Labour will “come down like a ton of bricks” on the vaping industry if Rishi Sunak does not “pull his finger out” and introduce regulations, Wes Streeting has said.
The shadow health secretary attacked the prime minister, saying he had been leading a government that had been “asleep at the wheel” as a generation of children become addicted to nicotine.
Vaping is a substitute for smoking baccy. We want the kiddies to be vaping.
Vote Labour so that your child is PROTECTED from vaping after the NHS cuts her tits off and pumps her full of male hormones.
Well, vapers, don’t say you weren’t warned.
Vaping is regulated
Labour is aware that the ineffectual enforcement of cigarette sales under labour and the conservatives has resulted in some children becoming addicted to nicotine?
It didn’t begin with vaping
I’m not sure I want Mr Streeting chattering about children.
But this is what the Mother of Parliaments is reduced to.
Competing sets of incompetent liars and traitors, in the pay of foreigners, who can think of no better distraction from the economic and demographic ruin they’ve deliberately inflicted on you than to promise to ban vapes, fags and laughing gas.
We’re at the kids table.
Unfortunately it’s the kids table at Gary Glitter’s birthday party.
“We want the kiddies to be vaping.”
That would be true if vaping was a substitute for smoking – that is as smoking continued to die out, the few remaining hang-outs were switching to vaping.
However, a LOT of people have taken your unfortunate phrasing to heart. Vaping has been presented as desirable, beneficial, safe *in it’s own right*. Just as the public health message on smoking was beginning to reduce the industry to a stub (haha), along comes vaping as the thing the cool kids do.
It appears that vaping has significantly increased the numbers of nicoteen users, due largely to very poor public messaging, not decreased it. And no, vaping is not risk free, and certainly no longer fulfulling it’s role as a way to wean people off cigarettes..
However, a LOT of people have taken your unfortunate phrasing to heart. Vaping has been presented as desirable, beneficial, safe *in it’s own right*. Just as the public health message on smoking was beginning to reduce the industry to a stub (haha), along comes vaping as the thing the cool kids do.
Counterpoint: who cares?
Vaping isn’t even in the first ten encyclopedia volumes of things that are urgently wrong in this country.
So many squirrels, we should reform the Tufty Club.
“Vaping isn’t even in the first ten encyclopedia volumes of things that are urgently wrong in this country.”
Ah, the convenient myth that governments can only do one thing at a time… “You can’t possibly solve that problem because is more important”.
We *almost* addressed nicoteen addiction (after all, cigarettes are one of the first things first world companies sell to third world countries). Why should we willingly do that to ourselves when it is relatively easily avoided?
Teenagers vaping cannot be painted as remotely desirable except in the case where you are so determined to “preserve freedoms” that you might as well skip to the hard stuff on the grounds that it increases economic activity..
Ah, the convenient myth that governments can only do one thing at a time… “You can’t possibly solve that problem because is more important”.
They’re not solving any problems, and they’re actively making new ones for us.
Our government is the problem.
Also, smoking is cool.
Why should we care if adults choose to enjoy nicotine? (It’s already illegal to sell vapes to kids, so no need to bring up the “won’t anyone think of the chiiiiildren” straw man.)
I don’t smoke, have never smoked, have no intention of ever smoking. The only thing wrong with cigarettes is that if someone next to me smokes one, I have to too. That isn’t an issue with vapes.
Off topic, but…Wes Streeting MP once employed baby-faced Keir Mather, now MP for Selby, as a researcher, as did Matthew Parris. I am trying to think of what these three individuals could have in common…
It appears that vaping has significantly increased the numbers of nicoteen users
Citation needed.
We *almost* addressed nicoteen addiction
No one gave a fuck about nicotine addiction last time I looked. We tried to discourage people from ingesting nicotine in a particular fashion and that seems to have worked. Vapes have been part of that.
Teenagers vaping cannot be painted as remotely desirable except in the case where you are so determined to “preserve freedoms” that you might as well skip to the hard stuff on the grounds that it increases economic activity..
If teenagers are vaping rather than smoking fags then this entirely desirable because vaping is not as bad for you AND is easier to give up. We should certainly legalise most of the other common recreational drugs, not least because they are more fun than ciggies.
You speak as if the UK had legalised selling My Little Pony vapes to eight year olds.
But this is what the Mother of Parliaments is reduced to.
I’m 68 in a few weeks and in the 50 years of being eligible to vote the only time I haven’t attended the polling station was when I was abroad and my father was my proxy. (Those were the day when you needed a real reason to get a proxy vote and postal votes were even harder to get and rightly so).
I’m now fast coming to the conclusion that I’m not going to vote in the next election and I’m not going to spoil my vote either as they are just ignored but included in turnout numbers. I’m well aware of the argument that says if you don’t vote you are by default accepting the decision of those who do and can’t complain about the result, but its got beyond that because there’s no difference between the parties: they all want to take my money and treat me like a child who can’t make his own decisions.
Apart from a few individuals I don’t think there’s anyone worthy of an active vote.
We should deny them any legitimacy by not voting. If the turnout is under 50% they can’t even talk about having a democratic mandate.
@MC:
“If teenagers are vaping rather than smoking fags then this entirely desirable because vaping is not as bad for you AND is easier to give up. We should certainly legalise most of the other common recreational drugs, not least because they are more fun than ciggies.”
That was my point – vaping is not “rather than” smoking fags. For a while, most teenagers wouldn’t be seen dead smoking. It was what sad old blokes did. The public health messaging behind vaping changed that – that was the government failure – they actually managed to make smoking cool again. Morons.
As for the other recreational drugs.. If they’re less addictive/lower health side effects, certainly. But I’ve seen a few families fucked up by both smoking and other drugs and don’t see why we should introduce more vectors to that sort of damage if we can avoid them.
What is wrong with nicotine addiction ? As mentioned, shirley the problem was with its delivery : tar and smoke borne particulates scarring the lungs.
Doesn’t vaping avoid these problems ?
It’s illegal to sell vapes to children. We don’t need more laws we need the existing ones enforced.
We’ve got to get away from our bansturbation culture.
@AndyT – OK, I was assuming that kids who now vape illegally were just the ones who 10 years ago smoked illegally. However, are your numbers solid? I’m fairly certain Snowden has written about this.
Re drugs in general. A lifetime smoking fucked up the last 5 years of my father’s life. I know three people, all women, who drank themselves to death. But I do not believe that freedom should be restricted because it doesn’t work out for some. It really is a slippery slope. Ban smoking today and it will be compulsory helmets when leaving the house and a tofu only diet within our lifetimes. The fuckers who drive this will never ever stop, as noted by CS Lewis and whoever came up with The Bottom Inspectors in Viz. You can see it in the brief lines quotes about ‘ultra processed food’ in another of today’s items.
The Worstall Manifesto, as far as there is one. “We’re adults, we have agency. Our choice on path from cradle to grave. Fuck off”
@AndyT You’re not their nanny. These are adults. And nicotine is not as bad for your health as tar,
I think BiND has a point, Gorbachev managed to lose an election where he was the only candidate, because the electorate noticed the vote needed a minimum quorum. They refused to vote, quorum not obtained, Govie lost. Exit USSR.
Whether the resulting chaos was beneficial, however…
Isn’t it early days to make conclusions about the safety of vaping? I mean just because drilling through your kneecap with a 3/8ths Black&Decker isn’t as bad as jumping in front of a train, it’s probably still not clever. Apparently there were 350 UK hospitalisations due to vaping last year. Maybe there were 350 hospitalisations from plugging in USB cables, I dunno; but it seems a lot. It’s odd that many of the people celebrating putting whacky danger substances into their body get all fussy about nouvelle vaxxines and Diet Coke.
– Also, smoking is cool.
So they should’ve put some nicotine in with the spiky MRNA and administered it behind the bike sheds.
We have a century of evidence of nicotine. It’s no worse than caffeine. The fact that the body gets rid of it so fast is a massive clue.
Smoking is dangerous because of the tar, smoke particles etc. But that’s true regardless of the substance smoked.
There were not 350 hospitalisations for vaping in the UK. Countries without an issue with vaping have none. None. It’s not the vaping that is dangerous.
Put some stupid drug in your vape, sure. But that’s the drug, not the vape.
TtC,
The main difference is we have have a long history of democracy and a constitution that may not be codified but it is largely written down in various places, as Blair found out, and it doesn’t include the concept of a quorum. So no matter how many, or few, turn out a government will be formed.
My main hope, a vain one I know, is that there is a period of reflection amongst our political classes.
BiND,
“I’m now fast coming to the conclusion that I’m not going to vote in the next election and I’m not going to spoil my vote either as they are just ignored but included in turnout numbers. I’m well aware of the argument that says if you don’t vote you are by default accepting the decision of those who do and can’t complain about the result, but its got beyond that because there’s no difference between the parties: they all want to take my money and treat me like a child who can’t make his own decisions.”
I’m going to give the Reform guy a hand, I think.
But, I have a real concern that the problem goes deeper, and I see/feel this in so many places, that out politics, media, party machines, general population is socialist. Young, old, women, even blokes in their 40s who should have grown out of it. Everyone wants the government doing more things, and from some imagined rich people. It’s fantasy land and at some point it’s going to break. But it’s going to take 5-10 years.
Horse riding is a very dangerous activity. These days, horses are not a serious transport option so it isn’t even a substitute for other dangerous activities like riding a bicycle or driving a car. Moreover, horses do pose dangers to other people too – other road users, the stable hands who have to look after them – so all these posho horse riders are not just endangering themselves but also putting other people at risk. Also horses are ugly and pooh a lot.
And yet many middle class parents outside the big cities take their girls for horse riding lessons! Disgusting when you stop and think about it.
BAN THIS SICK FILTH IMMEDIATELY.
Let there be black market horses and riding lessons that you buy from a dodgy man in a pub instead. On smuggled ponies created in some illegal Chinese laboratory. This will end gloriously.
Nicotine is as addictive as Caffeine. And just as dangerous. Alcohol is more addictive and more dangerous.
@ BiW
The only thing wrong with cigarettes is that if someone next to me smokes one, I have to too. That isn’t an issue with vapes.
Have you ever been in close proximity of someone who vapes?
Yes.
Short of snogging a vaper while they’re vaping, I don’t see a problem. The water vapour dissipates in less than 3 feet.
@BiW
True, although some of the disgusting flavourings they put in can turn your stomach. But I don’t think there should be a ban on people who wear too much perfume/aftershave.
Anon – I think you’re channeling Prof David Nutt here.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0269881108099672
@GP
Yep, you got it.