Where should the line be drawn?

I was at the ACC tonight for a concert and brought my e-cigarette along with me. It wasn't exactly my style of music but I liked some of the musician's songs and figured with a bunch of longform essays and e-cigarette, I would more or less enjoy myself.

That was true up to a point when an ACC security guard approached me and told me I couldn't smoke. "But I'm not smoking," I said, trying to explain to him that what I was holding was a non-burning object. He insisted, over and over again, that an e-cigarette was lumped into the same category as a rolled tobacco cigarette and that neither were allowed in the ACC.

So, I asked him to show me this in writing, a piece of ACC paper that explained e-cigarettes weren't allowed. He said there were signs at the front that I was welcome to look at, and I asked him why I should leave my seat during the concert to verify a supposed policy he was bringing to my attention. When he said it was on the ACC's website, I pulled out my phone and scrolled through the page, holding it out for him to have a look. Neither of us could find anything about a smoking policy, and he went away a couple of steps to talk to some other ACC man that was standing a few feet away.

It turns out there is a smoking policy section on the ACC's website, but you have to type in "smoking" in the search box at the top and it'll explain e-cigarettes aren't allowed.

And this is what I take issue with.

A big corporation, of which the ACC isn't the first, is banning any product you inhale and exhale the way you would a rolled tobacco cigarette without appearing to do their due diligence and I take several issues with this. First, have they conducted research that conclusively shows e-cigarettes cause heart and lung damage to those around the vapers based on secondhand vaping? I bet they wouldn't find much to go on, especially considering that if I hold in the vapour for several seconds after I inhale, nothing will come out of my mouth when I let go.

Second, what's their line of reasoning for putting smoking and vaping into the same category? There are many marked differences between the two, with the only similarity being that you inhale and exhale each product. I can think of several other items — a Ventolin puffer, breath freshener, etc. — that you'd inhale and exhale that have not much in common with cigarettes other than the mechanism of action.

Third, the issue of smell frequently arises with smoking. There are no two ways about it: smoking rolled tobacco cigarettes stinks and there's no way to hide it. It stays on your breath, your clothes, your skin and in the air long after the butt's been crushed out. E-cigarettes don't even come close to it and I've tested this out on family and friends, exhaling right into their faces as I'm standing less than a foot away. Every single one of them has said there's a hint of a fruity smell (depending on what e-juice I've loaded it with), and every single one of them has said it's not like tobacco smoke at all. Even one of the orthopedic surgeons I saw said she'd rather see me vaping than smoking, and my physiotherapist has sided with that opinion, too.

I've been smoking since I was 15 and I'll be the first to admit it's not something anyone should be doing. I've quit numerous times, the longest being for nine months, and nothing's managed to make me stop for good. You think I smoke with the intention of being a 60-year-old puffer? No, nobody does, but that's the chokehold smoking has on a person.

And when a product is released that makes me finally feel like I'm free from the shackles of cigarettes, I'll take it. I fully acknowledge that more research needs to be done into vaping and the industry is still in its infancy stage. But when you have a product that mimics the feel of smoking without inhaling any of the semi-combusted carcinogens, it's mind-boggling why more people wouldn't support it as the lesser evil.