Are we approaching peak vape?
Thursday, September 15, 2016 at 10:51 You wait ages for a film about vaping then three come along at once.
I've written at length about the documentary A Billion Lives. Last night however I discovered there are at least two more movies about e-cigarettes in the pipeline. One is still in production (I think), the other is about to be released online.
Promoted with the slogan 'Let's make cigarette history', Vape Wave is described thus:
Vape wave ambitions [sic] to be the first and most thorough movie about the electronic cigarette's incredible worldwide phenomenon. Jan Kounen dives head first into the ever growing vaping world, taking us around the globe to discover this ongoing cultural revolution, the first real alternative to traditional deadly tobacco smoking.
As far as I can tell it's a Swiss/French co-production financed by crowdfunding. The producers set a target of €100,000 but had raised only €37,308 when filming started in France, Taiwan, Korea and California.
The website isn't hugely informative so I can't tell you much more. If you're interested see for yourself.
Beyond The Cloud is a French documentary produced by Vapexpo in partnership with the Vaping Post. Like A Billion Lives it repeats without quibble a contentious World Health Organisation estimate:
With more than 6 million deaths per year worldwide, tobacco use is the major cause of prematured (sic) mortality in the world. WHO estimates that half of current tobacco users die from a disease caused by their addiction.
We're told that Beyond The Cloud is a "socially-aware documentary" that "takes you on a journey that, we hope, will help you form your own opinion on the e-cigarette".
According to this report it's due to be released on social networks this month. I'll keep you posted although I'm not sure how many readers of this blog will want to watch it.
Personally I'm beginning to reach peak vape so if I watch one documentary on the subject it's going to be A Billion Lives (in which I have already invested a lot of my time, commenting from the sidelines!).
Talking of which, I understand anyone can volunteer to host a screening from October 26 thanks to an innovative partnership between the producers and a new distribution company called Demand.film.
Given the number of UK vaping advocates featured in A Billion Lives (five, the same as the US) it beggars belief the film has received so little promotion from the UK vaping community.
I would expect at least one screening in London to which MPs and national media would be invited. (OK, this is normally called a premiere but for some reason no-one has thought to organise one.)
But if I was an active member of the vaping community I'd see this as a unique opportunity to be a bit more ambitious.
Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff – these are just a handful of cities where screenings could be organised.
With a bit of imagination the vaping community could turn this into a month long celebration of vaping with a series of screenings throughout the country.
The potential for media coverage, especially at local level, is substantial so it's a great opportunity to spread the message.
All it needs is a bit of leadership. Anyone?
Reader Comments (16)
Why must they keep attacking our product of choice to promote their own. I am sick of the vaper "Let's kill tobacco" war cry (because they no longer use it) and like many other smokers, I am fed up of being thrown down the toilet for the sake some awful bloody toy that they think makes them look cool.
If that lot are successful in forcing smokers to quit or vape - and it is all about the money too and vested interests in the vaping industry - then no doubt 10/20 years from now, there will be "new" science that shows vaping is just as harmful as tobacco.
Why can't they promote their hobby on the merits they say it has rather than pushing it on the back of hatred and fear towards smokers and smoking using the junk science they say is corrupt when applied to ecigs but bang on and accurate when applied to tobacco.
Yes Pat a lot of us enjoy tobacco and its pleasures and are sick of hearing about vaping. Me definitely ! Leave those of us who enjoy tobacco alone to enjoy it.
Hear hear Pat!
If I hear another vaping advocate claim, without a hint of irony, that e-cigs 'will save untold millions of lives' I think I'm going to be sick.
I think they need to take a large dose of reality and see how they feel in the morning. If they've taken a large enough dose, then they may find that the madness has departed.
I've always supported vapers and vaping, but that support is wearing very thin as they continue to enthusiastically endorse the lies of Tobacco Control where tobacco is concerned, and then scream blue murder when those same lies are deployed about vaping. Are they really so naive? Do they really think that TC have been honest up to the point when e-cigs came on the scene, and then, for some unknown reason, suddenly started lying?
The way things are going, it won't be long before I start getting distinctly anti-e-cig. And that will be nothing to do with e-cigs themselves (which I actually think are quite cool), but everything to do with the bone-headed approach of the evangelical vapers who seem to think that their conversion from smoking to vaping was an earth moving epiphany which must be visited on all those recalcitrant smokers of tobacco. A bit like the old system of "recant or die" which was favoured by most of the major religions.
Of course these films are chock-full of anti-smoking mantras and Public Health hysteria – they are made by anti-smokers! It’s a hard fact of life that whenever someone gives up smoking, then by default they become ex-smokers. And it’s one of life’s constants, like death and taxes, that ex-smokers always become anti-smokers, no matter how hard they try not to. They sort of can’t help themselves; it kind of creeps up on them without their noticing. Soooo .... vapers are ex-smokers; ex-smokers become anti-smokers; and anti-smoking film-makers make anti-smoking films, in the same way that anti-smoking writers write anti-smoking articles. That’s the way it is – not exactly rocket science. After all, no-one would be surprised if ASH had commissioned a film containing lots and lots of anti-smoking rhetoric, would they? Of course not. This film is no different – it’s just made by a group of people who, unlike ASH, don’t have a well-known name and public image. But that doesn’t mean that they are any less anti-smoking, as these films show only too well.
Maybe we should all on here stop buying into vapers’ fantasies that, just because they have swapped real smoking for something that looks a bit like it, they are any different from ex-smokers who have given up smoking using patches or gum or by going to NHS quit-smoking groups. They’re not different, and they never will be, and it’s probably about time that we smokers realised it and stopped trying to make allegiances with them, because – like all the patch-wearers or the gum-chewers that we know – they just ain’t interested.
Why do you keep knocking vaping advocates Simon? We're just normal folk, generally doing a job and doing vaping stuff on the side, we aren't media experts.
If you really did stand for vapers, wouldn't you try to help us?
Funnily enough, Liam, only this week one of your colleagues has requested some advice re media management and I will be happy to help. However a lot of this stuff isn't rocket science and just requires a bit of common sense.
Re knocking vaping advocates, I think that's too much of a generalisation because 'vaping advocates' come in all shapes and sizes. Some vaping advocates are hard core tobacco control campaigners whose long-term goal is the eradication of, first, smoking, then all nicotine consumption.
Others are a bit more liberal on the issue of nicotine but are happy nevertheless to support severe restrictions on the use of tobacco and the further denormalisation of smokers.
There are of course vaping advocates, vapers like yourself, who are not anti-smoking but your voices are generally drowned out by others who are happy to work with those who are openly "anti-tobacco" in the belief, no doubt, that this is in the long-term interests of vaping.
They may be right but it doesn't sit easily with those of us who believe in choice for all.
Re this particular post, I am genuinely staggered there has been so little active or practical support among the UK vaping community for A Billion Lives.
You don't need media expertise to organise an event or host a screening. You, today, could apply to host a screening. Ditto your colleagues and many other 'vaping advocates'.
As it happens I emailed one of your colleagues only yesterday to suggest Forest and Vapers In Power might jointly host a screening. (I myself have already registered interest in hosting a screening in Cambridge although I have told the distributors I would prefer to do it in London.)
Why am I doing this? I don't know. There's nothing in it for Forest or for smokers who don't want to quit (my reservations about the documentary are well known to readers of this blog) but it frustrates me that the UK vaping community appears to be ignoring a gift horse.
You accuse me of knocking vaping advocates but in this instance I am actually trying to offer some help and advice - get out there and use A Billion Lives to help promote your cause!!
The target of my comments are those vaping advocates who are so vocal on social media yet go missing when an opportunity like this presents itself.
I genuinely don't understand it. Is there something about this film I don't know or should be made aware of?
Anyway, you might consider this to be sniping (I know others do) but I really am trying to help. I appreciate my comments may not be to some people's taste but I'm not going to sugar coat or disguise them to appease a few over-sensitive vapers (some of whom are more than happy to throw smokers under a bus when it suits them). No-one has to read this blog (or take my sage advice). Like Twitter, readers can unfollow me at any time.
PS. I've been accused of being consistently negative about the "pro-vaping" documentary A Billion Lives. Ask the director, though, who in the UK is currently being most helpful - me, or the high profile 'vaping advocates' who seem to be completely mute on the subject.
By a short head I suspect it might be me!
Oh if only vapers knew how much we want to join them and fight alongside as one - but how can we when at every turn these "advocates" screw over smokers.
Stop attacking us or our choice, fight as one for both vaping and smoking, and vapers will see we are not against them, we are just against being used and shafted as a means to promote them over us.
As a smoker I could never support a film that claims smoking or smokers cause 1 billion avoidable deaths. It isn't true so why support something that yet again seeks to demonise smokers while sanctifying vapers.
Sorry Simon, but as the only person who speaks for us, I wonder why you support such propaganda against us.
1 out of 2 smokers die a horrible death. Good luck with your love affair with smoking :(
I am a vaper and I know e cigs 95% safer then cigarettes. I no longer have a smokers cough, I don't get out breath when I walk at a brisk pace and my taste buds have flourished :)
If you think vaping is as bad for you as smoking then let's see who dies first, losers.
Alcohol is killing/will kill more folks than Smoking ,Vaping and all the other illicit drugs put together,the fight to help or should i say,the quest to enlighten truthfully has only just begun,we are a billion miles away from "peak" anything.
No one better mention refined sugar,meat and or dairy products either and the problems that they are causing.
The more you know,find out or are told,the more it hurts.
I blame social conditioning.
Remember,no one asked to be born,there is a truth to "ignorance is bliss"
But once you know,you know.You know?
I`m tired of fighting,the only answer is compassion,forgiveness and peace.
Where is my rock? i would like to crawl under it.
To the smokerphobic vaper John, I can see that you are a bigot. Why do you think I have a smokers cough? Just because you could not control your smoking doesn't mean we are all the same kind of pathetic addict as you clearly are because you can't quit so you suck on a toy and make those around you giggle at how stupid you look.
Btw, pal, if you must repeat smokerphobic propaganda, at least get the lie right. Smokers know 1 in 2 of us don't die so the new figure pulled from the air to try and scare us more, while pandering to the stupid like you, is now 2 in 3 of us will die.
Of course, vapers will never die. Nope, not ever.
For those who have commented about vape advocates throwing smokers under the bus, I understand your point. For far too long, the potential public health issues of smoking have been allowed to morph from informative data into the realm of hyperbolic propaganda, and more recently, outright lies. The people feeding the frenzy have political or monetary goals (or both), and have little concern for the choice of any vice that a small portion of society enjoys. Myself, I switched to vaping because 30+ years of pack-a-day smoking was taking a toll on my health, and I found an very enjoyable way to improve my own situation (my choice).
With that said, I'd like to present to the following argument for these vaping related documentaries for discussion: We (vapers and smokers alike) all know just how socially ingrained the "tobacco is evil" message has become, and we all know how that has shifted to the now popular "smokers are evil" message in more recent years. With that in mind, we have a chance here to show how these same people are using the same tactics and lies to try to demonize a product (and it's users) that has the endorsement of a growing percentage of the actual medical community. If the "it's evil" message about vaping can be torn apart and the liars exposed, it very well might open the door to allow the otherwise ignorant public to the previous distortions regarding second hand smoke, and then hopefully open a dialog to review all of the other lies the tobacco control industry has propagated over the years.
Am I saying that cigarette smoking doesn't present potential health issues? No, absolutely not. It's a vice that presents risks, much like many other vices. The problems generally emerge in the abuse of a product, and not necessarily the product itself. The occasional cigar or pipe or RYO smoker (who is otherwise healthy) has a much smaller chance of risk than the pack-a-day smoker of mass produced cigarettes (like I was).
In any case, I'm uncertain on my own theory about exposing the lies, but I thought I would put it out there for consideration. I don't want to deter vaping advocates, even those that take the "born again" attitude. At the same time, I don't want to ignore smokers who feel they are being singled out (yet again) and demonized. Most of all, I really don't want this potential to expose the lies of tobacco control, and their fascist beliefs, to fail because of splintered or non-existent support from current smokers.
That's my thoughts on it, in a nutshell.
Nice to see that 'John' has popped up to verify beyond all doubt that there are, as we've been saying, vapers who are as much anti-smoking as the most rabid in Tobacco Control.
Oddly enough, John, as a smoker of more than 50 years, I don't have a 'smoker's cough' either. (Although, I have to say that vaping makes me cough like an old derelict). Neither do I get out of breath when I walk at a brisk pace. As for taste buds, well, I'm pleased for you that yours have 'flourished'. However, I love my food, and I enjoy new taste experiences, so I don't feel that that sense has been particularly dulled.
1 out of 2 smokers die a horrible death? Are you sure about that, John? Do they get involved in traffic accidents, then? Fall off cliffs? Do their parachutes not open? Do their commuter trains derail at 90 mph?
Or are you repeating verbatim what the propaganda meisters in Tobacco Control have indoctrinated you with, without actually checking the veracity of that information?
Let me let you into a little secret, John. Those nice people in Tobacco control (whisper it...) lie. Yes, really, they do! They lie and they exaggerate and they twist statistics and they misinform! Hard to believe, I know, but you see, John, when you are on a six figure salary with the remit specifically to lie about these things, well, you want to keep the boss happy. It's only natural. And what's one more lie on top of the thousands that have gone before, anyway?
I'll let you into another little secret, too, John. Tobacco Control hate you just as much as they hate me.
Sycophancy won't save you, I'm afraid. You can brown-nose them all you like, but they'll still hate you. Give it a couple of years, and you'll be paying the same punitive taxes and operating under the same pointless restrictions as smokers. That is if e-cigs are still even legal. Some countries have already made it a criminal offence if you're caught with one.
So I would suggest, John, that your smug, sanctimonious attitude is perhaps a little premature.
Not to mention misinformed.
Why are vapers posting on this site ?
To be fair, Timothy, there's no rule that says vapers can't post on this blog. I would hate this to become a single issue blog with only one viewpoint. Many of my posts are designed to stimulate discussion - even opposition. Doesn't always work but nor does censorship!
Timothy, in many cases because they were once smokers and would still be had vaping not been invented. Nearly all vapers were once smokers and many still want the indoor smoking ban overturning - if only because it now increasingly includes vaping.