Flavour a ‘Big No’ to Kernow Tories

The councillors met on Tuesday 24^th September to debate a motion submitted by Barry Jordan and Peter Perry (both Conservative councillors). The motion demanded the leader of the council (Linda Taylor, Conservative) writes to Wes Streeting and Cornwall’s six MPs (four Labour, two Liberal Democrat) urging them to enact a ban on disposable vapes immediately and to include a ban on eliquid flavours.

The current make-up of Cornwall Council:

• Conservative 43 seats
• Independent 20 seats
• Liberal Democrats 13 seats
• Labour 5 seats
• Mebyon Kernow 5 seats
• Green  1 seats
• Total:    87 seats

During the debate, Barry Jordan told fellow councillors: “[Children] must have [vapes] in their pockets, they can explode in your pockets – they’re a dangerous thing.”

Demanding that the government banned all flavoured eliquids, Jordan added: “There’s evidence that children like the flavours, such as bubblegum. For a lot of young people, it may be the only reason they vape.”

Councillor Dave Crabtree (Conservative) agreed with Jordan’s point of view, adding that he routinely witnessed children vaping on their way home from school.

Fellow Tory, Louis Gardner commented: “My daughter’s nine, she’s been offered vapes at school. I find that absolutely appalling. I’ve seen on the streets of Newquay promotional companies giving them out for free with absolutely no reference to the person being over 18.”

Conservative Martin Worth said the government must “get rid of this blight on our young people”.

Lib Dem Colin Martin urged caution by pointing out that banning products only results in them being supplied through an unregulated black market, and Lib Dem Leigh Frost mentioned that the move would impinge upon freedom of choice for adult smokers who use flavours to help them stop switch from cigarettes.

The information the Council provides to the public about vaping states: “Over the last few years e-cigarettes have become more and more popular as a stop smoking aid. This is mainly because E-cigarettes/vapes have been shown to be less harmful than cigarettes and smokers are up to twice as likely to quit when using e-cigarettes in a quit attempt. It’s for these reasons e-cigarettes have helped many adult smokers to quit smoking for good.

“However, vaping is not risk-free; there are short term effects of use that can include coughing, headaches, dizziness and sore throats. Also, as the use of e-cigarettes is still so new, long-term effects of use are still as yet unknown.

“While e-cigarettes have been shown to be a good option for adult smokers looking to quit smoking, they are not recommended for use by those who do not already smoke or for those under the age of 18.”

Research has shown that the real-world impact of restricting flavours in San Francisco was an increase in teen smoking rates.

In Boston, research found “messaging questioning the safety of e-cigarettes led to an increase in combustible cigarette use”.

Following a ban in Nova Scotia, the Canadian Vaping Association said: “There is no justification for knowingly pushing vapers back to a product that kills half its users. Proponents of these bans have yet to produce any real-world modelling to suggest that flavour bans reduce youth experimentation without harming adult smokers.”

Dave Cross

Journalist at POTV

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Dave 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.