Losing the plot
Saturday, May 7, 2016 at 13:25 I know, another post about vaping, but some things need to be said. Sorry.
One, the reaction to the FDA regulations on e-cigarettes (which won't come into force for two years) has been hysterical and over-wrought.
Some vapers have even been tweeting that they will forced to go back to smoking. What nonsense.
Thankfully the Consumer Advocates for Smoke-free Alternatives Association (CASAA) slept on the FDA's announcement (as I suggested vapers should) and last night posted a reasoned evaluation (FDA Deeming Regulations: Release and Next Steps) that includes this important comment:
"Vaping as we know it will continue and we are not done by any means. Keep calm."
This echoes what Forest keeps saying in relation to smoking. OK, so we lose menthol cigarettes (in 2020). It's regrettable, obviously, for those who like the flavour of menthol cigarettes, and for those of us who believe in consumer choice I'd go so far as to say it's outrageous.
Likewise the directive to ban packs with fewer than 20 cigarettes and smaller pouches of rolling tobacco. But smoking as we know it will continue and we are not done by any means. So keep calm.
Two, following the FDA announcement on Thursday a number of vapers, including some of the leading advocates, have been 'congratulating' the tobacco industry, albeit in an ironic way.
A typical tweet read:
I'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Tobacco Industry for the market it will own in 2yrs.
As a supporter of harm reduction and consumer choice I too am concerned that the FDA regulations will force out of business some of the smaller e-cigarette manufacturers.
But have faith. If there is sufficient demand the market will do its best to meet it.
What annoys me is that many ex-smoking vapers seem to think that if it's a Big Tobacco product it must be rubbish because the tobacco industry doesn't understand what vapers want.
I'd take issue with that. Does anyone really believe, with the money they're spending on the development of 'emerging products', that the tobacco companies aren't conducting research into what smokers and vapers actually want?
How do you think the most successful companies survive? They do it by changing their products in accordance with public demand. Look at Coca-Cola and the range of products they offer.
Three, what the most vociferous vapers have to understand is they are in a minority, a minority whose choices must be recognised and defended, but a minority nonetheless.
And I don't just mean a minority of the population. I mean a minority among vapers.
For them vaping is a hobby. They love the paraphernalia, the gizmos and the camaraderie. I understand that.
H/T, btw, to the person who drew my attention to the fact that vaping is a hobby while smoking is a habit. I can't remember who it was but it's a good point.
It's only half the story though because vaping is a hobby only for a minority of vapers. For others it's primarily a smoking cessation tool and for the rest it's a habit just like smoking.
Furthermore the majority of vapers are dual users not evangelical ex-smokers. They smoke and they vape. Some may be on the path to quitting smoking altogether but most haven't got there yet and they may not want to.
Like it or not a lot of smokers and dual users enjoy smoking and don't want to quit. Hard to imagine if you're an ex-smoking vaper who's seen the light but it's true.
Four, I'm delighted for you if you've chosen to quit tobacco and enjoy vaping as an alternative to smoking. It's wonderful that you are enjoying the 'freedom' from your 'addiction' to smoking and getting pleasure from your electronic gizmo. I get that too.
But the suggestion that vapers should be actively enlisted in the fight against smoking is abhorrent. This isn't a public health issue, it's a private issue.
Enjoy vaping (a habit or hobby I'll defend to the hilt) but unless a smoker asks for advice or information about e-cigarettes leave them alone. It's none of your business if they continue to smoke.
In particular stop the nonsense that you're part of a crusade to save a billion lives. This World Health Organisation figure is a wild estimate of the lives saved if everyone stopped smoking over the next century.
By repeating it you're regurgitating baseless propaganda that is being used to harass smokers throughout the world. Who you do think you are – tobacco control?
Five, it was brought to my attention this week that Conservative MP Anne Main has sponsored an Early Day Motion (EDM) on e-cigarettes. It reads:
That this House agrees with the Royal College of Physicians that it is crucial that e-cigarettes are priced as advantageously as possible in relation to tobacco; believes that the EU Tobacco Products Directive would significantly inhibit the development and use of harm-reduction products by smokers and cost lives; further agrees with Public Health England that e-cigarettes are around 95 per cent less harmful than smoking, and that nearly half the population does not realise that e-cigarettes are much less harmful than smoking; further believes that restricting advertising will have the perverse effect of reducing the rate at which cigarette use is declining; notes that the total cost of smoking to society, including healthcare, social care, lost productivity, litter and fires, was conservatively estimated by Action on Smoking and Health to be around £14 billion per year; and calls on the Government to exclude e-cigarettes and other harm-reduction products from the Tobacco Products Directive.
Main's EDM prompted an interesting discussion on Twitter between vapers who are delighted at this development (they obviously don't know the real worth of EDMs) and others who took umbrage – rightly – at the use of ASH propaganda to further the cause of vaping.
I've commented before about advocates of vaping embracing junk science and other tobacco control propaganda about smoking then complaining bitterly when politicians and public health campaigners use junk science against e-cigarettes.
The hypocrisy is sickening but I know why they do it. This week, when it was pointed out on that the £14 billion estimate "is just bullshit propagated by the likes of ASH", one vaper (a leading advocate of e-cigarettes) responded, matter-of-factly:
"I understand that but will not cut off my nose to spite my face."
In other words, "I'm happy to throw smokers under the bus and endorse any old rubbish about smoking if it helps our cause."
That also explains the refusal by some vapers to condemn further anti-tobacco measures. I hope Forest is never so dumb-witted or unprincipled.
I was going to make a sixth point but I'll leave it there. This post is quite long enough and there's something else I want to write about.
It's about the A Billion Lives documentary. I'll publish it later.
Reader Comments (11)
My com at the time, and I stand by it now:
"...Somewhat positive, but:
“… agrees with Public Health England that e-cigarettes are around 95 per cent less harmful than smoking…” is wrong, the PHE report said e-cigs were “at least 95% safer” which is not the same as ‘around 95%’ added to which the figure was ‘calculated’ from the opinions of a room of ‘experts’ rather than having any solid, factual foundation.
And;
“…the total cost of smoking to society, including healthcare, social care, lost productivity, litter and fires, was conservatively estimated by Action on Smoking and Health to be around £14 billion per year…” is only true if we’re redefining ‘conservatively’ to mean something along the lines of fabricated, inflated and egregiously exaggerated.
Other than that, good stuff..."
I feel the vaping regulation zealots have highlighted the junk science and lies that they have/will use(d) to try to control individual choice which is none of their damn business. Be it SHS, cancer, diactyl, etc etc. The more they do so, the more ALL their junk and lies on smoking & vaping will be brought under scrutiny, hopefully sooner rather than later.
Simon, i am fed up with hearing about vapers and vaping. Smokers are the ones getting the raw deal. Robbed blind and facing under plain packaging no consumer choice or protection. Also a massive wall of silence from the tobacco companies as what tobaccos their customers will be able to buy in the future.
Is smoking a hobby or a habit? I think it might be both. Growing tobacco, which I do because I smoke, is a hobby. Trying different methods of flavouring it, growing it, and smoking it are part of that hobby related to smoking.
How about the different types of pipes people use, looking for different blends of tobacco, the cigars they choose, or the tins they collect to put tobacco in? Maybe they'll start collecting different types of cigarette cases because of the new law - if they can actually find a cigarette they like now they're denied the information to know what they're buying.
I've started collecting souvenir pocket ashtrays, which I use, from all the different countries I visit during summer, a lot of that trip paid for with the money I save from not paying UK tax on tobacco, I suppose the above might all fit under the title of a "collection" hobby but I'd say only because of an interest in smoking.
Just as vaping has it's gizmos and paraphernalia, so does smoking. The act of vaping or smoking are related to habits we all have, like having a cup of tea at a certain time of day and having a smoke with it. Smoking while waiting to pass time is another habit.
Habits trigger a desire to smoke but I wouldn't dismiss it as not being a hobby too.
“ ... to congratulate the Tobacco Industry for the market it will own in 2yrs.”
It’s slightly bemusing that some within the vaping community are seeing this as a universally negative possibility. I personally feel that if the corporations who have been manufacturing and selling a product that millions of smokers around the world like and enjoy enough to still buy, even after all the tax increases and haranguing and persecution, then they are surely the best-placed organisations to develop an e-cigarette which those same customers might genuinely enjoy and feel inclined to switch/semi-switch to.
Because, having been developed mostly by small companies without large customer bases from which to obtain feedback, and being too new to have yet truly worked out exactly what their customers (or more importantly potential customers) actually want, most of the products currently available do tend to give the impression of having been developed by a bloke with a little lab set up in the shed at the bottom of his garden, based almost exclusively on what he and a few of his chums tried and thought “yeah, that’s not bad.” Which, to be honest, isn’t exactly a particularly wide cross-section of the smoking community, and therefore highly unlikely to appeal to a great many of them. Now, before anyone in the vaping community rushes in to quote big statistics at me, yes, I know that the actual manufacture and production of e-cigs is not quite as small-scale as this, but all the elements of the whole industry - from the plethora of sweet, fruity flavourings (because they can’t “do” tobacco flavour properly), to the rather scary medical-looking devices attached to some of them (what’s that nasty tank affair all about?), to what are, in all honesty, pretty embarrassing, missing-the-mark-by-a-mile adverts - do tend to give the overall impression that it is run by enthusiastic amateurs rather than by slick professionals.
So, if the tobacco industry does get in on the e-cig act as a result of this latest decision, the chance of an e-cigarette being developed which appeals to a far higher number of real smokers than is currently the case would surely be much greater, too. And one would have thought that the idea of lots and lots of new vapers would be greeted with great enthusiasm by current ones. But no. It would seem that vapers, like anti-smokers before them, are so determined to despise the tobacco industry, simply for being the tobacco industry, that even the chance that that very industry might significantly swell their own ranks has to be seen as a bad thing.
Yes, bravo Misty, a good summation. It is notable that the tobacco companies are tending towards the 'heat-not-burn' technology, which of course the purist vapers don't like. However, in terms of appeal to smokers, I think the HnB stands a much better chance than vaping, since you are actually getting the real tobacco flavour, rather than some synthetic construct. However, the HnB products don't yet have much of a price advantage over cigarettes, and until they do, there won't be a rush to buy them.
Simon et al,
I do have a genuine question.
Pat, I appreciate that you grow your own tobacco (props by the way) which would place you more towards "hobby" than habit, however there are still millions of smokers that prefer to buy off-the-shelf.
Would you consider that smokers in that section are (broadly) defined as being in the "habit" group - due in part to the generalisation of the product available to them?
It has been a while since I smoked but I can't remember there being much in the way of taste difference between brands as such, other than differences between "pre-made", roll-your-own and pipe-tobacco - btw I never was a ryo or pipe smoker though I can see the attraction of a pipe.
I said I think it is both. Some people have a habit of smoking which maybe triggers other stuff they do such as having a smoke first and then deciding to have the tea with it, but others clearly see it as a hobby.
Reading over old newspapers, which I sometimes have to do for my job, I was struck by a 1960s piece about a cigar ash competition in a smokers club - a regular thing like darts match that used to take place. The idea was the see who could have the longest ash without flicking and that was the winner.
Smoking used to be a habit for me but as I have learned more and more about it, I can say it is now more of a hobby that interests me as much as a habit I enjoy.
Dunno if that answers your question or causes more confusion.
Its pure pleasure for me especially if it is Oriental tobacco.
Pat,
It does answer my question. Thank you!
It seems cigar ash competitions still take place https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCvYdQPln9s
An old Avengers (Patrick McNee) episode also showed a scene in a cigar club where something like an oxygen mask was used between smoking different cigars to clear the taste of one tobacco away before trying the next - cleaning the palate, I suppose. If this sort of thing really happened, or still does, then again, I'd use that as an example of smoking being as much of a hobby as a habit.