This is an extract from this week’s Spectator, available from Thursday. To subscribe, click here.
I was waiting on an office forecourt recently puffing on an e-cigarette when a security guard came out.
‘You can’t smoke here,’ he shouted.
‘I’m not, actually,’ I replied.
He went to consult his superior. A few minutes later he reappeared.
‘You can’t use e-cigarettes here either.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you are projecting the image of smoking.’
‘What, insouciance?’
‘Go away.’
I did.
This phrase ‘projecting the image of smoking’ — along with ‘renormalisation’, ‘gateway effect’ and the usual ‘think of the children’ — appears frequently in arguments for restricting the use of e-cigs in public places.
While new evidence may yet emerge to support restrictions, these reasons don’t convince me. Like the security guard’s response, they look like a desperate attempt to reverse-engineer a logical argument to suit an emotional predisposition.
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