Day 24 of not smoking today. My slight sore throat has passed as has the wheeziness and I now put them down an adjustment period or leftover ill effects from the real cigarettes and not something permanent. I’m also sleeping a lot better – the amount of sleep I’m getting stabilizing where it was before at about 7 hours. Though I did have some cravings during the first week or so, they have now completely gone. Also my ability to concentrate is returning and I’m getting back to some work. And again I seriously think this is it: I’m finished with tobacco cigarettes.
Meanwhile I’ve been discovering more about e-cigs and the quite ridiculous reaction to them. A number of train companies have banned them, Wetherspoons has banned them (and will never again receive one penny from me) etc. And why? Well, the only reason any of these seem to be able to give is that e-cigs might encourage the chiiildrennn to think smoking is okay. Since when has that been their business? Our government and the EU want to legislate them out of existence too. It’s madness. There are people out there who put anti-smoking ideology before public health. There are people out there so determined to totally ban cigarettes or anything remotely like them that they are prepared to let people die to forward that goal. It is estimated that 1.3 million people are now using e-cigs in Britain and I submit that most of those are erstwhile smokers. I further submit that the majority of them will be back on ‘real’ cigarettes if e-cigs are strangled at birth.
Then there is the negative propaganda being spread about e-cigs. In some e-liquid antifreeze glycol was found, so the idea is propounded that they all have this in. There are some bad things in them and this is focused on, and the fact that the same things are found in conventional NRT and that the quantity is so vanishingly small as to be irrelevant is ignored. Normal cigarettes are sold everywhere yet something that can get you off them and does not contain the 20+ carcinogens, the arsenic, carbon monoxide, cyanide or supposed 4,000 active and potentially nasty chemicals must be controlled, legislated against, stamped on?
It is an unfortunately reality that many people hide their dictatorial instincts under the guise of concern for you. Something out-field like e-cigs comes along and whips away their camouflage to show us what they really are: autocrats, little tin-pot Hitlers and righteous prigs.