September 15, 2023 - 4:00pm
As I entered my teenage years I began to struggle with an embarrassing addiction. Things got so bad it even started to strain my physical health, and eventually I would require professional help. I should clarify that my juvenile dependency was not drugs or alcohol, but the comparatively innocuous computer game Championship Manager.
All-day binges had resulted, an optician told me, in the potential development of a lazy eye. This was likely the result of having measles as a baby, but the marathon gaming sessions had brought it to the fore. I would now have to wear a corrective eye patch.
Looking back, it’s hard not to feel wistful about such harmless temptations (the patch did the trick after a few months). Without the Internet or smartphones, there was no cyber-bullying or social media to impart bizarre wellness advice or disseminate body dysmorphia. There was no online pornography, with such material requiring intrepid exertion back then.
One struggles not to feel sad for today’s young by comparison. Besides their poor economic prospects and difficulty in getting onto the housing ladder, they have to contend with a society which doesn’t just tolerate addiction but often seems to validate it. Betting companies adorn the shirts of the football teams they support, and our febrile world of “joyless urgency” — as Marilynne Robinson labelled it — driven by the attention economy is all they’ve known.
I was glad, then, to see that Rishi Sunak is set to ban single-use vapes, as well as flavours designed to appeal to children. Predictably, vaping companies responded that they would never dream of targeting children for their products. After all, it is illegal for anyone younger than 18 to buy e-cigarettes. Apparently flavours like “rainbow candy” and “raspberry slush” are aimed at carpet-fitters, retired bank clerks and provincial headmistresses.
While the Government has tried to make cigarettes supremely unappealing in recent years — whether that’s through higher taxes, or pictures on the front of packets showing various organs in a state of tobacco-ridden decay — vaping has been subject to a lighter touch. Understandably, the authorities have viewed it as a means of rendering tobacco smoking obsolete.
Yet that strategy has started to reveal major downsides — especially among the young. The number of 15-year-old girls who vape more than doubled from 10% in 2018 to 21% three years later. Meanwhile, the number of children who tried vaping for the first time increased by 50% over the last year. None of this is legal, and the Prime Minister has rightly concluded that marketing vapes as no worse than Starburst or Haribo isn’t helping.
Central to the rise of vaping among children are disposable e-cigarettes. Just 7.7% of children regularly smoking vapes used them in 2021, a figure which rose to 69% in 2023. Besides the health implications and the increased likelihood of encouraging a cigarette habit, disposable vapes contain both electronics and lithium-ion batteries as well as nicotine, making them a uniquely toxic form of everyday waste. It is bewildering that something used for a day should be allowed to pollute the environment for a century. To quieten any whining about regulatory changes there is a ready-made alternative for those who can legally vape: refillable e-cigarettes.
The waste angle is an obvious one — and it’s clearly incongruous to have landfills suffused with throwaway vapes while plastic straws and disposable earbuds are banned. And yet the fact that the Government is trying to legislate on a matter that impacts the health of young people feels even more important. What other threats to their physical and mental wellbeing might be areas of potential oversight? Social media addiction, perhaps? Or access to porn among children?
I don’t proffer any answers here, nor do I think any measures taken would be simple to enforce. But the political class is starting to grasp that how we let the young engage with potential harms is a social choice. The market does not care about their wellbeing — nor would its more honest advocates claim as much.
Aaron Bastani is the co-founder of Novara Media, and the author of Fully Automated Luxury Communism.
AaronBastani
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SubscribeI was involved with e-cigarettes almost from the beginning so know something about them (I am no longer in that business). Disposable ecigs are awful – a blight upon the earth and should be banned asap; there is no reason why re-chargeable ones should not be the only type on offer. However banning certain flavours because they might appeal to children is tricky, because that is a subjective grey area.
When considering the number of children who have tried vaping remember to consider how many of those would instead have tried burning tobacco in cigarettes, which is way more both addictive and harmful.
If we still had a properly functioning system of trading standards then the many abuses of the law regarding ecigs could be addressed. However this government seems to think that enforcement of such (along with the environment, building regs etc) is irrelevant.
E-cigarettes are a serious boon to public health as they displace the burning of tobacco. Nicotine is not usually harmful, and interestingly is not particularly addictive by itself – it’s the manner of it’s delivery by burning which makes it so addictive.
In my experience I was much more addicted to nicotine from e-cigs than tobacco because it’s harder to keep track of daily consumption. So on that part of your argument, I have to disagree.
“E-cigarettes are a serious boon to public health as they displace the burning of tobacco. ”
Sucking plastic cocks is less carcinogenic than traditional cigs, true. But, good Lord man, that’s not saying very much. And they mess up your lungs worse than trad cigs. Check it out:
https://www.roswellpark.org/newsroom/202302-vaping-cbd-causes-more-severe-lung-damage-vaping-nicotine-roswell-park-study-shows
If e-cigs are only intended to be a “serious boon to public health” (ha ha – how bribed / dumb do you have to be to swallow that one?), then let’s follow the logic of your propaganda – treat them as medicinal devices, available on prescription.
Since they are only intended for health purposes (according to you), then I’m sure you’d have no objection to treating them as the Austrians do.
See my anti-vape work-in-progress blog on the vaping scourge:
https://vapingsucks.blogspot.com/
Do you have any particular view on the legalisation of marijuana?
It is a social choice, but wouldn’t it be one for the parents to make? Why do we keep transferring parenting responsibilities to the state? And why isn’t there an educational campaign similar to the one against cigarettes? A ban like this will just create a black market with possibly even more harmful vaping products.
The pollution aspect alone should be reason enough for the ban. Vaping itself hasn’t been banned. If you want your kids to vape, you can invest in the refillable vapes.
Look, maybe under a more authoritarian form of government we could permit the parents to make these kinds of decisions, but as a democracy we simply can’t trust the people to run their own lives.
Your cynicism is refreshing.
“Why do we keep transferring parenting responsibilities to the state?” In this case at least because parents either don’t meet their responsibilities, or don’t realise the dangers. And who could blame them if the latter given the massive campaign for vaping, aided enthusiastically by government and health workers. As someone who had great difficulty giving up cigarettes, but eventually succeeded 30 years ago, it always seemed obvious madness to encourage widespread use of yet another means of inhaling foreign substances. When cigs were first available nobody knew the results. Yet having discovered the results were bad we plunged straight in to vapes, skilfully marketed by the tobacco producers because they knew they were similarly addictive. Madness.
Let’s ban alcohol, climbing, mountaineering, rugby, football, while we are at it. Why not alcohol actually – which caused far more social harm to other people? Do you have any consistent argument about this at all, or are you of the usual position that substances I like should be allowed, those I disapprove of banned?
Breathing in water vapour and nicotine is vastly less harmful than tobacco smoke.
Parents are too dumb to even know what’s going on. Most vapes are disguised as pens or storage devices.
https://vapingsucks.blogspot.com/
I think it is time to accept reality.
Despite DECADES of fighting smoking and now vaping, plenty of people still do both.
It is not for lack of good information. God knows it is out there and being broadcast loudly. It is just being ignored.
At some point you either have to make something illegal or just accept it.
Making cigarettes or vapes illegal would just create a black market. Besides, we know the government loves the sin tax revenue.
Making it illegal would just add to the cool factor for kids. Short of a prison sentence, they will risk it to look cool and edgy. Anyone want to imprison 16 yr olds for vaping?
So, if we are not prepared to make it illegal, which would probably backfire, then we are just going to have to accept that some percentage of teens and adults are gonna smoke and vape.
Sometimes there are no good answers. Humans are what they are.
We could, instead, make the production and/or selling of addictive materials illegal and thus close down the big companies making and marketing nicotine addiction.
There are SO many things that are potentially addictive from cigarettes to paint thinner sniffing to Sudafed, the list is nearly endless.
And, even if we could ban the production of these things, people will grow tobacco or grow marijuana or make their own wine and beer.
As long as there is demand, somebody will supply the product. Look no further than cocaine, marijuana, look at prohibition in the US, all it did was make money for organized crime.
Humans are what humans are and they are going to engage in things that some feel is self harm. They just are.
Is alcohol involved in that? And if not, why not?
Not just “ignored”. Big vaping / tobacco spends c 1 million dollars per hour on fake science and misinformation / astro-turfing.
https://vapingsucks.blogspot.com/
Why are these idiots wasting their time on this rubbish?
As the late Ernst Jünger found out, LSD is the only way to go.
You absolutely must read Eumeswil if you already haven’t Mr Stanhope.
Thank you.
Class A’s or nothing!
You’re right. It’s the new morality. I like trad cig smokers – they take it outside, the ritual looks cool, and they cheerfully admit that they’re messing themselves up. Whereas vapers literally never stop – in toilets, workplaces, restaurants, and they will bend your ear about the health benefits lol.
What’s the difference between single-use and refillable vapes? And why do kids prefer single-use vapes?
I would possibly support a ban for environmental reasons, but I would need to see some clear evidence that these things do great damage and are easily replaceable with something else. It turns out banning plastic straws and single use bags doesn’t do much to improve the environment at all – you’re just shifting the impact from one area to another.
I really detest banning stuff. We all make stupid decisions and many people have bad habits. Where do you draw the line and who does the drawing? Do we ban the internet? Do we ban driving, video games, dangerous sports? We have to accept that certain lifestyle choices will be a burden on the health care system.
We forced children to get the Covid jab, even though we knew they were far, far more likely to get injured or killed driving to the health centre to get said vaccine. I don’t like govt mandates.
Kids prefer single use because they are easily accessible and their use can be hidden from their parents since they do not have the liability of hiding refillables and the stuff that goes with them.
When 5 million are being thrown away every day then that has to be considered as a completely unsustainable level of waste, it’s absolutely obscene. Lithium in particular is a precious resource that cannot be abused in this way.
5 million. That’s a lot of waste. It’s weird kids wouldn’t use refillables. It’s not like they would be difficult to hide. Kids have been hiding booze and weed from their parents for decades.
So you have addictive tendencies and therefore you want to band them for all? Why stop there then? Why not cigarettes, alcohol, gambling, meat, breathing…
Alcohol, gambling, injecting yourself, etc, be my guest. I couldn’t care less, and I will happily step over you as you lie in your own filth in the gutter. But vaping, like smoking, is inflicted on other people. I left my previous job as the open-plan office I was in was full of chain-vapers. The stuff sticks to surfaces and re-gasses. You get this astringent hit in your mouth from third-hand vape, and then, a couple of hours later, excess mucus production and endless coughing. If vaping had no effect on me, I’d let them at it. But if something you do affects me, I’ll do my damnedest to stop it, since there is no point in appealing to vapers to take it outside. It’s more addictive than cigarettes, and they can’t stop.
I’m stunned that people are allowed to vape in an office.
https://www.nhs.uk/better-health/quit-smoking/vaping-to-quit-smoking/
imo, this is very muddled thinking.
While the health implications of e-cigarettes remain uncertain. After having used them a few times, what struck me is how they manage to be uniquely addictive by being both sweet and full of nicotine. This makes them a potent combination of fizzy drink and cigarette. A fiendishly cleaver move from their suppliers if you ask me!