B.S. At Borden: Just Came Across This (May 2011)

[rachelcoffe]

Hey everyone. Just came across this piece by sheer chance - it's on a government website, and it's brand-new, dated May 2011.

D Safe G - Safety Digest - May/2011 - Electronic Cigarettes

That's right - the CFB's Camp Borden (a Canadian military base here in Ontario) will now tell our troops that vaping e-juice via e-cigs is the same thing as smoking.

Idiots.

It's not enough apparently, to ask our troops to serve & perhaps even die in the line of that service. Now, any of them who have made the switch from smoking to vaping will need to go sit with the smokers in the smoking shelters / smoking huts, amongst the clouds of deadly second-hand smoke.

Soldiers who wish to vape, but do not care to spend time in a poisonous smoke-filled atmosphere...must ensure that they are 15 feet away from any walkways, sidewalks, buildings, common areas, work areas, or any place at all where anyone else working there must pass by on occasion. In other words, virtually nowhere on the base. If you're a soldier at Borden, and a vaper...you're now screwed. Sit with the smokers, or (practically speaking) go cold turkey.

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This is b.s.! I tell you...the stupid, irritating and I dare say evil b.s. towards e-cigs, vaping & vapers never seems to stop issuing forth from HC - or from those who blindly follow them.

To our Canadian troops...I urge you to calmly arrange to meet with your CO & explain why this is fundamentally wrong. A candid discussion with your CMO beforehand may help as well. Request that Alberta's Dr. Carl V. Phillips be consulted as part of their "further research and consultation with appropriate subject matter experts." Vapour is not smoke; e-cigs do not involve any combustion of anything at all; and vaping e-juice via e-cigs is now clinically, scientifically, objectively proven to be infinitely safer than smoking.

Asking troops who vape to be treated as smokers literally makes as much sense as asking people who use the patch or nicotine gum to be treated as smokers (i.e. no damn sense at all).

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The government cannot lawfully treat vapour as though it were smoke. I'm not certain of the following, but it appears to me that HC may be attempting to very quietly & sneakily set a precedent in Camp Borden re: lumping vaping in with smoking. A precedent they may try to build upon, to spread this idiocy across the nation. It must be stopped, here and now, so that it doesn't spread any further...and so that it gets squashed in Borden, too.

Nicotine is a legal substance, and the form we vapers are using it in is most definitely a non-prohibited form. When HC says otherwise, they are provably lying. And above all - there is no law, anywhere, that says you cannot vape in a public space.

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One last thing: does anyone else see the sheer irony in this attempt to misclassify vaping as smoking...while at the same time, HC continues to block regulation, seize packages, wage war on our suppliers, and treat e-cigs & e-juice as contraband? Even if these products were eventually classified as "tobacco products" due to the nicotine [a far-from-certain outcome, I might add; ECITA has been working successfully towards a far more appropriate "general sales products" classification in the EU & UK]...

...no-smoking laws do not prohibit the use of tobacco products. They prohibit smoking.

No matter how you look at it...vaping is not smoking, any more than an ostrich is an ocean.

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Anyway...sorry if I got anyone riled up in a bad way. Try to enjoy your Sunday; that's the plan for me & the babies. We're off to go do that now. Happy vaping, & all the best!

[Kams Cats]

Well I agree with you Rachel. Although I admit that I figured what is happening at Borden would happen. I expect as vaping becomes more common there will be more complaints about it. there will be those that for whatever reason won't tolerate it. Won't want to be near it. Won't hear about it. There will be people complaining they smelled the vapour and it made them instantly sick.

Look at all the sudden perfume allergies around. My sister is a perfect example. No one is allowed to wear perfume around her because it makes her sick. Yet she can wear whatever she likes. Apparently she is only allergic to other people's perfume.

[heXy]

Wow, I am a little riled up about this. But you're nothing but correct, vapor is NOT smoke, bottom line.

Sometimes people will ask me not to "smoke" when I'm at the bar or pub, rather than start a "who knows what" contest with them, I ask the bartender for an empty cup, take a nice 5-6 second drag (not inhaling), and then push it out of my mouth into the cup. I then ask, "does smoke do that?". Generally I'm left alone after that little display lol.

The vapor will just sit in the cup, where as smoke, will rise and expand. Most people say "that looks like those mist making things" and I reply "that's cause it is..."

[Not Iris]

I'm thinking that the government might be laying the groundwork to start taxing everything that involves vaping, the same way that they tax cigarettes. They just don't know how yet, but they will get there.

Those are just my thoughts as I see this unraveling.

[dk2]

I'm thinking that the government might be laying the groundwork to start taxing everything that involves vaping, the same way that they tax cigarettes. They just don't know how yet, but they will get there.

Those are just my thoughts as I see this unraveling.

That's a wonderful idea I support taxation and regulation of vaping as tobacco products there are a few exceptions such as vapors should have there own vaping areas away from smokers no need to have us breathing in second hand smoke.

[CanadianMetalHead]

Thank you for this piece of info. Appreciated!

[Danesnpits]

No one has mentioned yet that this is dated back from 2009. Things have changed since then. Also the part I read on the link where they state proplylene glycol is a known irritant..well duh..they forgot to mention that it is used in candy, icecream, drinks,,and well they forgot to say that we are probably eating propylene glycol right now! And don't even know it! The whole issue boils down to tax dollars. They can't tax us so there is a problem. Not to mention the issue with proper market authorization practices. Those aren't being done either. So with that being said, we seriously need to get the media involved, lawyers, protests on parliament hill. Like the pot smokers do. We need to go sit in front of the govt building with our PV's and protest this crap. Our voices need to be heard. The whole ecf forum chats are fine, but who is going to see this if we don't go public? Why have some countries such as the US and the UK made it legal, but we are not? And the whole rant on that link about nicotine being poisonous when vaped and the fact that it is addicting..well isn't that the same as saying the patch will do the same? I am ripped! All lies yet again from the government. And all misinformation just to scare the public even more. The saying goes, what they don't know won't hurt them..well u know what? If more people who want to quit analogs never get to try ecigs, they may lose the battle, and die from lung cancer or emphysema. Who wins now? The govt is responsible for that, by not allowing people to access the products that work from them to quit in the first place. They are taking the rights of Canadians away from being healthier.

[rachelcoffe]

That's a wonderful idea I support taxation and regulation of vaping as tobacco products there are a few exceptions such as vapors should have there own vaping areas away from smokers no need to have us breathing in second hand smoke.

Um, dk2...you're joking, right??

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Not Iris: I don't think the government is ever going to sin-tax vaping. Normal HST tax, sure - we have that on most things already. But a punitive sin-tax, like on booze & smoking? No.

Why? Consider: if they actually thought that there was any chance they could do that & cash in, they wouldn't be standing in the way of vaping being regulated & marketed. You can't collect any tax at all on something that people can't buy. One way or another, HC would've gotten the ball rolling long, long ago...rubbing their hands together at the impending pile of tax dollars to be raked in, if they thought that such was a possibility. They haven't done that...because they know they could never get away with it.

A sin-tax on vaping would literally make no more sense than a sin-tax on coffe (i.e. no sense at all). Punitive sin-taxes have to be justified. Booze & smoking provably burden society; vaping & coffe do not. (In fact if anything, vaping actually benefits society.) All the anti-vaping talk out there is chock full of pejorative flimflammery & amounts to hollow, easily debunked b.s., and we know it. It was b.s. two years ago...and it's b.s. now. In fact, we have studies now that prove it! Trying to prove the fallacious idea that vaping is somehow so harmful that it deserves to be sin-taxed...would be akin to trying to prove that water isn't wet. It can't be done, because it's indisputably false.

This is why to this day, HC continues to fight vapers tooth & nail. If they thought they could sin-tax it, then they'd be working overtime to make it a taxable, available product. But they're not doing that...which proves that that's not a viable goal for them, or a concern for us.

The message they are driving home over & over is: "We want you to smoke. We do not want you to vape."

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Danesnpits, just saw your post as I was writing the above...excellent post honey!!! I completely agree! Don't have much to add right now...you said it perfectly hon.

[Not Iris]

rachelcoffe

You think the government's motivation is that they want people to smoke and not vape? If they could get their greedy hands on the sin tax for vaping and the continued sin tax the smokers, don't you think it's a win win for them? I have come to the conclusion though, that they really do not want people to quit smoking.

I have learned, on all of my 63 years on this planet, to follow the money, as it is the motivator for our government and I still think that they are laying the groundwork for another witch hunt and taxation.

I'm just not fully understanding why the nicotine patches and gum are not being banned, yet the ejuice is? Can't wrap my head around that one as of yet.

Time will tell.

[kalvinf]

While the topic of dumb gov't asshats is being aired, check out what Australia has to deal with - YouTube - ‪Nine News (Recorded May 4, 2011, Nine).mpg‬‏. This is from a recent post on the Australian ECF forum where the government will fine anyone who has bottles of e-juice with nicotine up to $8000 per bottle.