As I reported last week, I took the NHS online "What's your heart age?" test and came away with a respectable score of 55.
One of the questions there was "Do you smoke?", to which I answered "I quit", that being the honest answer. It's been over 2.5 years since I had my last ciggie, I've been vaping instead but there was no "No, but I vape"option in the drop-down menu:
As we all know, stopping smoking is a good thing. Vaping is an excellent alternative, even the NHS thinks it's 95% safer than smoking - these posters have been displayed prominently at all three Leicester hospitals for several years:
... or do they?
When I attended my annual Vascular Review test yesterday at my G.P.'s surgery the clinician said that she had me down in her records as having quit smoking and therefore I was classed as a non-smoker. I confirmed that, and added that, as I told them last year and the year before, I have been vaping since giving up the fags. Incredibly, she declared that "vaping is still smoking" and she updated and backdated my status to "Smoker"!
Now, there's no smoke in vapour, there's no tar in vapour, and quite often there's no nicotine in vapour, so how the fecking bejeezus did she reach that barmy conclusion?
Someone somewhere will look at her lies in my results and may well make an ill-informed clinical decision based on them. That won't go down well with me, there's a more-than-slim chance that I'll have something venomous to say about it.
FFS, NHS, can you please tell these people that vaping is not smoking? If you are going to condone vaping, the least that you could do is circulate the same hymn-sheet throughout your empire, even unto the far-flung corners.
THE SMALL(ish) PRINT... (updated 23/07/2016)
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