The ban on e-cigarettes, imposed ostensibly to stop the hazards of vaping and improve the moral health of youngsters, is actually an exercise in moral policing. Some enlightened souls (enlightened, that is, in their own reckoning) decide that some proscription is good for the society; and they, as the Nike motto says, just do it. They have done it again. Without taking into account various facets of their intended action, its impact on the sector concerned, the health of the people, the consequences on the economy, and so on.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the ban, saying, “Reports say that there are some who are probably getting into the habit of e-cigarettes as it seems cool. It is believed that there are more than 400 brands, none of which is manufactured yet in India. And they come in over 150 flavours.”
Well, smoking also seems cool, as does drinking, so why didn’t the government proscribe regular cigarettes and impose prohibition as well? This is not to say that smoking and drinking should also be banned; in fact, no victimless activity should be criminalised; the point to be emphasised here is that this argument doesn’t cut any ice. Neither does that of imported brands. Are e-cigarettes bad because these are manufactured in other countries? Would the swadeshi e-cigarettes, had they been there, have been less dangerous and therefore kosher?
The proscription has come into effect in the form of the Promulgation of the Prohibition of Electronic Cigarettes (production, manufacture, import, export, transport, sale, distribution, storage and advertisement) Ordinance, 2019. “The owners of existing stocks of e-cigarettes on the date of commencement of the Ordinance will have to suo moto declare and deposit these stocks with the nearest police station,” says the official press release.
The release has cited a recent white paper on the subject by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), which recommended a complete ban on e-cigarettes: “These products are usually marketed as being safer alternatives for conventional cigarettes but such notions of safety are false. On the other hand, available literature suggests that these products may act as gateway products to induce non-smokers, especially youth and adolescents, to nicotine-use, leading to addiction and subsequent use of conventional tobacco products.”
This is a contentious assertion. Public Health England (PHE), an executive agency of the UK’s Department of Health and Social Care, said in December last year that vaping is 95% less harmful than tobacco. In fact, its director, Prof John Newton, went on to say, “We need to reassure smokers that switching to an e-cigarette would be much less harmful than smoking.”
A report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, mandated by the US Congress, which has been called the most comprehensive on the subject, states otherwise. The report says that “among adult populations, to the extent that e-cigarette use promotes either reduction or complete abstinence from combustible tobacco smoking, e-cigarettes may help to reduce health risks. E-cigarettes could similarly reduce risks to youth who take up e-cigarettes instead of combustible tobacco cigarettes. This may be especially beneficial for certain vulnerable populations.”
Further, it points out that “while e-cigarettes are not without health risks, they are likely to be far less harmful than conventional cigarettes.”
The authenticity of the ICMR paper, on the other hand, has been questioned. For instance, Anupam Manur, an academic with the Takshashila Institution, has accused the ICMR of cherry-picking facts.
Apparently, the outlawing of e-cigarettes pertains to the moralising impulse rather than scientific evidence; the idea is to improve the moral rather than physical health. They want to save us from ourselves.
Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963), a British author, broadcaster, and Christian apologist, wrote in his book, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
The conscience of our political masters (who also fancy themselves as our moral guardians) is the product and function of their statist worldview: that is, only the enlightened souls know what is good for the millions of dimwits, also known as the people of India. It is the same mindset that makes the Leftists describe people as “the masses”: inanimate objects, lacking free will, ethics, and dignity, the creatures that need to be told what they should do. Obviously, if the statists—saffron or red—can’t let people take care of their own economy, they also can’t let them behave in any manner that might be physically or morally unhealthy. Hence the ban on e-cigarettes.
Ravi Kapoor is Editor, www.thehinduchronicle.com