Don’t let manners evaporate in puff of vaping smoke

Suzanne Harrington takes up vaping after being off cigarettes for over a decade but has to get to grips with the new etiquette that comes with it

How we love to over complicate things. First, there were cigarettes, which were smelly and killed half of everyone who used them. Then there were e-cigarettes, awkwardly named, but containing none of the stuff that kills you, like tar or arsenic. (Nicotine doesn’t kill you, otherwise, they wouldn’t be selling it over the counter in chemists to chew or slap on your upper arm).

Vaping exists because smokers missed, well, smoking, and so Hon Lik, a Chinese pharmacist, invented vaping after his father died from smoking and Hon himself was hooked on ciggies. He then sold his vaping idea to Big Tobacco, who renormalised the idea of inhaling nicotine-laden clouds, and to date, there are around 2.8 million vapers in the UK and 134,000 in Ireland.