John Raffles

Another scare story about e-cigarettes. What we should be worrying about is sugar

‘E-Cigs Time Bomb’, shrieks the front page of today’s Daily Mirror. Vaping gets kids hooked on nicotine, experts fear. Experts do a lot of ‘fearing’, it strikes me, but what we don’t know – cannot know for years – is whether e-cigarettes will cause long-term addiction to nicotine. Or what proportion of those nicotine addicts will be people who wouldn’t have smoked cigarettes if a safer alternative hand’t been available. Tiny is my guess.

I notice that the Mirror’s online version of the story backs away from the panic-stricken splash, actually describing the story as a ‘scare’. One triggered, no surprise, by the state of California, which is obsessed with banning anything people might enjoy.

Let me keep this short and sweet.

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