Under the “noncommunicable diseases” section of its latest report, the World Health Organisation celebrates China’s more heavy handed regulation of electronic bikes, before going on to laud its on work tacking the noncommunicable disease of e-bikes that are able to go faster than 25 kilometres per hour. It’s not like they have anything else to be focussing on…

The crackdown on e-bikes mirrors the WHO’s obsession with and longstanding war against e-cigarettes, with the organisation’s then director general Margaret Chan making it clear she considered a vaping crackdown a high priority, at the hight of the ebola epidemic in 2014. Their war on vaping has fostered prohibition in many countries and consequently less harm reduction than in the UK, where WHO guidance has rightly been shunned and vaping is widely seen as the safer alternative to smoking that it actually is.