Harm Displacement

A by-product of the liberation of Afghanistan has been spiralling opiate use. From the 2009 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Drug Survey, the four-year period witnessed a rise of 53% in opium use and 140% in heroin. This isn’t an attempt to make a simplistic direct correlation linking freedom from decades of war to drug abuse; I include this simply as an example that by attempting to solve a problem another has grown in its place. Whether caused by or opening the opportunity for, Aristotle told us “horror vacui” – nature abhors a vacuum.

Every Christmas brings with it a renewed push to eradicate drink driving from the roads. Almost universally supported, but the act of being drunk and in charge of something has been an age-old problem. In 1872 you could be prosecuted for being drunk in charge of a horse-drawn carriage, cow or steam engine – and yet as recently as 2009 a man was prosecuted for riding a horse while intoxicated while another ran a red light, inebriated, riding a pony trap in 2014. Strict legislation neither prevents nor alters the behaviours; education and a sense of freedom to make choices does. Banning or taxing vaping will achieve nothing but resentment and non-compliance in the same way that a teacher punishing the whole class for the actions of one errant child does.

Under the Town Police Clauses Act, 1847 a person could be fined up to £1,000 for hanging out washing or even flying a kite in the street. Having rid society of such menaces it is now possible to wander any town or city centre on a Friday evening without being disrupted by anti-social behaviour. In the same way that preventing the public beating of carpets didn’t cause drunken yobs to fight a century and a half later, actions and behaviours were replaced for people in high office to continue being concerned about.

In Management Control Systems by Merchant & Van der Stede, in relation to employees, they write that it’s impossible for individuals to enjoy following a strict set of guidelines for a prolonged period of time…they rebel. Merchant and Stede caution that people will fake report figures, call in sick, slack off or demonstrate any number of undesirable behaviours. If employees see what they are being asked to do as out of their control, not meaningful to them or simply unfair they will subvert their outcome.

Their ‘employees’ are analogous for the general public. If public health officials and politicians place strict mandates on vaping then it will be met with large-scale non-compliance because it is devoid of logic, unjust and seeks to control our free will. Like sourcing Snus from Sweden, markets outside of the EU will flourish for mods and juice. Global eMarkets will fill the voids created by insensitive and ill-considered legislation.

There are few whose lives have not been touched by cancer and yet alcohol (which causes 1,008,850 hospital admissions and costs the NHS over £3.5billion a year) doesn’t face the same controls that are heading towards vaping. Imagine the outcry if we were to be told that beer was to be limited to 3.6% and only sold in 100ml child-proof/drip-free bottles.

And no one mentions dementia and Alzheimer’s, the biggest killer of women and fifth largest killer of men in England and Wales. There seems to be a huge disparity and unfairness in the attacking of vaping, targeted as a result of dogma and vested interests, wholly disproportionate to the threat it poses to the population.

I strongly suspect that even if electronic cigarettes are forced out of the national consciousness it won’t free up many hours for public health officials – they will seek out new monsters to battle. A new war to be fought will rise up in its place, probably of equal or less threat to the fabric of society as vaping is.

My postmodern nihilism leads me to pose a further question: to what extent does Karr’s maxim, from the satirical Les Guêpes, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” hold true for our use of nicotine? To paraphrase: the more legislators attempt to change things for us the more they will stay the same. Afghans will remain at risk, cows will still have the occasional drunk owner and people wishing to use nicotine will still find a way to do so.

I understand the reasoning to try to improve the public health but surely that should only be if those members of the public want it improved and their actions pose a clear danger to themselves or others? The data doesn’t support legislation or taxation and, until it does, the de facto position cannot be to assume threat.

All I do know for certain is this: If they remove my liquids from me I’ll be buying an awesome kite and heading for the M1, and to Hell with the Town Police Clauses Act of 1847.