{"id":24355,"date":"2014-02-20T08:37:21","date_gmt":"2014-02-20T13:37:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=24355"},"modified":"2019-10-02T18:45:56","modified_gmt":"2019-10-02T22:45:56","slug":"anti-tobacco-campaigners-a-great-bunch-of-puritanical-cnuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/02\/20\/anti-tobacco-campaigners-a-great-bunch-of-puritanical-cnuts\/","title":{"rendered":"Anti-tobacco campaigners – “a great bunch of puritanical Cnuts”"},"content":{"rendered":"

In sp!ked<\/em>, Rob Lyons<\/a> looks at the way e-cigarettes are being marketed in the UK and how it’s driving anti-tobacco campaigners absolutely insane:<\/p>\n

For the tobacco-control lobby, an advert like Dorff\u2019s is an absolute nightmare. It makes no health claims. It is clearly targeted at adults. It plays to the fact that even smokers dislike aspects of old-fashioned cigarettes, and are happy to compromise in order to get most of the pleasure of smoking without the hassle or the irritation to others. And then \u2013 God forbid \u2013 it even plays to the annoyance of smokers at the health fanatics. The last thing smoke dodgers want is for anyone to be able to take their freedom back. Even the existence of the sanitised offer from Vype\u2019s say-nothing advert is anathema.<\/p>\n

This was made abundantly clear in a report published by Cancer Research UK last year, The marketing of electronic cigarettes in the UK<\/em><\/a> [PDF]. The authors are forced to admit that e-cigs \u2018are accepted as being much safer than their conventional equivalents, so if smokers can be encouraged to switch there is the potential for significant public health gain\u2019.<\/p>\n

However, this message is quickly lost in a cloud of public-health cant. The threats, say the authors, include concerns that \u2018hard-won tobacco-control policies (smokefree public places, the ad ban, age restricted sales, tobacco industry denormalisation, POS [point-of-sale] restrictions) are being undermined\u2019 and that \u2018there is evidence that young people, who have always been the key to the long-term viability of the tobacco industry, may be being pulled into the market\u2019. The danger, say the authors, is that tobacco companies don\u2019t want you to give up your addiction, just switch to a different delivery system. The problem with this argument is that the new delivery system is much, much safer. Why shouldn\u2019t corporations try to sell us safe products?<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

In reality, what the anti-tobacco lobbyists (and their fans in Westminster and Whitehall) are really afraid of is the loss of their power and influence over our lives. They fear they will be helpless against the tide of e-cigs, like a great bunch of puritanical Cnuts. (Note to sub-editor: that\u2019s definitely \u2018Cnuts\u2019, as in the Danish king who famously \u2013 probably apocryphally \u2013 tried to turn back the sea. Honest.)<\/p>\n

E-cigs are a safe, practical alternative to smoking. For all the huffing and putting-a-stop-to-puffing, tobacco control has been an illiberal failure. E-cigs are encouraging smokers to switch, cut down or stop altogether far more successfully than all the bans, taxes, restrictions and useless nicotine-replacement therapies that have gone before. \u2018Vaping\u2019 is an unexpected but nonetheless happy success story. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In sp!ked, Rob Lyons looks at the way e-cigarettes are being marketed in the UK and how it’s driving anti-tobacco campaigners absolutely insane: For the tobacco-control lobby, an advert like Dorff\u2019s is an absolute nightmare. It makes no health claims. It is clearly targeted at adults. It plays to the fact that even smokers dislike […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,831,66,15],"tags":[119,428,931,1310,661],"class_list":["post-24355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-business","category-health-science","category-technology","tag-drugs","tag-marketing","tag-moralpanic","tag-puritanism","tag-regulation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6kP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24355"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51486,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24355\/revisions\/51486"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}