Fancy a smoke? Try an e-cigarette, says the government.

[Ansel]

[muddyfunkstar]

That unit needs nudging in the direction of Sweden.

[shikitohno]

Knew this couldn't be the US just by the thread title. Far too sensible an idea to have been approved here. Wish the various governments would get over their aversion to snus already, and make it easier for people to get. The numbers are pretty clear on its health benefits, but a loud group of anti-tobacco lobbyists just keep flat out lying, or completely distorting the numbers to suit their agenda. Sad thing is that it gets believed by so many people.

[snusgetter]

Ansel, this should be a little easier to read:
Try smokeless nicotine cigarettes, says government | Society | The Guardian

[Ansel]

That unit needs nudging in the direction of Sweden.

haha yes, it does.

[jmdkodiak]

I never really liked e-cigs..

But I tried one not that long ago and it wasn't bad, actually. On the upside I've actually started seeing people at bars and whatnot smoking them.

[Lulie]

Forgive my ignorance on e-cigs, but I do think this is a good idea, even if it is just "police" them. I saw a woman I used to work with discussing them on facebook and saying she had bought one, and the website she linked looked kinda dodgy.

I will stick with snus, I don't think I could have quit as easily with the e-cig, too much familiarity there..

[jmdkodiak]

Forgive my ignorance on e-cigs, but I do think this is a good idea, even if it is just "police" them. I saw a woman I used to work with discussing them on facebook and saying she had bought one, and the website she linked looked kinda dodgy.

I will stick with snus, I don't think I could have quit as easily with the e-cig, too much familiarity there..

I agree.. Snus is habitual enough to replace smoking, but discreet enough to be passive treatment for nicotine addiction. Perfect!

The only instance I could see myself using an e-cig is while drinking/at a bar. I still smoke regular cigarettes when I drink usually..

[snusgetter]

Forgive my ignorance on e-cigs, but I do think this is a good idea, even if it is just "police" them. I saw a woman I used to work with discussing them on facebook and saying she had bought one, and the website she linked looked kinda dodgy.

I will stick with snus, I don't think I could have quit as easily with the e-cig, too much familiarity there..

It couldn'ta been Northerner/GetSnus ..... they now carry e-cigs.

[Mdisch]

Forgive my ignorance on e-cigs, but I do think this is a good idea, even if it is just "police" them. I saw a woman I used to work with discussing them on facebook and saying she had bought one, and the website she linked looked kinda dodgy.

I will stick with snus, I don't think I could have quit as easily with the e-cig, too much familiarity there..

Good gal!
E-cigs have alwasy struck me as a sort of weird thing.. Sure they are "better" than normal cigarettes, but I know 10 people who have tried to quit smoking using e-cigs and only 1 succeded. And I have yet to see anyone fail with snus?

[Lulie]

It couldn'ta been Northerner/GetSnus ..... they now carry e-cigs.

No it definitely wasn't one of those fantastic websites!
The website was called "Easyworld Online",.. looks like "made in china" crap to me.

[Ansel]

I feel a bit like a robot or something smoking an e-cig... they seem a bit clinical... and lack tradition, naturalness, history... for me. Moreover, for me they didn't work whereas snus did, instantly. But that said, i think this is a move in the right direction.

[Frosted]

Argh! Just posted this under Health.
Sorry Ansel - didn't see this here.

At least the government is being nudged in the right direction. Smokeless is the way.

[snusgetter]

E-cigs but no snus?? WTF?

~
The smokeless truce
By Tom Keane
September 17, 2011


I’M SITTING at a bar and the guy next to me pulls out a cigarette and starts smoking. I’m inwardly seething, wondering what to do. Ignore it? Complain to the bartender and let him do the dirty work? Or confront the smoker myself? And if I do, then what - words exchanged, perhaps a fight?

And then I realize the smoke isn’t bothering me at all. Indeed, I can’t even smell it.

“What is that you’re smoking?’’

“That,’’ it turns out, is an electronic cigarette. The smoke I was looking at was water vapor - steam - and nothing else. The device itself is a small marvel, containing flavored liquid and some nicotine, and it delivers the taste of a cigarette - and the drug - as the user inhales. To complete the effect, the tip even glows. It is, it occurs to me, an excellent way to bring about a truce between those who smoke and those who don’t - a way for us, once again, to occupy the same places in bars, restaurants, and ball fields.

So why won’t Boston let that happen?

Smoking bans are a relatively recent phenomenon. Boston was one of the early adopters, putting in a full-scale ban - covering almost all workplaces, including restaurants and bars - in 1998. Today, 26 states have bans and the US Centers for Disease Control expects that by 2020 all states will have put one in place. And for good reason: one’s right to smoke stops when it hits someone else’s lungs.

Sometimes the bans have been framed as a workers’ rights matter - tobacco fumes in effect create a hazardous work environment. No one, the argument runs, should have to risk their health merely to wait tables. Other times the bans are a weighing of rights. Some patrons smoke, some don’t, and as the number of nonsmokers has grown it’s easier to make those who do give way to those who don’t (usually by just letting them sneak outside for a moment to get a fix). Either way, the bans are deservedly popular. Even some smokers like them; they may not mind inhaling their own smoke, but don’t want to breath someone else’s.

This has all come at a cost to smokers, however, who find themselves increasingly pushed aside and isolated. One doesn’t have to be an enthusiast of smoking to recognize there is some legitimacy in smokers’ complaints that these various bans are in some ways an infringement of their rights.

But the logic for all of those bans plainly disappears if the smoker poses no harm to the non-smoker. That is what makes a recent proposal by Boston’s Public Health Commission so puzzling. Electronic cigarettes are so new that they are largely unregulated and the Commission is now leaping into the gap. (Nothing, one suspects, so quickens the pulse of a regulator as the prospect of new terrain.) One proposal - to limit sales to adults - makes sense; nicotine is a drug after all. But another proposal - to treat electronic cigarettes the same as the tobacco-stuffed kind - is nonsense. By their very nature, electronic cigarettes pose no hazard to anyone except, of course, the person choosing to use them (and, since electronic cigarettes have none of the cancer-causing tars and other byproducts of tobacco, that hazard is far less). So what is the commission’s rationale?

I suspect it’s just a back-door effort to ban adults from smoking. An outright prohibition would still generate much resistance (and, as we have learned from Prohibition and the war on drugs, would ultimately carry negative consequences far greater than the benefits of any ban). But by sharply limiting where adults can use electronic cigarettes, it is in effect trying to accomplish the same thing.

Granted, we all wish people would live their lives as we wished. Personally, I’d ban motorcycles, skydiving, and mountain climbing - dangerous and worthless pursuits all. But the hallmark of a genuinely free society is that we permit people to engage in those and other risky activities as long as they don’t impinge on others’ freedoms. If electronic cigarettes pose no threat to me - and apparently they don’t - then you should be allowed to sit beside me and puff away.

© Copyright 2011 Globe Newspaper Company.


To paraphrase:
"If snus poses no threat to you or me - and apparently it doesn’t - then I should be allowed to sit beside you and snus away."

[lxskllr]

That's because it isn't based on logic, science, or good faith bargaining. These people are petty tyrants that try to enforce their views on everyone else. They're frustrated with the deprivations inflicted on them by their superiors, and make up for it by inflicting deprivations on others.