Horse 3316 - THE PEOPLE v VAPE COMPANIES [2024] - Judgement

THE PEOPLE v VAPE COMPANIES [2024] - Judgement

The Fake Internet Court of Australia

H3316/1

It has come to this fake internet court's attention that vaping is now seen as cool by 'da kidz'. We are also aware that there is a secondary issue which has to do with the wide scale littering of vaping products, which we assume are supposed to be refillable but in practice never are. At least in the olden days when smoking cigarettes was seen as cool, the litter would be a cardboard box as well as miscellaneous filters festooned about the world. A vape device contains magnitudes more plastic than was ever generated by a packet of cigarettes, as well as a battery and the necessary elements to flash boil the syrup inside to generate the vape cloud.

This is not part of the primary hearing but this court by way of direction hereby orders everyone who does vape, to dispose of their rubbish thoughtfully. Don't be a mucky muk maker, do thing right thing. Chuck it the bin. If you can only be forced to do the right thing by means of the threat of punishment which stands behind the law, then you are a bad member of society and no better than an animal. 

Back to the principle matter at hand, e-cigarettes were originally invented as a quit-smoking aid. This would have been all that they were used for except that some bright spark worked out that by changing the syrup inside the device, they could get e-cigarettes to taste like anything. With some clever marketing in a practically unregulated market, within a few years e-cigarettes magically changed into what we now called 'vapes'.

Instead of a quit-smoking aid, vapes have turned into a nicotine delivery system in their own right. They have become popular enough and drawn sufficiently enough of their own market, that the ultimate proof that they have become their own thing is that there is vape advertising on Formula One cars. 20 years ago, these 200mph billboards would have advertised traditional cigarettes and it should surprise nobody that many of the various vape brands are owned by exactly the firms which owned the various cigarette brands: such as Philip Morris, British American Tobacco, et cetera.

This fake internet court makes no moral prescription about whether or not people should vape. The facts are well enough known that vaping causes lung damage, as well as health issues like black lung. This is only to be expected as vaping is yet another particulate delivery system to ones lungs. It is also a reasonably established maxim that people like what they like and are going to do what they like unless regulations and/or the law is so restrictive as to be a barrier to doing it. If people know the dangers and yet keep on wanting to do this anyway, then no direction from a fake internet court is going to change their minds.

These are the facts as this court sees them:

As someone who does not vape but who shares enclosed spaces with people who do, I know that most of the flavours of vapes are fruit based. I personally think that fruit flavours like pineapple, mango, strawberry, et cetera, after they have been sucked into someone's lungs and them blown back out again, all seem to resemble a poor facsimile of rotten fruit. This is not pleasant. 

As I live in the bogan west of Sydney and work in the harbour suburb of Mosman, and commute to work on trains and buses, I think that I must be singularly unique in that in one day I can share a bus with people from both the poorest and the richest suburb of the harbour city. In many respects, the difference between the quality of character of people at the very bottom and the very top of the economic ladder may as well be non-existent. One of the basic premises of economics and indeed most religions is that people are either rationally or irrationally selfish; and I can tell you that the likelihood of someone vaping on the bus in both the very richest and very poorest suburbs, is pretty well identical.

Vapes on the bus go round and round the air-conditioning system; so a bus ride is often like a smell roulette wheel. In addition to whatever other smells that we get on the bus, the smell of expended vape from someone else's lungs, is just one of legion. What smell are we going to get today? 4711? Pubescent boys' body odour? Rotten pineapple or rotten strawberry vape? Chanel No.5? Lynx Africa? Who knows? Wheel of olfactory, spin, spin, spin. What smell today do we find ourselves in?

There are two delicious ironies about this. The first delicious irony of this is that it is not delicious. Vaping probably tastes nice as evidenced by the fact that people like to do it. The second delicious irony of this is that it this is not merely a case of an old man yelling at a metaphorical cloud but a case of an old man yelling at a actual cloud. In the twenty-first century we have in some cases returned to the fug and palls of cloud which form inside of public transport. 

Final Judgement:

One of the things about smoking is that burning tobacco had a certain smell about it. That smell indicated to the world that the person who was smoking was aware of the risks and did it anyway. There is a sense of daring-do with tobacco smoke. The smell of a Gauloises wrapped inside a Gitanes indicates that a French person is looking down on you. The smell of a Marlboro indicates that person has dreams of punching a bison. The smell of a Lucky Strike indicates nothing other than it's toasted. The smell of putrid pineapple, mouldy kiwifruit, or not quite strawberry, indicates that you have accidentally wandered into a creche during snack time. Tobacco smoke was cool because fire is dangerous; even if it is tiny. However, can someone really said to be cool if they smell like rotten banana, mouldy strawberry, or pine lime?

This court hereby orders that henceforth, all vaping companies replace their fake fruit flavours with something actually cool and daring. This court suggests that such vape flavours as espresso coffee, southern beans and chili, charred capsicum, schezuan beef, and that most venerable flavour of all, bacon, be used instead. One does not impart any sense of being cool with vape exhalations that smell like someone has vomited an entire ice cream shop into a bus.

Vape Companies, you are guilty of both conspiracy and deception. You have brought hateration and holleration into this fake internet court and as you have no sensible business by altering the air that we breathe, we order you to desist and stop this egregious pretense. If we ever see you back before this court, the penalties will be severe. Get out; lest you make a mockery of my courtroom. We are already perfectly capable of making a mockery of this fake internet courtroom as it is. You are malevolent and have now ensnared others in your villainy. Can you not see what trouble thou hast wrought? 

- ROLLO75 J

(this case will be reported in FILR as H3316/1 - Ed)