Dear Desmond Turner,
I would like to tell you a little story about smoking cigarettes and how to reduce it's effects on health. I will do my best to keep it short, but if it gets a bit lengthy, I apologise in advance for taking your valuable time.
I have been smoking cigarettes for the last 10 years. I am 26 and up until a week ago, I was smoking 20-25 cigarettes a day.
I am fully aware of how harmful smoking a cigarette is to my health and I wish I have never started smoking a cigarette. But a mistake has been made and I have started.
About 10 days ago, I tried a product called e-cigarette (a.k.a. electronic nicotine inhalator, e-cig). This is an electronic device with a supplied, refillable cartridges which enables you to smoke a pharmaceutical grade nicotine and pharmaceutical grade propylene glycol which can be found in many food brands and a few other flavouring chemicals of which most of them are proven to be not hazardous to your health. Considering the fact that a
tobacco cigarettes has 4,000+ very dangerous chemicals (including tar), this alternative smoking device is certainly a much healthier alternative to
tobacco smoking.
The government is trying very hard and spending so much money to stop people smoking tobacco. As you know, each year in the UK, tens of thousands of people die because of the side effects of smoking tobacco. There are many legal products (such as nicotine patches) available in the market. Although they deliver the nicotine to the body, it does and never will replace the "action" of smoking, whereas with smoking e-cigarettes, you actually "smoke" non-dangerous chemicals while getting your nicotine need.
Nicotine is a poison and I am aware of that. But we are addicted to it. But the government legally allows nicotine patches to be sold in the country. Instead of these patches (let's face it, their success rate is not very good), I prefer to smoke e-cigarettes. Did you know that there are tens of thousands of people (if not hundreds of thousands) started to smoke from these devices and immediately they stopped smoking tobacco and started to see the good effects of their decision within weeks; such as breathing better, no morning coughing, no chest pains in the morning.
Last but not least, when I smoke my e-cigarette, it has absolutely no danger to the person next to me. The vapour is mainly water based, it has almost no smell and the vapour disappears in the air within seconds.
Even though I was a tobacco smoker, I supported your decision about banning smoking tobacco in public places. But many figures show that since this ban, bars and pubs saw a decrease in the amount of people staying in their premises, which clearly has a negative effect to the overall economy and small business. Given the current situation with the World's economic climate, I believe this is a brilliant opportunity for e-cigarette smokers AND the business owners as I do not have to leave their premises while I can smoke without damaging anyone next to me and leaving any smell in the premises. As you do not need any fire to "light" these devices, the safety advantage over tobacco cigarettes is another point I would like you to consider.
As my MP, I would like you and your party to consider the above facts and not make it any harder for us to smoke/purchase these products (but please do keep it strictly available people over legal smoking / drinking age). Even though these products are not a part of nicotine replacement treatment / programme, it is clear that they are healthier alternatives to smoking tobacco.
Although majority of these products come from China (where the controls over mass production is not as strict as they are in the EU), there are handful of companies in the UK and USA which are producing these products mainly in the UK / USA (totallywicked-
eliquid.co.uk and johnsoncreeksmokejuice.com as an example). They do provide all the chemical analysis made by independent universities and make it strictly visible that these products are not suitable for non-smokers and to anyone who is under legal age of smoking.
I wish my government will not treat these products the same way they do to tobacco, because they are nowhere near dangerous to my health.
Thank you for your time. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you need further information.
Yours sincerely,
