E-cigs and cruise ships: will a no always outweigh a yes?

Tip of the hat to Michael McFadden for drawing this to my attention.

Dick Puddlecote wrote a post about the changes in smoking policies on cruise ships which led Michael to this e-cigarette smoking policy from Princess Cruise Lines.

Electronic Cigarettes
The use of electronic cigarettes is permitted in all areas onboard with the exception of dining areas and the Princess Theater. However, should a fellow passenger in the vicinity feel inconvenienced and complain, even after being told the difference between electronic cigarettes and real cigarettes, we will ask the passenger to refrain from smoking the electronic cigarette.

Let’s just translate that into alcoholese:

Alcohol
The use of alcohol is permitted in all areas onboard with the exception of dining areas and the Princess Theater. However, should a fellow passenger in the vicinity feel inconvenienced and complain, even after being told the difference between a glass of water and a glass of vodka, we will ask the passenger to refrain from drinking the water.

In other words, being right or wrong is irrelevant when it comes to nicotine. Even worse, wrong and delusional is granted authority over right and real. And to compound matters, this judgement will encourage the complaining twit to further their behavior.

Ever since vaping appeared on the scene, there have been complaints from the anti-smoking brigade that because vaping looked like smoking it should not be permitted. Its not the first time they have gotten things exactly wrong.

It is precisely because it looks like smoking that vaping should be permitted. It educates the public and particularly smokers who have not heard about it yet.

Given the threat to so many vested interests, the absurd amount of money dependent on keeping smoking dominant (and thus supporting the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries, the anti-smoking groups, and the government revenues) this kind of reaction is no surprise and yet for so many of thus we naively expected that this would have been the great OMG moment in public health.