I'll be away until Monday so I shall wish you a good weekend and leave you with two things.
Firstly, Leg-iron has a message for those who want to ban e-cigarettes:
All you antismokers cheering, consider this. We are going to smoke. If we can't have Electrofag any more we will go back to tobacco. Those who have switched completely from tobacco to Electrofag will switch back. Gum and patches are no good, it's the action of smoking that smokers enjoy. The gum is as bitter as an ASH activist and the patches are as irritating as a fake cough. Especially the fake cough produced by the hideous old bat who passed me in the street as I was rolling a cigarette. Cough cough cough. Pathetic. At least wait until I light it before pretending it bothers you.
It's the action of smoking that bothers you people. Not the smell. Not the health. Not the pretendy science that backs up every damn report ever issued. It's the sight of someone enjoying something that you don't like.
Secondly, via F2C, the curse of the smoking ban has struck again. First Ireland, then the USA, then Italy and now...
Imperial Tobacco reports first rise in British cigarette market in four decades
Imperial Tobacco said yesterday that the annual duty-paid cigarette market in the UK had increased by 1 per cent to 45.5 billion cigarettes in 2009, while the fine cut tobacco market grew by 21 per cent to 4,650 tonnes. It is the first time that the number of cigarettes sold in the UK has risen in almost four decades.
You can lead a horse to water...
Leg Iron is spot on. If public health groups actually cared about public health they would be over the moon about the electronic cigarette. Instead, they seem to take the view that smoking is morally wrong, even when it is not bad for you.
ReplyDeleteA couple of weeks ago Quit in New Zealand admitted that the electronic cigarette was "certainly a good thing" from a health view point but complained:
"Our concern is that, at face value, they appear to reinforce the behaviour of having a cigarette. It's reinforcing the wrong habit and potentially without addressing the addiction."
Or as we translated it on our blog:
"smoking is morally wrong, even if it is not bad for you..
"And if you can't quit, you can just f**k off and die."