Vapers: A Twenty-First Century Menace

Leye - Every other Wednesday

Photo by mush m.

Vaping. Tut-tut.

It’s morning rush hour. You’re walking along the pavement, you and a hundred other mildly depressed workers - constantly readjusting your pace to thwart the devilish intentions of the slow-walkers, the hand-holders, the start and stoppers, and the walk-while-reading-on-phone-ers. You’ve just managed to side step that most privileged of all sidewalk users, the parent with kids spread out from both arms, then all of a sudden, puff, your entire head is engulfed in a dense cloud of sickeningly sweet nicotine laced vapour, instantly ruining strawberry for you for the rest of your life. You have been vaped. Against your will and without your consent. Why is this not a crime?

I used to be a smoker, real cigarettes, so I get it. They are addicted. They are victims. It is medication. But what I don’t get is the total lack of awareness or regard or both that vapers exhibit in public. They should not have the right to breathe out the humongous clouds of chemicals they inflict upon innocent members of the public. It is an assault. It is an act of violence. And if I have managed to stay nicotine free for so long (4 years, 11 months, and 11 days – I checked. I have an app), what right have you to force feed me yours? Especially when it has been circulated through your lungs and the bits of you that live in there. This should be illegal, but I guess we’ll have to wait till the first lawsuits for that to happen. “The court finds Mr Varpour guilty of causing Miss Iwaz Klin’s nicotine addiction through reckless vaping while in public.”

If you are resident in Hong Kong you need not wait till successful litigation to enjoy vape free walks in your public places. Hong Kong has just announced plans to ban all e-cigarettes and jail all vaping offenders. Can I get an amen? That’s six months in jail or a fine of $6,370 for anyone who imports, makes, sells or promotes new smoking products.  Anti-social vaping? Whack! six months hard labour!  I just love the people of Hong Kong. (This morning I realised I do not know what Hong Kongians are called. Hong Kongers? Hong Kongese? Just Cantonese?)

But, wont that lead to an increase in smoking? If I use one of my three wishes to get the UK government to follow the example of Hong Kong and ban vaping, wont former vapers just turn to that much more hardcore means of nicotine delivery, regular cigarettes? 

Well, this is where I stand on this: I think turkey sausages are evil. I think diet coke is all shades of wrong. I think non-alcoholic wine is the work of Satan. I think vegan burgers, and vegan bacon, and vegan any other not-normally-vegan food are just manifestations of pure evil. 

So, for me, if you must have sugar, have sugar, not some chemically synthesised tastes-like-sugar. If you want bacon, eat bacon from a pig, not something called sietan. And if you must smoke tobacco, smoke proper cigarettes. Light a match. Enjoy the orange glow of the tobacco each time you take a drag. Inhale that smoke of 7,000 chemicals. Feel that instant hit, that sensation that all smokers know too well (and all ex-smokers miss tous les jours ). And should you ever blow your smoke in my face, at least I will get a hit of nicotine the way I was accustomed to, and not from the vapour cloud of some inconsiderate vaper who lacks the real-cigarette-smoker’s etiquette of at least attempting to blow their smoke away from other people’s faces.