Vapes are cringe, this is why we should ban them now

The UK government may be set to ban single-use vapes, it has been reported, with a DHSC consultation on the decision due in the next week.

Thank goodness for that. They are the most embarrassing accessory of the modern age and have terrible effects.

The environmental impact of the cigarette alternative, for one, is nothing short of jarring, and research by the not-for-profit organisation Material Focus has shown that the amount of plastic discarded from vapes in a week equates to enough lithium to create 5,000 electric car batteries a year.

Single-use plastic takes yonks to break down, harms wildlife, particularly in the sea, and requires a huge amount of precious energy to produce, and so contributes to the emission of harmful greenhouse gases. Good. Stuff.

And that's not vaping's only sin. While research has thus far found e-cigarettes to be less harmful than smoking, the evidence base is still emerging and we don't know all the facts yet to be able to confidently say something like "yes, inhaling this banana flavoured mix of chemicals and nicotine into my lungs is a really good idea".

And while the products were meant to wean smokers off smoking, it is clear vapes have hooked people who never smoked before and a market of illegal vapes has even emerged, containing dangerous chemicals that people really shouldn't be huffing into their internal organs.

This video showing how vapes are made might put people off foreverwww.indy100.com

But aside from all these noble concerns, there is one key issue that is getting lost in the debate. And that is that vapes are pure cringe.

Sitting in a pub garden and seeing grown adults puffing away on pens proudly labelled with flavours like bubblegum and donuts, passing them around, trying each other's, and comparing tasting notes like pound shop sommeliers is enough to give even the most laid-back person the ick.

In fact, you know those Haribo adverts in which adults with creepy children's voices dubbed in sit around and eat sweets because "kids and grownups love it so"? Well that is what springs to my mind when I walk past any London office and see men and women, dressed in suits, hurriedly sucking in mango air with a faint look of stress in their eyes, before returning inside their buildings to sign a deal or something.

I could go on, and I will. Walking down the street then briefly getting lost in a magician's smoke bomb of flavoured air when someone exhales their fruity nonsense is as annoying as it is visually impairing.

Trying to buy something normal in a newsagent but getting stuck behind someone umming and ahhing over whether to waste their money on an Elf Bar or a Lost Mary is an assault on our productivity and patience.

Listening to people debate the virtues of said ridiculously named products like bores discussing their cars or new phones is a sedative that I never asked for.

Is all that cringe, health concern, and environmental impact worth giving some lad called Jonty something to do with his hands while he bops away to techno in a bucket hat? I think not.

So ban the lot of them, I say. And may they never return.

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