Freedom to Choose and the Electronic Cigarette
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ECD: Electronic cigarettes - I know some smokers are against e-cigarettes, which is perhaps understandable given some of the marketing. However, on the other hand the e-cigarette and related issues has lead to many people educating themselves more about passive smoking, third hand smoking and the lies behind it.
So what's your position on the electronic cigarette?
David: Well, I think it is a personal choice, isn't it? If you want to smoke tobacco, smoke tobacco, and if you want to smoke an electronic cigarette, smoke an electronic cigarette. I am really not here to dictate to people how they should live their lives.
If the anti-smoking lobby wanted to get smoking down in my opinion the electronic cigarette would be the most effective weapon in doing that. And, for example what people might want to do is smoke the electronic cigarette in the day and go home in the evening to smoke normal cigarettes. I have no objection to them whatsoever, personally speaking, however Freedom to Choose does have reservations about them, but I personally don't.
ECD: So what are the reservations based on?
Dave: Do you know something - I don't know!
ECD: There was something on the e-cigarette forum where e-cigarette users were complaining they had had aggression from smokers who seemed to think they [the e-smokers] were letting the side down.
David: I take their point - it does look as if they are letting the side down, and possibly you might have given in, but so what, that's a matter of choice, isn't it?
[Clarification: In an email following up to this interview, Freedom2Choose stated that they considered electronic cigarettes an "instrument of coercion", a position which we strongly disagree with.]
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