Re: 鈥淲hy do the billionaire Koch brothers care about our pot?鈥� column, Oct. 9.
Good one, Jack Knox.
But I鈥檓 still waiting for the Capital Regional District鈥檚 Clean Air Bylaw to catch up to the growing body of evidence that shows that electronic cigarettes pose no material risk to bystanders.
Victorians wax nostalgic (used to, anyway) for anything British. Our colonial roots run deep and long (heck, what newspaper is this again?). Isn鈥檛 it interesting then that Public Health England (Britain鈥檚 analog to our own Health sa国际传媒) concludes that electronic cigarettes are more than 95 per cent less risky to users than tobacco cigarettes and pose no identified risk to bystanders.
PHE credits electronic cigarettes for helping many of the nearly 400,000 Britons who quit smoking in 2017. It says that 52 per cent of current vapers in the U.K. quit cigarettes completely.
In order to encourage smokers to shift to a far less harmful alternative, PHE recommends that public and private institutions should create separate tobacco and electronic cigarette policies, and that such policies should permit using e-cigarettes where tobacco cigarettes are otherwise prohibited (even indoors 鈥� gasp!).
I don鈥檛 know about you, but I鈥檓 sick of watching municipalities and other public and private institutions limit people鈥檚 behaviour for no other reason than: 鈥淓w, that looks icky.鈥� We owe it to our citizens to encourage them to embrace healthy lifestyles.
If a citizen puffing an electronic cigarette (legally) in Centennial Square isn鈥檛 a symbol of Victoria鈥檚 progressive approach to public health, then I don鈥檛 know what is.
D.W. Roland Stacey
Victoria
