Why e-cigarettes should be allowed in the office

Soon the few people left in civilized society who still smoke will be stubbing out their last gaspers and resolving to quit. Some of them may turn instead to e-cigarettes, those funny little white cylinders of plastic and metal, which contain liquid nicotine and are being sold in ever greater quantity.

One of the great advantages of these things is that it’s perfectly legal to puff away at work. As you can’t actually light them, they don’t count as smoking. And as all they emit is a little water vapour, they aren’t even antisocial.

Yet, increasingly companies are taking the very regrettable step of banning them. Some say they are a fire risk or that they may be harmful, but the main reason seems to be that they look too like the real thing. A spokeswoman from the British Medical Association recently complained that they set the wrong example and they renormalize the idea of smoking in offices just when everyone had succeeded in making it seem freakish.

It is for that very reason - the similarity to a real cigarette and the way they normalize the idea of smoking at work - that I’m strongly in favour of people puffing away on them in the office.

Smoking was the most reliable and most powerful way of bonding that anyone has yet found, according to The Globe and Mail. The simple act of lighting someone else’s cigarette, of offering a pack around or chatting for just the time it takes to smoke one created a good feeling that lasted about as long as the tar sits in your lungs.