Vaping at playgroup

[Imnotbilly]

I go to a very busy and popular playgroup once a week. There's lots of different rooms and activities, but the largest room is the most popular. It's like a mini bedlam for kids.

Last week I was there with my 2dc and a mum was sat there vaping. I don't care what crappy science you've got to try and prove they are safe - what sort of person vapes at a playgroup???!!!

AIBU to complain to management about this? AIBU to be hoiking my judgy pants well and truly up under my armpits?

I'm just curious, do most pubs and trains allow vaping? Can you vape in shops?

As a midwife I looked after a lady in labour once who vaped the whole way through childbirth. Gas and air in one hand, vape thing in the other. This was years ago when they were new. Then I read about a vaper in a hospital setting their oxygen mask on fire!!!!

Sorry, seen that most shops ban it.

I have vaped without issue in most shops, restaurants, trains, theatres, cinemas, pub, bars, clubs, hotels etc

Though I am discrete

I wouldn't do it at a playgroup though

Some pubs allow vaping, some don't.

TFL banned vaping on all London transport about 2 years ago. It's not banned on my local national rail network. I don't know about others.

The general rule, 'don't be a dick' covers most situations. I will cheerfully vape in pubs with the landlord's permission but I won't blow Big Clouds or vape if it's very crowded or near people who are eating. I'll discreetly vape on a late bus or train home but not in rush hour when it's jam packed!

I was on a vape-related demo last summer and ended up in a tube carriage with about 12 other vapers. They were all vaping away but you wouldn't have known unless you were looking straight at them as they put the thing in their mouth.

It's refresshing to see MN really is a nest of vapers :)

Then I read about a vaper in a hospital setting their oxygen mask on fire!!!!

Yes, I remember that scare story. It was never confirmed that the ecig started the fire. She also had a lighter with her so who knows. Fire safety around oxygen is incredibly important, of course. Anything which could produce an electrical spark is a hazard in combination with oxygen.

I don't think the risk is anywhere in the same league as the risk of smoking while on oxygen therapy. Obviously this wouldn't happen on a hospital ward but the problem for patients on home oxygen therapy is well known.

Handled safely, and with proper regard to the comfort of all patients, allowing vaping on hospital wards could be a massive win for public health. At the moment, most smokers undergo an enforced quit if they are admitted to hospital because they are not allowed to smoke anywhere on the grounds. They will be offered patches, which aren't actually any good. The vast majority will spark up again straight away on discharge. If they could be offered a half-decent ecig instead they might just discover that it's a viable alternative and stay off the fags when they leave hospital.

Louise Ross's work is worth watching. She's pioneered the use of ecigs in inpatient mh settings. I'd like to see this expanded to other areas (as long as it's done safely and with regard to the comfort of all patients, as I said previously). I think we could prevent a lot of early deaths and make lots of people's later years less shit.

Our local hospital is updating it's smoking policy to allow vaping in the grounds - common sense.

Yes it's been interesting watching the progress of vaping in hospital grounds bans. I think just about every trust had a knee-jerk total ban at one point but they're slowly coming round to the harm reduction potential, one by one

OurBlanche just want to say thankyou for your posts on this thread. It means a lot for someone who is neither a smoker or a vaper but a stop smoking practitioner to take the time to post sensibly about vaping. It's hard for vapers to do this because we are so often dismissed as deluded addicts (or worse, astroturf).

I probably get more annoyed by the negativity as I see so many people that have had their lives changed by vaping. Whole families get the benefit, financially as well as in a wide range of health indices. Society (OK, tax payers) also reap the benefits as there is an immediate, measurable, decrease in accessing GPs, A+E, acute and chronic care.

For decades the debate has raged: how much does a smoker cost us as a society? Do tobacco taxes cover the medical expenses? Now that is becoming a moot issue and still the wider society is not happy. Let alone the fact that vapers pay for their own cessation whereas the other NRTs are available on prescription, which costs me, others like me, over and above the product cost!

Those who complain cite us not knowing the long term effects. Well, blow me down! We know the vapour is far less damaging than secondary smoking. And smokers seem to be willing to take the immediate health benefits as a positive and the possibility of late issues as a good bet - as in they are betting that they will be no more fatal than the known risks of smoking(even if you include the nigh on mythical popcorn lung )

There is so much good research around about the sociological aspects of vaping, in the young and old, smokers and the never smoked. The one facet we don't have gold standard research is longitudinal data... and that is growing as vaping continues to be legal, allowed, encouraged.

I could bore you to tears with anecdotal evidence - I get about 10 new clients a fortnight and know the medical outcomes of many long term clients (I work within a wider health setting, lots of other groups that the clients move into). Some of them are taking part in a longitudinal study: they have given all sorts of bodily fluids and measurements over the last 5 years and show no signs of removing themselves from the list.

Sorry, but, whilst I agree that vaping in any childcare setting is a really daft idea, it isn't the end of the known world and is nowhere near as catastrophic as some would have us believe!

It's weird these threads compared to smoking threads. Vapers should fuck off putside and smokers should just fuck off. Only in summer though because winter it's nice to smirk and point. With the token asthmatic thrown in who seemingly just needs to breathe in to set it off.

People aren't happy unless they're twisting I've come to the conclusion.

I think I was trying to illustrate that with my barista and frothy milky drinks posts earlier. Sadly the deliberate silliness of the analogy sank, unnoticed, unmourned

ourblanche I'm playing hypocritical games?? For saying I don't like the smell of them?

When I've stood in pubs with someone vaping behind me, the smell has made me feel sick, just as if someone stood constantly spraying air freshener into the air. But people don't do that, do they? It's sprayed once and then goes. Vaping is constant pillouting the air with vapour that is 95% less dangerous than cigarette smoke and 1000% more dangerous than just normal air! That I would be breathing if that person wasn't vaping.

But yeah, I'm playing hypocritical games. You completely undermine your argument when you come out with bullshit like that.

Another asthmatic here - they set my asthma off which isn't much fun. At least outside I can avoid the plume of vapor but indoors it's a different kettle of fish.

My other beef is it is still smoking and it must not be normalized for children

I think lots of the anti smokers are secretly enraged by the idea that people can now enjoy smoking without getting cancer. They would love it if e-cigs turned out to be horribly toxic. Strange people.

I'm asthmatic and I used to smoke. (I know, not good). When I switched to vaping I pretty much gave up my inhalers. Now I just order one inhaler a year, which isn't even totally used. Before, I used to use 2 a month.

Houseofmirth, spot on.

inaclearingstandsaboxer Latest research from ASH Wales goes further than other statistics, they show ecigs are actually a barrier to youth uptake of tobacco rather than a possible "gateway" to smoking. No evidence whatsoever anywhere in the world that ecigs "normalise" smoking.
Public Health England state if you are vaping instead of smoking, you've quit smoking.
Plus another annectdote, MrsB also asthmatic vaping ex smoker who rarely uses inhalers anymore.
Curious as to why ie vanilla vapour which disappates in seconds incites asthma attacks whilst diesel fumes etc do not. Just askin.

Driving in my car can trigger my asthma. In fact, being inside a running car on a busy road is about the worst, most polluted place you can be. I vase occasionally though.
I probably wouldn't vape at a playgroup, but all the "disgusting"comments about someone who did make me roll my eyes. Children are constantly exposed to worse pollutants. In fact life, for children all over the world, is far more dangerous the sitting in a room with some poor sod sucking away on a e cig.
I totally agree, that if you stigmatise vaping the same way as cigs, you make it harder for people to quit. I can't actually believe pubs ban vaping. Pubs are closing in their droves. The argument for banning smoking in pubs was staff health. How is vaping harming bar staff?
All this hand wringing and shock horror over people trying to do something to end their addiction to cigarettes is not helpful to anyone, least of all the child of the parent trying to quit by vaping.

I bloody love vaping I do - all the cool of fags, none of the nasty pong or cancer.

Marvellous. And HouseofMirth is spot on!!!

The 'big clouds' jobs (sub-ohm vapes) are really for outdoors or at home - they are not for indoors in public places and if you use one in the car be prepared to crash due to sudden lack of vision (I also don't use mine in front of the PC as then I can't seen the screen for whole minutes at a time and someone could be wrong on the internet in the interim period!!!)..

Normal non-huge-clouds vaping though, I think schools, playgroups and hospitals are off the list, ditto 'professional' places like the dentists, Drs surgery.

Shopping malls, cinemas, big places like that - pft, I vape, catch me if you can - I am happy with the science that says the ONLY person risking harm from it is myself.

Hospitals that don't allow vaping outside are being incredibly foolish and its good to hear some are changing that policy - last I was there my local General hospital hadn't done so, but I ignored that for a whole week and nobody died!

When it comes to smaller spaces like pubs, I ask permission from the bar staff, so far they've all said yes its fine.

Scary if that is all you ever say on the matter then no, you wouldn't be one of those I would include in the Hypocrite Games. I said as much in the post you are referring to. The smell of sweets will probably make you feel equally nauseous, they certainly make me fee ill (especially the pink ones). Oddly that is because they contain the same flavouring ingredients. My solution is to move away from the person eating them... not to try and get them banned.

Many asthmatics vape.

Those of you against vaping think of it like this: the sooner every smoker vapes the sooner there will be a total ban on cigarettes. The sooner everyone vapes the more likely it is that the nicotine based liquid will be reduced and eventually banned. The sooner that happens the sooner the vaping fad is likely to disappear, or become far less prevalent.

In being so outraged against vaping you are prolonging both cigarette smoking and vaping. You are acting against your own best interests.

Scary - and 1000% more dangerous than just normal air!
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You completely undermine your argument when you come out with bullshit like that.

Hahaha priceless! Thank you for cheering me up on this gloomy, referendum-tense day. What is this 'normal air' of which you speak? Do you live at the top of a mountain or something?

There was something on the radio today saying the BmA want to ban vaping in public places. They say that nicotine from vaping lingers in enclosed places.