E-cigarette company "never intended to cause any bad feeling"
Friday, May 9, 2014 at 13:33 Further to yesterday's post, reader Mark Butcher comments:
You may be interested in this. A month or so ago, the e-cigarette maker Go-Lites issued a press release regarding lost time with smoking breaks.
I sent an email to them registering my objection to them jumping on the anti-smoking bandwagon. This is what I sent:
Hi,
I've just read your press release regarding lost time through smoking breaks.
As a heavy e-cig user and now occasional normal smoker, I am very concerned that Go Lites has turned on smokers.
I can assure you that I will make sure never to use your products - and I am sharing your press release and my views with my vaping friends.
Go-Lites responded as follows:
Hi Mark,
Thanks for your reply. I assure you that was never the intention from me or anyone at Go-Lites – we never intended to cause any bad feeling in the smoking or vaping community. The piece you’re referring to is simply trying to alert smokers and employers to a potential alternative to smoking, which I’m sure you’ll agree as an e-cig user yourself, has plenty of benefits.
The team at Go-Lites are not anti-smoking, and alienating the community of smokers is not something that was ever aimed for. I am currently coordinating with Go-Lites to ensure that all future releases are better thought out, and will focus on uniting vapers and smokers rather than isolating one of the two.
Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any more views you’d like to air.
I am so pleased to read Mark's comment.
As it happens he wasn't the only potential customer offended by their email. See The second front against smokers (Oh What Now!).
Mind you, I'm equally impressed by Go-Lites' response. Actions have to speak louder than words, of course, but hats off to them for taking Mark's complaint seriously.
If vapers were to write to Vapestick – which wants employers to ban smoking breaks – that company might reassess its marketing as well.
After all, knowing what you now know, and given a choice between Go-Lites and Vapestick, which brand would you choose?
Update: Founder of Vapestick responds in the comments ...
Reader Comments (12)
Yes, I agree. Thanks Mark Butcher. More vapers should jump on ecig companies that use stigmatisation or abuse of smokers to sell their product.
Maybe they should approach our consumer right's group Forest for advice on how to treat potential customers before launching marketing attacks on tobacco consumers in an attempt to make profits.
Having seen your posts (and subsequent comments on your posts), and then re-read our release once again (to double-check we hadn't missed something), I cannot find any mention (anywhere) of any call from VAPESTICK to ban smoking breaks! The IT company referred to in the release has ultimately taken that decision, but that was entirely their decision to take and I'm sure they would have taken the views of their employees into consideration before doing so. The ONLY thing VAPESTICK is attempting to do here, is try and convince employers that it would be in their best interests to allow vaping in the workplace, as they may then find smokers starting to choose to take less and less smoking breaks of their own accord. Which would be a win win for everyone of course. I trust this note clears that up!
Regards,
Michael Clapper
VAPESTICK
The consequence of writing "the second front against smokers" has meant that I now receive an inordinate mass of junk mail from go-lites via Dakota Digital!
Unintended consequences.
Michael, you're right, there was no mention in the press release of Vapestick calling for a ban on smoking breaks but it was mentioned in an email I have from your PR company to a news agency, which is why I was careful to write "according to an email I have seen" and "according to the actual press release".
The email from your PR company clearly stated that "e-cigarette brand Vapestick are piloting a brand new programme and are calling on employers to allow e-cigarette use in the workplace and ban smoking breaks to alleviate this cost". (I know because I have a copy of it.)
I am grateful to you for putting the record straight but if you want to prevent this 'misunderstanding' happening again I suggest you have a word with your PR company.
In the meantime you could stop banging on about the "serious financial implications" of smoking breaks. Everyone is entitled to a break so can you tell me what the "serious financial implications" are?
This is an old wives' tale designed to stigmatise smokers and turn their employers against them. If you can show us hard evidence that smokers are less any productive than non-smokers (in general) I'd like to see it. Anything else is pure conjecture and it's a great pity to see an e-cigarette company repeating the same myths as the tobacco control industry.
Thanks for clarifying. I certainly will pick that up with our PR agency, as that was most certainly not the message that had been approved.
Our sole aim with this release is to try and persuade employers to welcome vaping in the workplace, which would be to the benefit of smokers, and vapers, and to the employers themselves. Each time a smoker vapes instead of smokes, he or she is doing themselves (and the people around them) a huge favour - a simple fact that is indisputable.
As for the cost to employers of smoking breaks, not only have I experienced the (numerous types of) costs myself, (having previously employed hundreds of people), but I can also refer you to two recent studies about this, undertaken by:
1. Centre for Economics and Business Research (UK)
2. Professor Micah Berman at Ohio State University
Over the past 12 months these studies have been reported by Forbes, The Independent, CNBC and many others. All easily found with a web search.
All of us at Vapestick are extremely proud to be in the business of providing an alternative solution for adult smokers, and those smokers are our valued customers. So the very last thing we would ever want to do is antagonise any smoker. If we can help to give smokers the opportunity to vape at work, they might just be tempted to at least give vaping a try, and they might just find they like it, like so many millions of others have already found. The more reasons we can give employers to agree to permit vaping in the workplace, the more chance there will be of that happening.
As things stand, many employers have already started to categorise vaping as smoking, and imposed bans on their use in the workplace. We believe this is a big mistake, and a wasted opportunity, on so many levels and for everyone involved. If we say nothing now to try and prevent this trend from continuing, then it will just become the norm...and how would that help anyone?
That all being said, it is time to 'let it rip' at a certain PR agency!
Wow, didn't expect top billing!
To respond to Michael Clapper: Those studies you highlight don't really differentiate between a 'smoking break' or a 'coffee break'. As Simon mentioned, everyone is allowed a break during the work day. I also employ people, and everyone is allowed to have occasional breaks. Either for a chat, a coffee or a fag.
Also, the fact that these studies have been reported by mainstream media outlets is absoutely NO reflection on their rigorousness or value. Working in the media myself I can easily see the cutting and pasting of a press release that fits an accepted narrative and fills a few column inches.
This is why many people, not just smokers, are becoming far more jaded regarding the motives of the media and politicians. You are continuing an uncontroversial line to guarantee accepted publicity. But with your target market being smokers, you may get far more respect by being more challenging.
Michael Clapper - some of us don't take smoke breaks at all. I never do and the implication that smokers can't go a shift without a fag is what I find insulting because it promotes the "Pathetic Addict" aspect of denormalisatiion.
I smoke before work, I smoke during my lunch break, I smoke after I leave home. I do not smoke in working hours. I wouldn't want to smoke an ecig at my desk but if I ever do I wouldn't buy yours because you just don't get it nor care as long as you can sell your product on the back of insulting propaganda against tobacco consumers - especially as you are pushing the idea that we harm others around us. We don't. Check the science and the propaganda and you will see SHS never killed nor harmed anyone - if it can be annoying to obsessive Smokerphobics who hate vapers as much as they hate us.
Smokerphobia is the real harm and it appears to me you rely on it to sell your silly plastic stick.
Leave us alone. We are sick of being the butt of corporate abuse whether that comes from a company like yours or one aligned with big Pharma which pushes the same shit as you do.
Totally agree Pat. I'm one of the healthiest members of my team - never taking a day off sick in my working life, and I'm 47 now - but shock! Horror! I smoke!
The propaganda stinks against smokers and is totally false.
To be honest, it's the do-gooders who work to rule; they are the ones who are ruining our economy and our lives.
I'm old school though. To me a day's work is something to be proud of and meaningful. The do-gooders believe that balancing work and 'having a ball without a care in the world' is a better way to live our lives.
That is no way to run an economy, nor a country.
Hey-ho, the do-gooders know best as long as they are being well-paid for it. They work to rule; have no loyalty; they follow the filthy lucre.
To be honest, the entire establishment needs a good re-think about what the people of this country actually want against the heavily funded politically correct rules that are currently imposed.
@Michael Clapper
"Each time a smoker vapes instead of smokes, he or she is doing themselves (and the people around them) a huge favour - a simple fact that is indisputable."
Shs is harmless Michael. You should equate yourself with the facts, before posting here.
http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2008/07/01/scientific-evidence-shows-secondhand-smoke-no-danger
@Michael Clapper No MIchael, it is not an indisputable fact - unless you rely on wikipedia for facts. The Anti Tobacco industry which got the smoking ban brought in, and which is now your nemesis, no longer even bother pretending that the ban was brought in to protect anyone. They knew the harm from normal levels ( indoor, not outdoor) passive smoking is negligible. There objective was too "denormalise" (their new and rather sinister word) smoking. Looked at objectively, the evidence does not support the claim that passive smoking is harmful. It may be unpleasant to many, but that's different.
It's because it's unpleasant to some that there should be some restrictions but there shouldn't be restrictions everywhere. Not everyone or even the vast majority of people hate smoking or smoke.
Choice and compromise would have kept both sides happy and should have been favoured over bans and "denormalisation" which is just the phase before criminalisation in the name of ideology and the aim set for a "smoke free world" back in 1970 before any meaningful studies on alleged "passive" smoking were done.
Sadly, I'm cynical enough to think that ecigs companies like Michael's rely on denormalisation and a blind belief in all the smoking and health propaganda, both on active and passive smoking, because it helps to sell their product.
If they can't join in making the smoker feel marginalised, stigmatised, socially excluded and denormalised enough to hate themselves then why would we bother to use or need an ecig in the first place?
I think ecigs should be sold on their merit and not on the back of negativity about smokers. If this issue hadn't become so vitriolic and political, then ecigs would have been a natural evolution. Now many smokers see them as just another arm of tobacco control if they do have a different reason for bashing smokers into submission.
I think ecig companies and some vapers are hedging their bets and are as yet unsure of which side to come down on in order to gain the best for themselves. The libertarians, however, smoker, vaper or businessman, can see the bigger picture.
The question is, can you Michael?
Just seen this extra post. So this Michael Clapper is chief of ECITA? Soooo deluded and quite worrying that a harm reduction company is acting like a spoilt brat! If Vapestick were the only ecig available, I would be a full time smoker again. What a numpty!