One thing that certainly dismayed me - as others have mentioned. Yesterday we were walking around in Brighton and couldn't help noticing the number of E-cig
shops which have sprung up in the city streets. All with their produce prominently and 'tastefully' on display in the shop windows.
And in our local town, we have just lost our one remaining fruit'n'veg street stall - a victim of 'falling demand' so it seems
, along with the impending re-development of the town centre. And yet another stall, purveying an impressive array of coffin-nails (sorry: coffin-vaping-nails) is still plying its trade in the town centre.
What more inducement do the local kids need, to take up this nasty habit? Why can't vaping paraphernalia be kept under wraps in closed cupboards, as cigarettes on sale are now?
When I earlier on made as if to condone E-cig use under certain circumstances - I was thinking of those for whom all other efforts to kick the habit have failed.
And no others.
I worked closely with a colleague for many years - a chap some years older than me - who was an inveterate chain-smoker. I suppose I was forced to inhale his emanations often enough - this was years before the workplace ban. Anyway, enduring remonstrations from me and others, as well as dire warnings from his GP and family members, he tried his hardest to give up - several times. Each effort failed miserably after a few weeks. A common story!
Eventually, while in his late 50s, he suffered a serious heart attack. Although he partly recovered, he did then give up for good - or so I believe. I suppose he was told that lighting up another fag would be tantamount to putting a loaded pistol to his head. After recuperating to some extent, he returned to work for a few weeks, but was still too unwell to carry out his job satisfactorily. So he was offered redundancy, and took early retirement.
As it turned out, this chap survived until he was 81 - I went to his funeral - so in his case the weed didn't bring about an early grave. But it certainly brought an abrupt end to his working career.
If he had switched to E-cigs (if they'd been around then), would he have avoided the early, life-changing, heart attack? Who can tell?