I have to say I can see the point of view of Mr Antz. As @
Peeej alluded to, for Mr Antz the question isn't about negligible risk it is about necessary risk. To take the car journey analogy. If Mr Antz wishes to get to Blackpool he must take a journey. He has a choice of forms of transport of which the car is the most dangerous. However it is also the fastest and the cheapest. So he decides that driving constitutes a necessary risk. He then makes a whole host of other decisions about wearing a seatbelt, obeying the speed limit and choosing to have the radio on. In each case he weighs up the perceived danger versus the received benefit. Arriving safely vs enjoying the journey. Allowing a vaper to vape in his car provides him with no benefits to balance the risks regardless of how negligible they may be. Now if he is catching a lift with said vaper the risk benefit analysis changes again, but saying someone should accept a risk because it is only very tiny doesn't make sense. People accept risks because they benefit by doing so. We can help ensure they consider our pastime sufficiently low risk by educating them. In situations where the air mass is greater we and they can choose to sit further apart to ensure that our exhaled particles dissipate before reaching them but in a very enclosed space such as a car or a lift asking someone to accept an avoidable risk regardless of how negligible because of a benefit to you rather than a benefit them isn't a sensible standpoint it is a selfish one. I vape in my local pub all the time. There is one lady who has had a reasonable conversation with me and expressed her concerns regarding the risks of passive vaping. I have provided her with information regarding the dissipation rates of my vapour to ease her concerns and happily vape away in her presence. However if I choose to join the table she is sitting at I refrain from vaping whilst there. If she chooses to join a table I am already seated at I continue to vape. In one scenario she has had the choice of making a risk/benefit analysis in the other she hasn't. Its called being polite as far as I am concerned.
I can see where you're coming from and I'm in favour of politeness but the same politeness should be employed by non vapers too.
If 'passive vapour' causes negligible harm, is it not polite for non vapers to tolerate it on a temporary basis? As to necessary risk, the risk is kind of necessary to the person vaping to avoid combusted tobacco.. what's wrong with non vapers who happen to be in the same space recognising this and being tolerant?
The WHO are calling for a ban on indoor vaping btw, not politeness. A ban takes away the opportunity for both politeness and tolerance and imposes restrictions that are based on unjust comparisons with passive smoke.
It comes back to the expectations of non vapers that they are entitled to 'clean air' when in practice, that air is more often than not anything but 'clean'. There will be contaminants/particulates present in any air sample, but because vaping happens to produce visible contaminants/particulates, non vapers automatically make an unconscious association with tobacco smoke and view it as an intrusion upon their 'clean' air. If we keep on pandering to these false assumptions, then blanket bans on vaping indoors will be pushed through without proper consideration or debate.
It bears thinking about that just because you may choose to vape in an indoor space, there doesn't necessarily have to be anyone else present that objects. Today you can (for example) go into a pub that's sparsely populated, find a quite corner and vape without causing commotion. If a blanket ban gets put into place, you'd no longer be able to do this regardless of whether there's anyone present to offend by vaping or not.
I have no issue with vapers being polite and considerate and despite my perceived POTV persona, I'm quite polite and considerate in real life and will treat people with the same respect they treat me with.. politeness will be met with politeness and douchebaggery will also be reciprocated.
I've mentioned before that I believe the public have been brainwashed by a saturation of anti smoking propaganda and I still hold to this view. It's my belief that vapers need to challenge the automatic assumption that they need to defer to attitudes that have been formed with an anti passive smoke agenda. After all, it's not smoke, it's vapour and if it was really that potentially harmful why are all of us even vaping rather than smoking in the first place?
