Electronic Cigarettes in the News

Welcome back mates! It's been a little while since we've done a proper news roundup. That's mainly because there wasn't really that much new news to report. There's been a smattering of bits and pieces, some worth sharing, but really, there've been no ground-breaking or earth-shattering developments.

Up North

Way up north, the Scot's had a big to-do over whether vaping should be allowed in Hospital Zones, or banned in the same way as tobacco. Not surprisingly, as with so many other official stances on the use of electronic cigarettes, the answer was... a resounding maybe.

It seems that the Home Office couldn't really come to a conclusion that was based on hard medical and scientific evidence, so they left it up to the individual districts to decide for themselves. 

It truly is hard for politicians to make a decision when they are trapped between common sense and the all mighty pound. This is a classic example of the traditional political philosophy "The Buck PASSES Here."

The Land of Cornbread

The next story comes to us from the State of Alabama. The same place the lads from "Top Gear" almost got killed. You can check out that video on YouTube.

' Turn's out Alabama is suffering a shortfall in tax revenue, and one of its Governors' suggestions was to start taxing electronic cigarettes and eliquid at the same rate as tobacco products. 

Alabamians, when independently polled, showed an unusual amount of common sense by rejecting the idea 68% to 30% with 3% having no opinion. Yes, I realise that that comes to 101%, but consider the local!

Here at Home

Falling prey to the same fits of schizophrenia that seem to affect all public policy boards, the British Association of Adoption and Fostering (BAAF) has ridden the roundabout full circle on electronic cigarette use.

The Story runs like this. The BAAF considered electronic cigarette use the same as tobacco use. That is, until the "Mail" ran a story last Sunday about a middle-aged, professional, extremely over-qualified set of adopting parents who had their application denied for the single reason that a social worker had observed the prospective father using an electronic cigarette.

Once the story went public the Adoptions Chiefs went into full 'damage control' mode and reversed its policy in less than 24 hours. Their new policy will be as stated in this direct quote.

"At the next meeting of our Health Group Advisory Committee (HGAC), we will be recommending that [fostering and adoption] agencies now consider e-cigarettes as different to tobacco cigarettes.

'Agencies should therefore recognise the low risk to children and not see the use of e-cigarettes as a reason to preclude foster carers or adopters purely on this basis. Each circumstance should be risk assessed on an individual basis.

E-cigarettes appear to have positive benefits for smokers when providing them with a route to abstinence and the risk to children from passive smoke is lessened."

I couldn't have said it better myself.