Intelligent Design

OK, fair enough, as a species we manage to make more than our fair share of idiotic decisions. We’ve created a system of politics that would be better housed in a circus, driving around in a clown car. We value voting for a performing dog over that of intellectual debate. While we’re busy pointing fingers: stand up if you purchased a copy of Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice. All 600,000 of you!

And if you bought the Jedward version, just leave the room now and never come back.

No, if you look at things that way then we don’t appear to be brighter than an old pair of slippers. But we aren’t looking at ourselves that way. We are thinking of higher things: the way that you are regulating your body temperature through feedback loops and evaporating your salty juices. The way your pulse will quicken when you spy Sports Direct is having a sale, and that you don’t think twice about breathing during the course of an average day.

“But hang on,” you say, “you can’t have us all claiming to be bright just for having the ability to not continuing holding a hand onto a red hot oven hob.”

Well, yes.

Public health people believe smokers are so stupid that they’ll quickly vape too much nicotine if left to their own devices. Although they haven’t stated this publicly, they also worry that once people start buying eliquids they’ll store it all in a bath. And then bathe in it while poking themselves in the eyes with 30ml bottles.

Clearly, the only safe thing to do was to campaign for juice bottles to be made tiny and restricting the volume of nicotine contained therein. We’re all far too stupid to be trusted.

Well, no.

If anybody has read Self-titration by experienced e-cigarette users: blood nicotine delivery and subjective effects, and that’s probably most of us, there’s continuing evidence that (if not us) our bodies are incredible.

“Incomplete self-titration may be due to a ‘saturation’ effect, that is, a limit on the volume of liquid that an individual can comfortably consume within a given time period, or because a given level of compensatory puffing is sufficient to achieve subjective satisfaction and alleviation of craving and withdrawal symptoms.”

We will vape only up to the point where the desire to do so is sated. Heavy users simply vape longer inhales more frequently to overcome a restricted volume of nicotine. This, in turn, leads to a higher coil temperature – which is the subject of ongoing investigation.

Consequently, it makes sense to reverse the 24mg limit (even if it only impacts on a small group of potential users) because there’s a lack of logic to the ban. Here’s hoping that MPs discover the innate intelligence our bodies possess, as they zoom about in their clown cars.