Australia Leads the Way: Vaping is Verboten!

What’s this? A smoking doctor? No, a vaping doctor! He has the unusual name of Attila Danko, which seems to be of Eastern European provenance, possibly Hungarian, and I hope he will forgive me for saying that this perhaps explains his passing resemblance to the actor Christopher Lee in his role as Dracula from next door Romania. He doesn’t look very happy. Is this what vaping does to you?

Dr Danko will now have an additional reason to feel unhappy. Australia’s drug regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration, has ruled that the already existing ban on e-cigarettes will continue.

In 2015 Dr Danko founded the New Nicotine Alliance Australia to push for e-cigarettes to be legalised. He admits he was a smoker for over thirty years and has ‘given up on giving up’ after switching to e-cigarettes. New Nicotine Alliance Australia’s mission, he says, is also to educate current smokers so they have the choice to switch. He thinks this would be a good move for ‘hardened smokers who can’t give up any other way’.

I don’t believe there’s such a thing as a hardened smoker or that any smoker needs to give up on giving up. The current orthodox approach to smoking cessation, however, may well encourage this nihilistic attitude, and it seems to me that what Dr Danko is saying, in effect, is that he’s mightily relieved to be able to continue in the thrall of his intractable nicotine addiction with allegedly safer e-cigarettes instead of ordinary cancer sticks.

Another part of the problem is shown in a view he expresses in a YouTube video: vapers should be able legally ‘to enjoy recreational nicotine’.

This is where the whole argument falls down. Nicotine is not enjoyable, nor is it a recreational drug.

If people who use nicotine are asked to say honestly whether they enjoy doing it, the answer is almost invariably ‘No’.

A recreational drug, of which the prime example is alcohol, is quite different. Unless you are an alcoholic, which most people are not, you can enjoy a drink as and when you choose, circumstances permitting. But virtually all people who use nicotine in any form feel compelled to do it many times a day, every day, for years on end.

If nicotine were a recreational drug, what is supposed to happen when you put it into your bloodstream and thereby cause chemical changes in your brain? Do you see visions of heaven? Do you experience some wonderful sensation? No. All that happens, though most smokers or vapers don’t realise it, is that the discomfort you were in before you smoked or vaped is temporarily relieved and this is perceived as enjoyable.

The Australian Medical Association’s sensible position on nicotine is very clear: it is highly addictive and there is no good reason to put it into your body in any form.

Note: The above comments are not intended as criticisms of Dr Danko. If he would care to contact me I should be delighted to prove to him (without charge) that he can easily abandon his dependence on nicotine.

Gabriel Symonds

Dr Gabriel Symonds is a British medical doctor living in Japan who has developed a unique interactive stop smoking method. It involves no nicotine, drugs, hypnosis, or gimmicks but consists in helping smokers to demonstrate to themselves why they really smoke and why it seems so hard to stop doing it. Then most people find they can quit straightaway and without a struggle. He has used this approach successfully with hundreds of smokers; it works equally well for vapers. Dr Symonds also writes about transgenderism and other controversial medical matters. See drsymonds.com