Well this is a rather lovely to-do isn’t it?
The smoking ban. Introduced on July 1st 2007 (in England, but the Scots had to go one better and implement it officially on March 26th 2006. Plus Wales did it on April 2nd 2007 – if only it had been a day earlier – and Northern Ireland on April 20th 2007). The ban is now almost 10 years old.
For those that don’t remember how it all came about, a brief history lesson is needed.
I know, it’s been awhile since I last put finger to key. Far too much going on outside the twitter- & blog-spheres for me to put aside time to regularly post. Real life eh?
It seems the hypocritical vapers friend ASH have been up to their old tricks. Again. I’m not at all surprised, after all this time last year they said the 250,000 vapers that use 20mg/ml and above don’t matter. Fancy that!
It is well-known that within the UK, each of the devolved areas have completely different priorities when it comes to “running” their little piece of the country. Wales tried, and spectacularly failed last year to bring in a new “Public Health (Wales) Bill” which would, in effect have severe negative consequences for Welsh vapers. That Bill, the demented offspring of one Mark Drakeford, was defeated at the final hurdle, not by the weight of evidence as it should have been long before it got to the final vote, but by the “cheap date” comment.
As I’m sure you’re aware, England has had their ridiculous ban on smoking in cars since September 2015. They even “celebrated” the anniversary this year where there was a totally unremarkable 3% decline in self-reported exposure in kids to smoke in cars - using their own survey figures of course. Now the so-called “ban” in England didn’t apply to Scotland, so instead they had to create their own version of the Orwellian legislation.
Hard to believe it’s been a year since the sock-puppet charity ASH got their way with the ridiculous legislation on smoking in cars (with kids). Yet, a year it has been. I’m sure you’ll remember how ASH considered the passing of the legislation a “success” and how it would “drive down” smoking rates and all the usual platitudes when a state-funded charity imposes its authoritarian will by lobbying the government (with their own cash mind).
It’s been rather busy outside of my vaper-sphere recently which has unfortunately led to a lot of things slipping, including this post. Many of you are aware that the World Health Organisation recently released all the documents for the upcoming tax-payer funded shenanigans to be held in India for Conference Of Parties #7 (COP7). There’s a number of documents that are of interest, some of which I’ll write about here but the main interest at the moment is the originally named document FCTC/COP/7/11 ‘Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems and Electronic Non-Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS/ENNDS)’
It never ceases to amaze me how ludicrous these anti-smoker folk are. Not simply content with banning smoking (and of course in some cases vaping too) indoors in bars, pubs and all the other fun places that we like to attend, now they’re taking aim at the great outdoors.
It’s not the first time, Swansea held a consultation, which they subsequently ignored. Pembrokeshire council made a beach smokefree (which of course included vaping), Bristol has a “voluntary ban” (complete with oh so cute sign posts) - arguably they were “the first” to do such a bonkers notion.