers, that are not tobacco products by any definition. Typically the nicotine content of e-liquids is between 1 and 3 percent of the volume held in the atomiser, this rarely exceeding 1.5 millilitres (ml), sufficient for up 200 'puffs'. This would suggest that very few e-cigs hold more than 0.3mg of nicotine and any one puff would not contain more than 0.0015mg. Ignoring the fact that one of the first principles of law that I was taught in school was that “the law does not concern itself with trifles”, bear also in mind that e-liquids may contain absolutely no nicotine at all. Thus the question may be asked, is an e-cigarette a tobacco product within the law? And the answer must surely be no, or at worst, not in every case. So should taking a puff from an e-cigarette be covered by the ban on smoking, especially since the vapour is definitely not smoke?



Secondly there is the question of 'lit'. There is no combustion of substances in e-cigs. The e-liquid is gently warmed for a matter of seconds exactly in the way that a kettle vaporises water to produce steam. And steam is all that is released by an e-cig; harmless water vapour. One would think, therefore, that e-cigarettes are outside the scope of the ban on smoking, and can be used anywhere, this being a prime reason for their popularity with former smokers.



The problem is that some people want to use the e-cig to replace the tobacco cigarettes they cannot smoke whilst in places covered by the ban, as is their right as citizens; to do something which is permitted by law, or not forbidden by any existing law. But the tobacco control fascists do not tolerate anyone exercising their rights, especially if it conflicts with their obsessive desire to eradicate smoking, and anything even remotely connected to it. Thus they either attempt to use the law to enforce what the law does not enforce, or to seek to extend the law even against the principles of justice. In the first instance we see bodies such as hospital trusts applying the smoking ban beyond the 'enclosed or substantially enclosed' places specified by the Health Act, in order to include car parks, roadways and open spaces within the hospital grounds, which are in no sense enclosed. Then they seek to extend their ban beyond tobacco products to include e-cigs, thus exceeding both the letter and the spirit of the Act.



The zealots wish to go further, too. They wish to extend the law that they already exceed, to cover e-cigs by declaring them tobacco products, and by doing away with 'lit' to include any means of vapourising, and all this simply to include something that has not harmed anyone! Something that has, in fact, saved hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people from the very thing that the Health Act was intended to fight, the smoke from tobacco! E-cigs are being condemned by association with tobacco, by being used by people NOT to smoke! This is similar to treating as an accessory to murder, a bystander who tried to prevent the murder taking place by removing the murder weapon from the killer! What judge could condemn in such a case, other than one who has total contempt for every basic principle of law?



The zealots argue too that e-cigs should be banned like tobacco because the act of 'vaping' is vaguely similar to that of smoking. Like a motorist driving at 30 mph is guilty of looking like another doing 120? If a man looks as though he is making a bomb, although he is in reality repairing a clock, is he to be considered a terrorist? Is a man carrying a sack guilty of burglary, or a gardener with a spade guilty of preventing a lawful burial? The 'stop-and-search' rules will need to be radically re-written to accommodate such changes! Justice requires evidence of guilt, not of similarity! Furthermore, it is normal before passing a law to circumscribe anything, to ascertain whether that thing has actually done any harm, and to seek evidence of the harm done. E-cigs have caused no harm. Not to users, and especially not to non-users.



E-cigs have been accused of the 'potential' to do harm by 'renormalising' smoking. Surely NOT smoking can only normalise NOT smoking! For many people smoking is actually normal, whatever the purists may believe. But when did the law ever punish someone for having the 'potential' to offend, anyway? Should we condemn politicians for having the potential to make war? Strike off doctors for having the potential to murder us? Punish bank managers for having the potential to rob us? In fact, all the evidence to date shows that E-cigs have little or no potential for harm; in reality they have the potential to save millions of lives, and to end the smoking of tobacco, as the purists seek! The truly guilty parties are those who prevent the good doing good deeds, not the other way round.



So, when did the law change? Was it when ideologists found that natural justice got in their way? Others have walked that route before, and the world was always a worse place for it, not better!

[cHooBeyDoo]

Thank you again for such a wonderful read. You sir, are a literary genius

[Ripshod]

angryoldgit, you certainly don't mince your words. Making quite an impact here

[dagl]

angryoldgit with your eloquence you should pop over to seniorphil 's thread allaboute-cigarettes.proboards.com/thread/40086/help-needed-letter-prof-robert

[angryoldgit]

May 26, 2014 22:23:30 GMT dagl said:

angryoldgit with your eloquence you should pop over to seniorphil 's thread allaboute-cigarettes.proboards.com/thread/40086/help-needed-letter-prof-robert

I already did!

[dagl]

May 26, 2014 22:32:43 GMT angryoldgit said:

May 26, 2014 22:23:30 GMT dagl said:

angryoldgit with your eloquence you should pop over to seniorphil 's thread allaboute-cigarettes.proboards.com/thread/40086/help-needed-letter-prof-robert

I already did!

Oh yeh.. I'd even liked your comment there too!..

[chykensa]

Whilst your eloquence on the subject of smoking is a fascinating read angryoldgit, I'm sure you are saving your next salvo for the taxation question.
Big Pharma and Big Tobacco are both losing millions of pounds a year on profit and taxation of tobacco products, and really don't like the way that we the vaping community are pulling a fast one over them and giving up the extremely useful taxable tobacco and then kindly not costing the NHS loads of money buying cancer drugs (amongst others) from Big P.
Bearing in mind that Big P and, to a lesser extent, Big T are underwriting the Governmental coffers, although they wouldn't admit to it unless a High Court judge got very teasy, they are not happy bunnies at the moment. It's no surprise that the Government want to encourage Big T to get in on the e-cig market selling useless and expensive cig-a-likes which they can then 'regulate' and get their tax and profits from.
I would be most interested on reading your take on this complex and interesting conundrum.
Andy

[angryoldgit]

May 26, 2014 22:48:16 GMT chykensa said:

"I would be most interested on reading your take on this complex and interesting conundrum."

chykensa I'm working on that, too, Andy. Obviously it's a complex minefield and I don't know yet whether a 'sin tax' is planned for vaping, similar to that on smoking. That was 'justified' by blaming smokers for rising NHS costs (ignoring the obvious savings on OAP, geriatric care, etc.) but they'd find it very hard at present to make the same argument vis-a-vis e-cigs. Perhaps a 'nicotine tax' will be instituted to compensate for lost tobacco revenues, but who knows?

[Mikey@Vaporized]

Interesting read angryoldgit. Just out of interest, what evidence did you find that was unclear as to whether second hand smoke is harmful or not? And what evidence that claims smoking is only potentially harmful? I don't mean to challenge you by asking these questions, just interested to know

[angryoldgit]

Mikey@Vaporized There have been many, many studies that question whether second-hand smoke has actually harmed anyone. A quick internet search will pull up many details. The famous case that is usually cited is that of entertainer Roy Castle, who was said to be a victim of 'passive' smoking, but there are many who claim that he was a known smoker. It is all too easy to suggest that a never-smoker who develops lung cancer contracted it because they once worked with smokers. It would be almost impossible to prove that such a person contracted it by industrial pollution/smog/radon inhalation/home coal fire etc., etc. Court cases have been lost because proof of passive smoking could not be established. As regards smoking only being potentially harmful, there are very many well-known people who smoked, lived to a ripe old age, and showed no ill-effects from their habit. If the statistics are to be believed I should be long dead, but I am in good health as I approach my 'three-score-and-ten'. So smoking appears not to have harmed me personally. The potential is there, certainly, but not the actuality of harm.

[Mikey@Vaporized]

Interesting I have had a quick search and turned up a few interesting links to publications in the BMJ amongst others. My immediate next step was to have a look at who funded the studies that suggest otherwise. Not so much to my surprise, the answer is the tobacco industry. Don't get me wrong I could be overlooking a lot here as I only checked out two studies in terms of funding and know next to nothing about the alleged myth. For now I can only assume it is nothing more though, generally IMO anything published or sponsored by big T has only one aim - more smokers = more money.
I would be happy to read something peer approved that clearly had no affiliation to tobacco money, and if you can offer anything like this I would read it with interest. Like I say, I am basing my ideas mostly on assumption and am open to new ideas about this. As to your health, I wish you all the best in remaining healthy and am guessing you no longer smoker anyhow?

[halight]

Great read and very true.

[gill2009]

 Another very interesting read angryoldgit  

[andy01424]

so lets rebrand it all and no longer call it vaping or an ecig .....so as of now i vote for this product to be renamed a "Steaming Device" wonder how they would get round that not labled an ecig,we can call it a ecig under the terms of being a slang word for Steaming Device

[andy01424]

or remove the Ecig as everyone associates an Ecig to be these:




But these are not labeld as an ecig--- but a vaping device or as we could call it Steaming Device