Wales will officially ban e-cigarettes and vaping from public spaces, paving the way for other countries throughout the United Kingdom to consider a similar move.
E-cig research is still notoriously controversial. Results are inconclusive and there’s a multitude of conflicting data to suggest they are both harmful and harmless. Delve even further down the rabbit hole and it gets worse, with a large proportion of research government and corporate funded. It will probably come as little surprise that nobody wants to tarnish the reputation of cigarette alternatives more than tobacco companies.
One of the main benefits with e-cigs has been the ability to smoke them anywhere you liked, but it appears the Welsh government no longer agrees.They want to pass a bill that will ban e-cigs from public places, essentially treating them exactly like regular cigarettes.
This will make Wales the first country in Great Britain to carry out such a reform, which will surely have interesting implications for the rest of the UK. With Public Health England currently carrying out a major evaluation of e-cigs, this move will surely be watched very closely to see how the public responds.
The law is part of a new Public Health Bill that aims to “protect the health and wellbeing” of people in Wales. This takes the total number of e-cig bans to four countries, with Malta, Belgium and Spain all banning ‘vaping’ in public spaces.
