The pointlessness of the prohibitionists. It's in our genes.

Clive Bates has put in comments on the E-cigarette advertising code consultation
Thank you Clive - pleasing indeed to see you are trying for the most sense to be practised there.

I think part of the desperate fear the anti smoking industry has, is of a future where everyone vapes as they used to smoke. When all the "old smokers" like me have transitioned to vaping, and the now smokers vape too, who does the e cig industry sell to? The people who will be the vapers of the future are likely to be those who have never smoked or those who look back on their smoking years with nostalgia and the new crop of adults, simply doing what adults enjoy. With all the controls on advertising alcohol and gambling (and smoking) and now electronic cigarettes, the new customers are always the children grown up. There will forever be consumers. There is eternally a new generation, no matter what.

What DOES happen if ever vaping becomes as normal as smoking was and there is no money to be made from tobacco, or for the NRT producing drug cartels? And "Smokefree" becomes a defunct, irrelevant concept. And the profitable and expensive anti tobacco movement falls into disrepute?

Thank you for your efforts towards sensible advertising, Clive. But REALLY the anti tobacco ideologists will influence our near future because they are currently the most powerful, intransigent, self righteous prohibitionists and they are seemingly unconquerable. Their downfall will come as cultures change and new generations arise. Smoking has been practiced as a pleasurable activity since we climbed down from trees. Over the passage of time, the anti smoking drive can only fail in the pointlessness of it.

Whether "smoking" is practiced technologically, as in vaping, or by using combustion, as in the old way, the practise will never be eradicated. Neither will alcohol, or gambling. It's in our genes.