Kirsty Bosley: For goodness vape! Clouded view of smoking alternative

I pored over every sentence I constructed, and every word that I wrote, wondering whether I'd succinctly said what I truly wanted to say. I'd look at it from other people's points of view, check out readers comments and take them all to heart – sometimes to my dismay.

It may seem that filling this column each week is easy, but it isn't. And the biggest reason for that is because I have always tried to refrain from using it as a platform on which to rant about things that do my head in. And I feel that there are many, many things that do this regularly. In fact, in many ways, I feel that I haven't changed from the moody Slipknot fan that I was in my teenage years. But as miserable as I may often be, I've always tried to stop myself from allowing that to spill into my columns.

I have always lived by the rule that if you can't say anything nice, then you shouldn't say anything at all. And so every week, when I go to rant and rave about something that's wound me up, I rein myself in. I write an annoyed sentence, or paragraph, and then delete it before turning to a more constructive mindset.

But this week, when reading an article in the E&S, I fell over the sensible, zen precipice, and plunged into blind, unreasonable annoyance. It was a story about a lad who was set to make thousands of pounds partaking in his favourite pastime. He practices said hobby for 'eight hours solid, every day', and is set to compete in a World Series in which he could take home a £16,000 prize. Good for him right? Right. Only it happened to tap into something that just winds me up, no matter which way I try to approach it.

He's a competitive vaper.

Now, I know what you're going to say: vaping is better for you than smoking. Blah, blah, blah. I've heard it all, believe me. For whatever reason, people think that by inhaling 'juice' then there's no problem. "It's just vapour," they say, while desperately sucking on an elaborate and expensive battery-operated machine like someone with an obvious chemical dependency and oral fixation.

If we're trading one for another then yes, I agree that it must be better to suck in something water-based than something that you set fire to. But these days, it's less about giving up smoking cigarettes and more about looking really cool while blowing out billowing, candy-floss scented fog.

But that's not the case. For a reason completely unbeknown to me, vaping has become 'a thing'. It's a thing that other people stand around and watch you do in such ludicrously-titled competitions as the World Series of Cloud Chasing. For whatever reason, it just really gets on my wick. I feel like saying 'come on now, grow up'.

I know what you're thinking: Kirsty, why do you even care? It's not hurting you, is it? And you'd be right, it isn't. In 20 years time, when loads of people develop a pulmonary disease and the headlines finally read 'what were we thinking?' I probably won't care, as long as it means those people stop chuffing candy-smelling vapour into my vicinity. It's not outside of the realms of possibility that such a discovery will be made. Remember, pharmaceutical companies once sold Thalidomide over the counter. . .

When loads of people around me get pleurisy, I will sit there in my little tower of misery, listening to Slipknot, saying: "I FLIPPING KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN!"

I'm no medical expert, and I'm not saying that vaping is bad for you. But you'd also be hard pushed to find an expert to tell you that it was good for you, too. But again, the health and wellbeing of people that chase 'jellyfish', blowing rings while being surrounded by vacuous people that find smoke rings cool, is none of my concern.

What I do care about, though, is how we as a society are making vaping 'cool'. It's a pointless undertaking, but it's no less so than, say, playing with a skipping rope or roller skating. Just doing stuff because you like it.

But at least those pointless undertakings keep people active and promote a healthy lifestyle. What does vaping promote, aside from stupidity?

I shudder at the thought that I might one day have kids who aspire to be competition level exhalers of chemical-laced fluid.

The notion that young people are taking up vaping makes me feel annoyed on behalf of society itself.

With some fluid tasting like sweeties while containing more nicotine than a normal cigarette, getting hooked on this kind of 'smoking' is really easy. And does anyone even know what's in this rubbish they're inhaling? Didn't a dog once eat some and die?

I went on to a vaping website and found more than 90 'gourmet juice brands' all selling this absolute nonsense. On the manufacturer websites I visited, the brands made clear that they are 'not a cessation product or form of nicotine replacement therapy' and neither had their products been medically evaluated.

Even the description of the juices themselves get me feeling irrationally annoyed. One claimed that it would 'leave you enveloped in a halo of your inmost desire'. I can't imagine that to be true, unless puffing it would leave me enveloped in a halo of cakes, in which case, plug me in.

Another, that might make me reconsider my non-vaping lifestyle, claims to be a 'full-on flavour fest serving up a yummy cheesecake base, covered with lashings of rich cream topped off with a perfect balance of oranges, lemons and grapefruit'. Only it's JUST A LIQUID FOR LUNGS which can't give lashings, bases or toppings. It's an idiotic fallacy.

And that's the only rant you'll get out of me for a while. Next week, I'll be writing to you from Cyprus where I'll likely be vaporised into mist in 30 degree heat. Have a good week!