Opinion: Rites of summer highlight the rights of individuals

Almost universally, our regulators of behaviour throw vapes into the same category as combustible cigarettes and ban their use in these spaces, writes Almost universally, our regulators of behaviour throw vapes into the same category as combustible cigarettes and ban their use in these spaces, writes Ian Irvine. Photo by JULIE OLIVER/OTTAWA CITIZEN FILES

Article content

The past week in Montreal has seen the gradual encroachment of restaurant, bar and café patios onto the city sidewalks and asphalt, any that isn’t potholed, that is. Our six-month winter is slowly yielding to the delights of a brew, a glass of whatever with a fish ‘n’ chips, or even a pricey mocha or latté in the warming outdoor spaces we wintry creatures so cherish. Patrons engage in people-watching and fashion-judging, all the while assessing the chances of Les Canadiens in their playoff quest for the Stanley Cup. Torontonians are doing much the same, except the conversation is in the form of Leafs lamentation.

Article content

Article content

Alcohol is a wondrous social lubricant, dulling the brain, firing the spirit and providing a pleasant, almost sensuous experience. Once a conversation gets going the patrons call for another round and the talk grows ever more animated. Such behaviour conforms to our social norms. Our break-out season is uninhibited by government regulation on the permissible percentage of alcohol in a Belgian beer, or the flavours permitted in wine, or the peatiness of single malts.

Article content

Article content

Article content

This tableau embodies what economists call “internalities” and “externalities” — acts that affect oneself only and acts that also affect others. Over-imbibing patrons generate internalities: they may hurt their liver and give themselves a throbbing day-after headache.

Article content

But bar patrons can be noisy, occasionally rowdy, and sometimes display aggression. These are externalities. Though not welcome, they are tolerated rites of summer in Canada. The rights of individuals to imbibe are not trumped by the externalities that may attend drinking.

Article content

The exercise of another individual right sees people drive their gas-guzzlers a few feet from the sidewalk patios, spewing various toxins towards the imbibers as they cruise up and down the crowded boulevards.

Article content

Article content

All bets are off, however, and all rights cast aside when it comes to vaping. Almost universally, our regulators of behaviour throw vapes into the same category as combustible cigarettes and ban their use in these spaces. Without good cause and without needing to justify itself, the nanny state simply proclaims its concern for humanity and sets out to change the behaviour of others while turning a blind eye to the dangers its own actions create.

Article content

Article content

What are the internalities and externalities of tobacco substitutes? Where do the rights of the state begin and end?

Article content

In terms of internalities, though drugs and stimulants should generally be avoided or at least consumed in moderation, for almost two decades the U.K.’s Royal College of Physicians has been telling us that vapes involve at most five per cent of the risk of combustibles. Other respected medical and public health bodies say the same. Researchers from Canada’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health place the danger of vaping at a small fraction of the danger of alcohol.

Article content

So internalities are not a justification for government heavy-handedness in regulating vaping. As for externalities, what about the rights of non-vapers sitting close by on the patio? Again, there is little to be concerned with. The volume of ambient vapour is about 15 per cent of the volume of smoke from a cigarette. This is because cigarette smoke is 85 “side-stream,” meaning it spreads directly from the cigarette without first being inhaled. But there is zero side-stream vapour from e-cigarettes. And because exhaled vapour contains a minute fraction of the toxins in smoke, and in reduced concentrations, the “danger” from sitting next to a vaper is miniscule — likely about one per cent that of sitting next to a smoker.