Celebrities and contestants of Simon Cowell’s big new show ‘Keep it in the Family’ are to be offered Vapourlites to help them ‘kick the tobacco weed’. Simon, a smoker himself, is the brain behind the new TV show inspired by Sir Bruce Forsyth’s Generation Game.
The X Factor boss, 54, is said to have been working on the programme for the past 18 months.
The quiz, which would be aired at teatime, will feature contestants from three generations of families.
According to the Mirror’s celebrity experts: “It’s very family-focused like the Generation Game but has a fresh feel.”
This is yet another indication of how the public – as well as health experts – are loving electronic cigarettes as a safer alternative to tobacco, yet there are still pockets of moaning! This week, the World Health Organisation caused controversy when it urged countries to ban “vaping” indoors.
Fortunately, people dislike this kind of hysterical over-reaction and came out strongly in support of the beleaguered vaping community. Indeed, many public health experts said that such restrictions would be damaging because they would discourage people from switching from tobacco cigarettes – and we all know how dangerous they are!
Writing in The Times, Health Correspondent Chris Smyth said the confusion over where electronic cigarettes can be used is here to stay.
Shops, offices, restaurants and even hospitals should display signs to make it clear to people whether they can “vape” on the premises, campaigners say.
Some organisations have banned e-cigarettes, but others say there is no reason why customers, employees and patients should not use them. Government health chiefs insist that e-cigarettes should not automatically be included in anti-smoking rules.
Uncertainty is likely to deepen when the first e-cigarettes are licensed as stop-smoking medicines, which could happen this year. Employers and landlords could face legal challenges if they try to stop people using a medicine.
Ministers are planning to ban under-18s from buying e-cigarettes – and Vapourlites already refuses to allow their sale to under 18s, – and while EU laws will impose restrictions on marketing, there are no plans to regulate where they can be used.
More than two million people in Britain use e-cigarettes, almost all of them smokers trying to quit or ex-smokers.
Train companies, the London Underground and some cinemas and airlines have banned them, while other cinemas and bars and mental health units have not.
Martin Dockrell, head of tobacco control at Public Health England, said that organisations should treat e-cigarettes differently from smoking. “Smoke-free laws were based on strong scientific evidence of harm to bystanders, and that does not exist for exposure to e-cigarette vapour,” he said. “Public Health England believes that regulations should reduce the confusion between e-cigarettes and tobacco smoking, and we need to recognise that treating nicotine products as if they were smoked tobacco might make that confusion worse.”
Hazel Cheeseman, director of research and policy at Action on Smoking and Health, said that letting organisations decide their own policies was the sensible approach. “The answer is not going to be the same for everyone,” she said. “People are coming to different conclusions, but that’s not to say one’s right and one’s wrong.”
Employers should set policies based on common sense and courtesy, she added. “If you’re a school, it might be appropriate to say ‘these are products that will be banned for under-18s’, whereas for a care home where people are adult lifetime users of tobacco, but going outside to smoke is quite difficult, you might well want to allow it. There’s no one-size-fits-all.
