I'm not an expert on cigarettes or electrofags.

I haven't smoked a cigarette in well over forty years as I thoroughly dislike them.  If I run out of pipe tobacco I would far rather go without than bum a fag off Herself.  I have an electrofag but rarely use it as I find it leaves an oily taste in my mouth and is a very poor substitute for a rich bowl full of pipe tobacco.

So whenever I prattle on about cigarettes or electrofags I tend to talk from a logical point of view rather than experience.

Take for example today's latest puff piece from the Tobacco Control Industry.  

Teenagers who use e-cigarettes 'more likely to take up smoking', study finds.

I will lay to one side the fact that other "studies" have proved just the opposite [and the fact that the piece is basically a cry from Tobacco Control for yet more funding] and look at this from a logical standpoint.

We are constantly told by Tobacco Control that electrofags are designed to "trap" the cheeeldren and get them hooked on nicotine.  They cite the use of flavours such as Coca Cola and bubblegum as their proof.  So according to them, the kids experiment because of the flavours they are enticed with?  So my simple question would be why would they switch then to cigarettes?

Electrofag flavours – Banana Toffee Chews, Bubblegum, Rhubarb and Custard, Strawberries and Cream, Menthol to name just a tiny sample of the hundreds available.

Cigarette flavours – tobacco, slightly different tobacco, tobacco, weak tobacco, menthol, tobacco.

So why would any kid decide that somehow the taste of smouldering old socks is suddenly preferable to strawberries and cream?  After all, according to Tobacco Control, it's the flavour they're after?

Aha, they say – they switch to cigarettes because they are now addicted to nicotine!  But this doesn't hold water because apart from the fact that nicotine is about as addictive as coffee, electrofags already contain the nicotine they apparently crave and therefore there is no need to switch.

And then there is the minor matter of cost.  I don't know how much is costs to keep an electrofag running, but I can guarantee it is a mere fraction of the cost for ordinary cigarettes which now run at €10.50 just for a pack of twenty.  Why the fuck would anyone switch to something that lacks flavour and costs an arm and a leg?  It makes no sense whatsoever.  It is completely illogical.

To go back to the "study" that sparked this little brain fart of mine, I noticed something strange about it. 

Just under a third of more than 2,300 students had used e-cigarettes when they were first questioned in 2013 at the age of 14, the study published in the journal Tobacco Control found.

Some 20 per cent of those who used e-cigarettes had smoked real cigarettes by the time of the second survey a year later, compared with just six per cent of those who had never used them.

OK, so a few hundred kids had experimented with electrofags the first time around.  Kids experiment, and that is perfectly normal.  Obviously that third had inquisitive minds.  Then they come back a year later and guess what?  Those experimenters had also experimented with cigarettes!  So what?  When you go to buy a pair of shoes, don't you try several pairs before making your purchase?  What conclusion can you possibly deduce from this other than kids like to experiment, and that some of them had tried cigarettes?  How many of those who had tried cigarettes had gone back to electrofags?  We're not told.  How many had decided that either electrofags or cigarettes were not for them at all?  We're not told.  In fact we are not told anything other than what the "researchers" want us to hear.

Now if they had gone back a year later and discovered that every kid from the first sample who had tried electrofags was now firmly hooked on a forty a day habit I would concede they might have a point.

But then you can't let the facts get in the way of a good scare story?