The dangers of Electrofag.

The Dreadful Arnott and her band of zealots insist that Electrofag is dangerous, because it contains nicotine and they declare that the only safe alternative to smoking is the patches and gum sold by their Pharma friends - which contain nicotine.

If nicotine is so deadly that even getting a couple of molecules up your nose will kill you, then insisting that people use gum and patches containing far higher concentrations must surely be attempted murder?

Nicotine, if you take too much at once, can be a poison. Exactly the same rule applies to caffeine. And pretty much everything else. People have died from voluntarily drinking far too much water. Anything in great excess is going to be bad for you - nicotine is not special in this respect.

Further, nicotine does not cause cancer. Not at all. Not one whiff of evidence exists to show that nicotine causes cancer or any other disease of any kind at all unless it is taken in ludicrous concentrations. You'd better believe ASH have tried to prove a link and tried very hard - and failed. They have resorted to their usual tactic because of this - lies and reference to some unspecified 'harm'. There is none.

The other components of cigarette smoke - tars and resins - well, there is evidence that excessive exposure can cause cancer but even so, excessive exposure is hard to achieve if you are actively smoking, because the small amount of leaves in a cigarette doesn't contain very much of these highly-proclaimed substances. It is especially difficult to reach 'excessive' nowadays when you can't smoke anywhere.

It's impossible to achieve 'excessive exposure' by second hand smoke - it was impossible before the ban and it's orders of magnitude more impossible now. You simply cannot be trapped in a publically-accessible enclosed area with someone who is smoking. You simply cannot be affected by smoke at all. So if you would finally stop complaining about it, it would be appreciated.

I have an Electrofag. Since the company I bought it from did a CAMRA by trying to side with ASH (idiots) I have not bought any more spares or materials from them, but I already had a lot of stock so it's still going. No need to look for a new source yet.

Electrofag looks and feels like smoking. It's not the same but it's pretty good. Patches and gum will never work because they don't have that 'smoking action' which is a big part of the deal. A bigger part than the nicotine, in fact. Sitting with a pint and a pack of gum, or pouring a whisky and sticking a patch on yourself is never going to cut it because it's not the nicotine we are after. It's the action of smoking. Electrofag has room for improvement but it does have that 'feel' and most of all, you can watch the smoke curl into the air. That is a huge part of the relaxation of smoking.

The nicotine, then, is no danger to anyone. Never was. If ASH want to claim it is, then anyone using patches and gum should band together and form a class-action suit against those who are deliberately selling them concentrated poison, and call ASH to declare in court that the nicotine in those things is a poison.

So, where is the danger in Electrofag? The flavourings? All are food grade flavourings, if a little unusual in some cases. There probably isn't much call for cigar flavoured cookies or tobacco flavoured cupcakes. However, they are made to the same standard as coffee or apple flavourings (also available for Electrofag) and are as safe as any food grade flavouring. Not a trace of danger here.

So far, no danger from the nicotine or the flavouring. What's left? Only the smoke.

Except it isn't smoke. It's steam, held together with propylene glycol. Aha! At last, a scary chemical name to terrify the idiot masses. A chemical with a name that long must surely be very dangerous. It's longer than arsenic or strychnine or asbestos, it must be utterly deadly.

There are entire sites devoted to propylene glycol, not because it is dangerous but because it is widely used. In food, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. It is widely used because it is an excellent inert carrier and thickening agent and breaks down into lactic acid in the body.

What's that? Is lactic acid scary? It depends. Not on whether you are sensitive to it - nobody is - but on whether you have any idea of how cheese, yoghourt, sauerkraut, salami and many other things are made.

Lactic acid is the preservative, formed by fermentation, that makes all those things possible. You can metabolise it for energy. As chemicals go, it's as safe as it gets. Propylene glycol is absolutely safe. Absolutely.

Right. Having gone through the entire list of contents of an Electrofag vapour, can anyone spot the danger? Smell? The vapour dissipates in moments and contains no particulates at all. It cannot stick to your clothes because it contains nothing that can form a residue. So no, not even smell.

The only danger posed by Electrofag is to ASH. It makes their funding pals' patches and gum look even sillier than they did before. Worse, it lets people 'smoke' indoors which destroys the main point of the smoking ban - controlling the population.

There is no scientific reason for banning Electrofag. There is no valid health reason for banning Electrofag. Even that old canard 'I don't like the smell' won't wash here. As for asthmatics, it contains far fewer chemicals than your inhaler. Not one reason exists for banning this little battery powered pseudosmoke generator.

ASH want it banned anyway. It cannot succeed because if it does, their Pharma friends won't be happy and they might stop paying ASH to ban things. If it succeeds, the sight of smoking in pubs and clubs will return and that will eventually break the Great Ban.

If you smoke Electrofag, there is no risk at all.

If you are in a room with someone smoking Electrofag, there is no risk to you at all. Not even if you are in an iron lung.

The only danger posed by Electrofag is to those who have made a living by demonising an entire section of the population for no valid reason.

The thing is, most of that also applies to tobacco. The only 'danger' to non-smokers is that they might smell something they don't like. That is really the only basis for support of the ban. That is it, all of it, the sum total. Nobody even tries to mention health any more because there has been no improvement in nonsmokers' health - because there was no effect on their health in the first place. The only thing left is the smell. For the sake of that inconvenience we cannot have one smoking carriage on a ten-carriage train, we cannot have ten square feet of smoking area in an entire airport, we cannot have a smoking room in the pub and we cannot even set up a smokers-only club. Because someone who wouldn't go to any of those places doesn't like the smell.

And if they use the pub toilets on a busy night, they should be used to a bit of a pong anyway.