Vaping in The Fine City
A man’s house is raided by police and he is detained for the crime of vaping in private - welcome to Singapore.
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by Dave Cross
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It’s a country so rife with paranoia that the lifts are fitted with urination detection devices, so it’s no wonder they are hot and bothered over vaping. Listed figures for electronic cigarette confiscation showed 10 were collected in 2009, rising to 2,428 in 2013. Meanwhile a growing rebellious youth culture flouts the rules and posts to social media. Late 2014, two businessmen were arrested for offenses under the Tobacco (Control of Advertisements and Sales) Act to import, distribute or sell e-cigarettes, e-pipes, and e-cigars. The penalty was a fine of up to £2,500 for the first offence and a fine of up to £5,000 for a second or subsequent offence. These fines have since been raised to even more draconian levels.
It has stepped up a gear since we reported on this sad state of affairs last year. News broke this week that a man had been arrested for vaping illegally in his home. The tale he tells is frighteningly Orwellian: “Sometime this year, a package of mine containing juices got seized at the customs. I didn't think much of it until I got a knock on my door a few months later. They flipped my home. They went through my phone. Checked every messages looking for other vapers. They took every mod, juice, tank and even my wires. They took photos of my home. Every cupboard, every shelf.”
After a lengthy process of making a statement detailing the hundreds of devices he had collected as part of his hobby, he was left uncertain if he would be prosecuted under the new harsher ban law.
The legislation states: “Any person who contravenes the ban shall be liable to a fine not exceeding $10,000 [£5500] or imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months, or both, and in the case of a second or subsequent conviction, a fine not exceeding $20,000 [£11000] or imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months or both.”
Unsurprisingly, the man at the centre of this story has not returned to vaping. He tried a period of cold turkey and then traditional nicotine replacement products before relapsing back to smoking. He isn’t alone, thousands of vapers across the country are also having their homes raided: “I've come to known that many fellow vapers have experienced the same fate but no one dared talk about it. Well, we can't stay mute forever. Someone has to let the vaping community know what we are going through for trying to improve our health. We've never harmed anyone. We never sold any vaping products. And yet we are being prosecuted.”
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.
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