Pro e-cigs, anti tobacco - whatever happened to the pleasure principle?
Friday, May 2, 2014 at 15:00 Every few weeks I have a little whinge about the lack of support smokers get from the more vocal advocates of e-cigarettes.
Smoking bans, display ban, plain packaging. Silence.
Some, of course, are fully paid up members of the tobacco control industry so I expect nothing less.
Many however are ex-smokers – now vapers – and I expect more of them, although we all know that ex-smokers can be among the most sanctimonious, puritanical people on the planet.
Anyway, with some honourable exceptions there are relatively few vapers willing to speak out on behalf of smokers so I was pleased to read this:
We have to start thinking straight.
I believe I am still a smoker that uses the new and better smoking system. This is the same reason I use an electric iron rather than the old ones filled with hot coals we used on the farm when I was a kid. Electric irons are clean and easy to use. They are modern. They are better in every way to the old fashioned irons.
I vape because I like it. I liked smoking too. As a human in charge of my own pleasure, I should have the power to decide which pleasures I like and how I want to perform them. I actually do not vape as a harm reduction thing. I vape because it is more convenient and just as pleasurable as smoking. I use an electric iron because it's easier and better - but if people want to iron with one filled with coals, I'm happy with that.
See: Are you a smoker that vapes? Or are you an anti-smoker? (Vapingpost)
Anyway, still on the subject of e-cigs, I was interviewed yesterday by the Scottish Sun.
They wanted to feature my thoughts in a head-to-head debate with someone who no doubt favours the precautionary principle – knee jerk ban while the authorities await evidence that the product harmful.
The article isn't online so I haven't seen it and I've no idea who my opponent is. It could be Sheila Duffy, CEO of ASH Scotland.
Duffy has been pontificating about e-cigs for a while now. Unlike ASH London, whose position has softened dramatically – possibly as a result of the flack they were getting – ASH Scotland is strongly opposed to the use of e-cigarettes.
Recognising, perhaps, that their position is untenable, Duffy is doing her best to sound conciliatory. Writing in the Edinburgh Evening News this week, she says:
As yet, we don’t have reliable evidence on the long-term impacts of inhaling e-cigarette vapour, although it is highly unlikely to carry the kinds of risks we see with tobacco smoke.
Don't get your hopes up, vapers. Duffy and ASH Scotland still support a ban on e-cigarettes in 'public' places if only "to avoid causing confusion when enforcing the ban on smoking".
Nevertheless she concludes her article with this get out of jail card:
ASH Scotland, like the NHS and other organisations, will continue to adapt our response to this fast-emerging category of products as the body of research evidence grows.
The question is, who's going to conduct this "body of research"? My guess is the tobacco control industry sees e-cigarettes as its next cash cow with large sums of public money being channelled in its direction to conduct all manner of reviews and impact assessments.
On top of that I expect a rash of e-cig conferences - at home and abroad - featuring the usual suspects.
Spin that out for a few years and everyone's happy. Like the EU, nicotine control is a gravy train that needs constant refuelling.
One final point. Whenever I talk to journalists or broadcasters about e-cigarettes I seem to attract criticism from some vapers who go on Twitter and bleat, 'Why is Forest talking about e-cigarettes?'
Well, Forest isn't denying anyone a voice. All we do is respond to questions and/or requests for interviews from journalists and broadcasters. And we do it because we represent smokers and many smokers vape.
In fact, according to the latest ASH/YouGov survey, two-thirds of vapers smoke so it could be argued that Forest represents a substantial majority of the vaping community, unlike those advocates who have turned their backs on smokers or were never a friend of the smoker in the first place.
Forest is an organisation that supports choice so we also defend an adult's right to choose between a range of recreational nicotine products, none of which is more important than another.
What a pity more active vapers don't see it that way instead of declaring, on their Twitter profile, 'Anti tobacco, pro e-cigs'.
Make tobacco obsolete and campaigners will simply turn their attention to the next nicotine product to which consumers are allegedly addicted.
Make no mistake, public health campaigners want to control your nicotine consumption, in whatever form it comes.
Increasingly I see conferences being organised that bring together vaping 'experts' and nicotine control campaigners. It's an alliance that is sure to end in tears. The reason is this:
When did you last hear a tobacco control or harm reduction advocate talk about "pleasure"? It's a word that does not exist in their vocabulary.
To a public health campaigner e-cigarettes are a necessary evil because they help some smokers quit tobacco.
But in their eyes vapers are still addicted to nicotine and that's almost as bad. The notion that people derive pleasure from nicotine is incomprehensible because - to them - it's incompatible with a long and rewarding life.
"Pleasure? What nonsense! These people are addicted and it's our job to get them off drugs unless they're sold in a pharmacy and manufactured by one of those nice thingummy giants."
All too often vapers who no longer smoke talk about e-cigs largely in terms of harm reduction.
It's an important factor, true, but if we want e-cigarettes to be classified as recreational as well as medicinal advocates of vaping should focus on pleasure too.
Pleasure, after all, is one of the things that keeps people smoking. (Other factors include habit and occasionally, I admit, addiction.)
Pleasure has to be a reason why some people vape because it can't just be about harm reduction, although that is certainly a factor.
Smoking and vaping clearly bring pleasure (or comfort) to a lot of people so when someone says they are "pro e-cigs" but "anti tobacco" they are demonstrating a shocking lack of empathy for those who also seek pleasure from nicotine, albeit in a combustible form.
Despite this intolerance they are feted by some in the vaping community as if it's perfectly acceptable.
Well, it's not. Reap what you sow, and all that.
Sermon over.
Reader Comments (6)
Well said Simon. That's exactly how smokers feel about ecigs, tolerant and informed vapers, who support us, and the ignorant intolerant vapers who deserve what they're setting themselves up for.
Smoke, vape, do whatever - they are your lungs! I had 60 years of smoking so it would ill become me to be a critic - doubtless I would still be a smoker if my health hadn't deteriorated to the point where I was choking on a drag as they stretchered me into the ambulance. Vaping allowed me to go on enjoying all the pleasure of smoking without the pain; which is why I will continue to fight to keep that alternative open for those who come after. Your comment is a bit dated - we beat the medical label last October; except for the ones that work - Pharma have got their greedy mitts on those - they hope!!!
Of course there should be an alternative for smokers who don't want to smoke tobacco anymore but still want to enjoy the culture of smoking or the nicotine.
A friend recently had to quit for health reasons but worried about quitting which is how she saw taking up vaping and she feared failure ahead. I told her to think of it as changing brands and psychologically that worked for her. She feels like a smoker still smoking but she's not. She's vaping.
Personally, ecigs give me a sore throat and I find them boring and pointless because I actually smoke for the smoke and I know I'm not the only smoker who does. But each to their own. I hope they don't medicalise ecigs and allow vapers greater consumer choice than smokers have been permitted over the years. Any fight you think you've won is only ever going too be temporary as we found through the decades as we fought off bans we were assured we wouldn't get. Manipulative Tobacco Control can't be trusted and they are never satisfied.
If I ever get to the point in health as you suffered DragonMum, I'd rather quit than smoke an ecig . I don't think my own preferential alternative to smoking tobacco - smoking tea - would give me greater health benefits but I'd give it a try.
Maybe I was born a smoker, given my smoking history, but who would know because it doesn't suit the political or ideological agenda to find out if such a thing could be possible. But I do know I'll be a smoker until the day I die whatever age that is - and I will never apologise, or play victim, because I've enjoyed smoking for almost a lifetime.
I'll be smoking during my summer holiday, as usual. In a bar in Sicily - land of the Free. Ich bin win Raucher.
Hah - Jonathan - perhaps I'll see you in there as I'm headed that way sometime after July :)
Cheering your "one final point," Simon. Amen.