Right, that's an important point because increasingly draconian
smoking bans are becoming more and more commonplace -- outdoor bans and so forth. When we discuss this topic, I think a lot of us are talking past each other because we're used to a particular type of indoor smoking ban, and a number of people here don't think it's unreasonable to put the PV away in certain, if not most, buildings.
And that's fine, but if we allow vaping to be categorized in the public consciousness as akin to smoking, then we will face far more intrusive restrictions in the very near future. Or now, depending on where you live. We've already seen outrageous examples -- like the prohibition against vaping
within 25 feet of a bus stop in Washington DC, or against vaping
anywhere on a college campus, for instance. Or within
3 blocks of a hospital building. Or within your own car if you're on hospital grounds.
Honestly, restrictions like those would be unacceptable even if they only concerned cigarette smokers, but when the same establishment forces that insist you're a second-class citizen for smoking
also go out of their way to oppose the most effective smoking replacements available -- to keep you paying regressive sin taxes or in pursuit of some misguided crusade against nicotine (which by itself is effectively harmless) -- then you know you've got trouble. We are, in a very real sense, fighting for people's lives here. Scoff if you like, but anyone who smoked for any considerable time before finding e-cigarettes knows it's true.
It should go without saying that private establishments (and even physically enclosed public establishments) have the
right to prohibit vaping. It also goes without saying that individuals who pointedly flout such prohibitions should be more considerate. As I see it, those statements are self-evident, and therefore only of scant interest.
The real issue is that certain anti-vaping policies, public or private, current or future,
bespeak an aggressive and malignant ignorance that must be opposed. That doesn't mean we should all march on the nearest health-food restaurant and conduct a cloud-blowing contest. That doesn't even mean that any particular policy
maker doesn't have a
right to enact ignorant policies on his own property. It just means that we should try our damnedest to educate the uninformed, and to fight the dishonest.