Those of you who read my column regularly will know I’m a convert to electronic cigarettes and it is encouraging to see I’m not alone. Walking through the City I now see a growing army of vapers – the name given to those of us who vaporise rather than smoke.
It is easy to see why: tobacco, in addition to being incredibly harmful, incredibly anti-social and incredibly expensive, is also incredibly addictive. Mark Twain once said: “Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.” You could say reports of the moreishness of cigarettes have not been greatly exaggerated.
E-cigs on the other hand allow smokers to keep on doing their thing without any of the downsides. Yes, the user is still addicted, but nicotine itself is no more harmful than caffeine. We converts can now happily ‘vape’ away, but without the tar, smoke and cocktail of 500-plus harmful compound chemicals that do the vast majority of harm in an ‘analogue’ cigarette.
It really is nothing short of a revolution, and one that could help save countless lives as more people give up the dreaded weed. E-cigs are already thought to be the UK’s most popular smoking cessation aid, with more than 1.3 million users at the last count and over 25% of attempts to stop smoking in the UK now supported by e-cigarettes, overtaking longstanding cessation aids such as throat sprays, patches and nicotine gum.
So it came as something of a surprise to learn how hard politicians are working to ban them.
I am going to give the European Union the benefit of the doubt and suggest that hard lobbying from big tobacco and big pharma – along with the billions governments stand to lose in taxes – has nothing to do with their proposals. Instead I suspect their stance is largely based on ignorance.
EU officials fear there is a risk that electronic cigarettes can develop into a gateway to normal cigarettes, which makes as much sense as someone choosing to take methadone and then moving on to heroin. Brussels also wants to include vaporisers under a new EU “tobacco products directive” — despite the fact that they contain no tobacco.
It is always dangerous when those in power decide to regulate something they do not truly understand. The institutional investment industry is itself facing one or two regulatory proposals which could go badly wrong if they are enshrined in law without proper consideration. The two that immediately spring to mind – Solvency II and the cap on defined contribution charges – are both well-meaning, but could have serious consequences for the industry if agreed in their current state.
Luckily, in both instances the powers that be have listened to concerns and chosen to investigate further before doing anything rash. Let’s hope they recognise the limitations of their current proposals before they leave the industry in much the same state I was in before discovering e-cigs: in poor health and out of pocket.
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