COLETTE Douglas Home urges us not to be too harsh on the users of e-cigarettes and she is correct; we need to do everything we can to support those trapped in their addiction to tobacco, and its primary drug, nicotine ("We shouldn't be too harsh on the users of e-cigarettes", The Herald, May 6).
Ms Douglas Home worries that we might be excluding people from their friends if we ban them from vaping e-cigarettes in restaurants, cafes, pubs and other public places. They are, after all, responsible tobacco addicts who are trying to overcome their addiction by using e-cigarettes as an aid to quit smoking.
What she has missed in her well-researched article are the myths that already surround the new smoking trend, vaping.
The first myth is that vaping helps people to stop smoking tobacco in the standard form of cigarettes. No evidence is yet available to support this theory. Another is that vaping "is safer than standard cigarettes". Again there is no evidence for this, but much that confirms that nicotine is highly addictive, and so must be bad for our health regardless of the method of allowing it to enter our bodies. I wonder if she would support injecting nicotine into our veins as being an even safer way to get nicotine into our bloodstream, rather than vaping it through expensive cigarette-style holders?
Ms Douglas Home also did not seem to think it was all that significant that e-cigarettes have come on to the market with no legal restriction. There is no control of quality, or strength of the nicotine, no restriction on who can sell it nor who can buy it.
The scandal that she did not reveal is that the multi-billion dollar tobacco industry has hoodwinked governments into allowing this myth-ridden product on to the market without questioning why it is there. They have all bought the bogus argument that it might help the reluctant residue of older smokers to quit, when there is no science to back that.
There is, though, already evidence that those who start off vaping occasionally soon return to the old smokers' habit of upping the dose. This is why the tobacco industry is laughing all the way to the bank.
The Scottish Government's response is to wait until at least 2016 when it is hoped that European legislation might come into force to restrict the age of those who can purchase and use the raw nicotine contained in e-cigarettes. In the meantime the market for this bogus aid to quitting smoking will grow, and a new generation of nicotine addicts will be created who will then need help to quit their addiction.
Max Cruickshank,
13 Iona Ridge,
Hamilton.
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