The rise of vaping and a potential threat
Wednesday, May 17, 2017 at 12:01 I'll be on radio tomorrow talking about the rise of vaping.
ASH (the vapers' friend) published the results of its annual survey into the use of e-cigarettes and vapourisers last week.
This year's headline stat was the fact that, for the first time, more than half of UK vapers 'have given up smoking' (BBC News).
According to ASH:
In 2012, there were 700,000 vapers in the UK, now there are 2.9 million.
Some 1.5 million vapers are ex-smokers, compared with 1.3 million who still use tobacco.
The rest are mostly dual users. Only a tiny handful of vapers have never smoked.
More pertinent perhaps is the fact that the rate at which smokers are switching to e-cigarettes has peaked.
Some people, including ASH, seem to think a major reason more smokers aren't switching concerns the perception of harm:
A growing proportion of the public and smokers fail to recognise that e-cigarettes are less harmful than smoking.
That may be a factor. Personally I think there are other reasons why (to quote ASH CEO Deborah Arnott) "The rapid growth in e-cigarette use has come to an end."
First and foremost, the rate at which smokers were taking up vaping was unsustainable.
E-cigarettes appeal largely to those who want to quit smoking or those who want an alternative nicotine device in places where smoking is prohibited (dual users).
Sooner or later that market was going to be saturated because the number of smokers who want to stop isn't as great as tobacco control would have us believe.
In fact a significant number of confirmed smokers (95% according to one recent study) enjoy smoking and don't want to quit.
A small majority accept they are addicted but it doesn't seem to bother them because the enjoyment outweighs other considerations, including the health risks.
Although the majority of vapers are now ex-smokers, a substantial number are still dual users who vape only when they're not permitted to smoke.
As vaping is increasingly banned where smoking is prohibited there is less incentive to switch (which is why the likes of the Royal Society for Public Health want smoking banned outside pubs as well).
Several generations on, e-cigarettes are not yet capable of giving the majority of smokers the experience they crave. For a variety of reasons many don't enjoy vaping.
Some of this information can be found in The Pleasure of Smoking: The Views of Confirmed Smokers which is based on a study of 600 smokers by the Centre for Substance Use Research.
But I'd like to suggest two more reasons why the rate of smokers switching to e-cigarettes is not what it was.
One, the more anti-smoking groups like ASH try to 'own' e-cigarettes as a smoking cessation tool the less attractive they will appear to the many smokers who loathe and detest the quit smoking industry.
And who can blame them? Tobacco control's latest proposals - a ban on smoking in social housing and a ban on smoking outside pubs - tells you everything you need to know about these despicable, puritanical bullies.
Two, if you read ASH's Smokefree GB survey in full (the name alone indicates the direction of travel) you'll stumble upon something quite interesting.
When asked what would prompt them to try an e-cigarette again, only 5% of smokers said, 'If I were recommended a specific product by someone I trusted.'
An even smaller number (1%) said, 'If I knew other people who used them.'
So when harm reduction campaigners talk about enlisting an "army" of vapers to go out into the world to spread the message, like a latter day temperance movement, I'm pretty certain they're barking up the wrong tree.
In fact I suspect that far from welcoming their evangelical advances millions of smokers - even those who want to quit - will react the same way most people respond when door-to-door preachers come knocking, with a polite but firm, "Thanks, but no thanks."
The same is true, I believe, of stop smoking services that try to 'educate' smokers to switch.
There's a reason stop smoking services are haemorrhaging clients - the number of smokers may be in long-term decline but so is the number of smokers who wish to quit.
The two are inextricably linked and there must come a point - very soon - when local government has to pull the plug on a service that few smokers want or need.
After all, if smokers do want to quit the overwhelming majority has always done so without state intervention - most recently by voluntarily switching to e-cigarettes, for example.
Which brings me to another point. Many advocates of vaping are so deeply engaged with the anti-smoking industry it's difficult to tell them apart sometimes.
Far from resisting tobacco control and excessive regulations some are effectively collaborators, happy to throw smokers under the bus if it helps their cause.
They deny it but their silence on anti-smoking legislation, including smoking bans, plain packaging and so on, speaks volumes.
It's indisputable too that many supporters of vaping are tobacco control activists whose anti-smoking agenda is well known and over-rides, I think, the harm reduction argument.
In terms of tobacco they are prohibitionists, pure and simple (albeit creeping prohibition). So can you blame smokers if they view their promotion of e-cigarettes with suspicion and mistrust?
Having been stigmatised and denormalised for years by tobacco control, why would you take advice from people who support more and more regulations to achieve their Utopian goal of a 'smokefree' (sic) world?
And why would you listen to those who, by virtue of their silence, are effectively collaborating in your denormalisation?
The simple fact is, the rapid growth of vaping, like the rapid decline in smoking which reached its peak between the mid Seventies and early Nineties, took place when there were relatively few regulations.
Education and increasing understanding of the potential health risks of smoking led to fewer people doing it.
It didn't need a tsunami of repressive laws or an army of anti-smoking evangelists to convince millions to stop. They made an informed decision to quit (or not start) all by themselves, just as it should be.
Smokers must also be allowed to decide for themselves whether to cut down or quit by switching to e-cigarettes. Millions have already done so; some are now ex-smoking vapers and others have decided to continue smoking. If that's their choice good luck them.
What they don't need is unsolicited lectures, well-meaning or otherwise, on the pleasures of e-cigarettes. If smokers genuinely want to quit and are curious about vaping they'll make that discovery for themselves.
More counter-productive still would be outdoor smoking bans designed to force smokers to switch. Even the most cursory understanding of human nature can predict how that will end.
In short, one of the biggest threats to vaping, beyond excessive regulation, is an unholy alliance between tobacco control and advocates of vaping that enlists vapers as foot soldiers and deploys e-cigarettes as weapons in the war on tobacco.
Nothing, in my view, will damage vaping more than the perception that, far from being a recreational product in its own right, e-cigarettes are merely a quit smoking tool, 'owned' and regulated by the public health industry as part of a long-term plan to outlaw smoking and, ultimately, any use of nicotine.
Reader Comments (20)
Is there a chance that you could decline an invitation to talk about vaping and instead point researchers to the NNA instead?
I agree. Vaping does not belong to tobacco control, and all attempts by scum like ASH to co-opt it should be strongly resisted.
David, why should Forest decline invitations to talk about vaping? Many of our supporters vape so we have every reason to talk about the issue.
In general Forest supports freedom of choice and that covers smoking, vaping and any other nicotine-delivery product. Are you suggesting we should decline to be interviewed about snus and heated tobacco as well?
One of these two things is going to happen:
1) E-cigs will become medicalized smoking cessation devices.
2) The tobacco control industry as we know it will cease to exist.
Simon, I'm sure many of your supporters vape but what has 'freedom to smoke' got to do with vaping? It's time you stopped pretending to be a spokesman for vaping and let the NNA get on with it. I'm sure it will advance vaping's progress if its perceived spokesperson was not funded by the tobacco industry. ps I know it is not in your interest to let others speak on this topic but perhaps you could do the decent thing.
David, we must agree to disagree. Fyi, we have also submitted responses to government consultations arguing against unnecessary restrictions on vaping and we will continue to do so.
Btw, I have never claimed to be a spokesman for vaping but, as I have explained, Forest does have an interest in this issue and if we are asked to comment on vaping we will.
The idea that only one organisation is entitled talk about vaping would be funny if it weren't so preposterous - and arrogant.
Simon, I have been a long time supporter of Forest. As a smoker it was my last place of sanity in troubled times. I thank you for that.
In media terms you are a great gotoperson but you are not the best vaping spokesperson and you should finally admit that and recommend to researchers who contact you that there are better people to speak to than yourself.
I just feel that your connection with the cigarette industry muddies the waters and you should gracefully step aside.
Excellent post, Simon, and I fully agree with your response to David Allen. He is essentially trying to say that there is no connection between smoking and vaping, which is patently specious.
Vapers are smokers who have chosen to use a different device; but they are still smokers, whether they like to admit it or not. The fact that many of them have become foot-soldiers (or to be less generous, useful idiots) for Tobacco Control merely illustrates how deeply they have been indoctrinated by TC propaganda. Which is probably why they turned to vaping in the first place.
They peddle their "vaping is 98% safer" claim, along with the "billion lives" meme with absolutely no evidence at all, yet it has become an article of faith to the vaping community. Even Carl Phillips, who is an advocate of THR (albeit a brutally honest one) dismisses the 98% claim out of hand as being without foundation.
They are fools, and they will inevitably be torn out of their comfort zone when the baleful eye of TC turns on them. Which it surely will. But by then, of course, it will be too late.
Hindsight is 20/20 vision, as they say.
Spot on Simon. I've smoked almost all of my life and I have been around smokers all of my life. Those that wanted to quit did so easily. Those that didn't want to quit but felt they must struggled to stop. Most quitters I have spoken to lately haven't used ecigs or nrt and a couple of those were lifelong smokers who just stopped smoking without aid because they didn't want to smoke anymore.
I also know smokers who thought about trying ecigs but have been turned off by the sanctimonious promotion of ecigs and the zealotry of some vapers.
Without the politics and smoking bans, I think vaping would have evolved naturally as a 21st century technological advance on smoking. Sadly there is so much pushing and shoving and righteousness about vaping that some of us find it a huge turn off and wouldn't want to try it even if it got 100 times better than it is now - and it is pretty dire.
Vaping inside wouldn't turn me to vaping. It would just make me even more angry at those people who have turned me into a 3rd class citizen. It would also lead to dissent and smokers hiding their smoking behind the huge clouds of the vapers. ASH should be careful of what they wish for.
The vaping industry and tobacco control both promote the addiction myth and smokers as helpless addicts who need saving. That's what they have in common and both are happy to beat us up to promote their own views and preferences.
In my opinion, groups like the NNA are a huge part of the problem. They speak with fork tongue.
As a media spokesman, I think you are fair to both smokers and vapers and honest about both. I think that is why some vapers don't like to hear you talking about vaping. You are not prepared to throw one or the other under a bus but promote the right of both to enjoy their product of choice.
Keep up the good work and thanks again for what you do.
Well said, vapers' organizations can be their own worst enemy - using BS like 95% safer and such. It reminds me of the 'tar wars' of the 1960-80s. Ads were along the lines of: this brand or that has 'only' 1mg or so tar. Where are all these '95% lower tar' brands now? Swiped with all the rest of tobacco products under the mantra 'there's no safe level of passive smoke'.
Vapers can't go very far if their strategy to advance is to kick down cigarettes and tobacco. Let's not forget tobacco has been smoked in one form or another for over 5000 years. And in the last 500 years, there's been a pretty bunch of psychopathic anti-smokers who used various pretexts to hate tobacco. The health one which has been in use for the past 60 years has the appearance of science---but scratch the surface and you're left with nothing beside statistical mumbo jambo.
With "friends" like ASH, who needs foes?
When I first heard about ecigs they were presented as another cessation gimmick like the gummy & patchy crap. That was enough incentive for me to ignore them. I liked smoking. And I hate obnoxious healthists.
When some of them started to fling their bovine excrement against vaping instead of promoting it like all the other sour NRT grapes from their pharmafia buddies, THAT made me curious. That's why I tried vaping.
I found that vaping - albeit different - can provide me with more pleasure than smoking. That's the only reason I switched.
I certainly can understand smokers refusing to really try vaping because of the association with the bloody "cessation" propaganda. If these ASHistic buggers had promoted vaping like NRTs, I might still ignore it, too.
(More details: My Story)
David, your long-time support of Forest is greatly appreciated, although I guess it's lapsed because I can't find any record of you on our database of supporters and your name is unfamiliar to me.
With the greatest of respect I shall therefore take your advice about standing aside with the proverbial pinch of salt but many thanks for contributing to this thread.
Pretty much agree with what you say here, Simon. However, I don't think you fully grasp the situation, vapers do promote vaping as a tool which could reduce the prevalence of smoking but not as an anti-smoking tactic, rather as a pro-vaping tactic. We are not attacking smokers, we are attacking anti-smoking groups who don't see any difference between vaping and smoking.
Unfortunately, smokers see this as an attack on them and anti-smoking crusaders see it as proof they are right. Is there a solution that will please everyone? Probably not, but if you think having vaping included in smoking bans would be an improvement, work away. We vapers won't lie down meekly, we are not smokers and while we think everyone is entitled to their choice, we won't sacrifice our choice for the sake of a lost battle.
Tom, I've never argued that vaping should be included with smoking bans. In fact I've given many interviews in which I've argued for vaping to be allowed in the workplace and I've consistently opposed vaping bans.
What bothers me is that while Forest opposes vaping bans, spokesmen for vaping organisations (with the honourable exception of Vapers In Power) remain resolutely silent on the issue of smoking bans and other anti-smoking initiatives.
You might argue that smoking bans have nothing to do with vaping but it does when when outdoor smoking bans are being proposed with a view to forcing smokers to switch to e-cigarettes.
Also, I'm a great believer in the slippery slope argument. What happens to smokers today will inevitably happen to vapers some years hence. The idea that vapers can somehow divorce themselves from smokers is, in my view, dangerously naive.
Your argument that "we are not smokers" highlights the problem. I'm not a smoker either but that doesn't stop me fighting for the bigger principle of choice. Smokers and vapers should be united in defence of choice but they're not (whatever you might think) because too many vapers have decided, out of self interest, to keep quiet on matters to do with smoking.
That's what I mean by "throwing smokers under the bus". I've seen and experienced it many times and it's one of the reasons I accept invitations to talk about vaping.
I'll defend vaping all day long but I'll never do it in such a way that sacrifices smokers on the altar of public health.
E-cigarettes are a smoking-cessation gadget. That’s why ASH and their cronies like them so much (for the moment). Everyone recognises this, apart from vapers who want to maintain the illusion that they’ve made some kind of “choice” in the matter. It’s why so many of them “turn anti” in the same way as so many ex-smokers of any other variety seem unable to stop themselves from doing. Non dual-user vapers are just ex-smokers who have given themselves another name so that they can try and pretend that they haven’t really joined the ranks of the people they used to claim to be standing up against. A pride-protection thing, if you will. It’s a bit like people who’ve given up by using nicotine gum calling themselves “gummers” or “chompers” and pretending that they just happened to try a bit of nicotine gum and really enjoyed it. Nothing to do with pressure from the health lobby, anti-smoking adverts, the other half, the kids, etc etc. Oh, no, siree! Yeah, right.
C’mon, honestly now, how many vapers does anyone actually believe stumbled upon vaping purely by accident (natch) and from their first puff, thought: “Wow! This is as good as smoking! I didn’t expect that! I think I’ll give up, even though I never, ever intended to do so!” Of course they didn’t. They thought: “I really should give up smoking, but I’ve never found gums or patches work in the slightest, so maybe I’ll give these new gizmos a go.” Maybe there's one or two, like Norbert who discovered vaping in this way, but they are few and very far between. The self-congratulatory crowing of vapers bragging about how they haven’t had a cigarette in xxx weeks/months/years since starting vaping is exactly the kind of comment we used to hear from people who’d given up using hypnotherapy, or pharmaceutical products, or sheer willpower in the days before vaping was ever invented. An ex-smoker is an ex-smoker, with all that goes along with it, whatever they want to call themselves.
Public vaping, whether vapers like it or not, is already inextricably linked to giving up smoking. Because when you see a vaper walking down the street, or sitting outside a pub or a club or a café, sucking away on their little steamy-stick, who doesn’t, in an instant, know with almost 100% certainty that that person, however they refer to themselves, is simply someone who has finally capitulated to all the pressure and has given up (or is trying to give up) smoking?
Given the vast amount of resources and power of the tobacco control bureaucracies, I understand (though disapprove) the reasons why many vaping advocates have felt (and still feel) that jumping into the tobacco control wagon was the only possible strategy to advocate for vaping. Still, this pragmatism must be judged by its practical results. Has it worked to promote vaping effectively? No, it hasn't. Has it served the vaping community? No, it hasn't.
Getting in bed with TC as a strategy was motivated by the fact that some regulators (including ASH) have reluctantly embraced vaping as part of the "cessation kit". Yes, this put the latter as "reformers" in a collision course with the more dogmatic controllers of the Glantz-Chapman variety. Yes, this rift was a tactical victory for vaping. However, this tactical victory did not translate into the expected strategic victory. The reason is (as you say) that a lot of reformist controllers (there are honorable exceptions) have not truly embraced THR. They only support vaping as a more efficient (and more gradual) method towards nicotine abstinence, a goal they share with the dogmatists. Their world is authoritarian regulation, free choice and personal autonomy is not part of their mental framework.
Many of the reformist controllers who are (allegedly) allies of vaping remain silent (and by thus, contribute) to the massive campaign of disinformation on e-cigs produced by the dogmatists. A lot of these alleged allies still support banning vaping indoors and wherever smoking is banned. Therefore, it is not surprising that less and less smokers are willing to give it a try (why changing habits without practical benefits?). However, this unfortunate state of affairs has occurred because the majority of those supporting vaping within the public health apparatus have (most likely, willingly) allowed it to happen. Why? Since they cannot presently regulate and control e-cigs as medicinal smoking cessation products, they prefer to destroy (or allow for the destruction) of its recreational usage altogether until its medicalisation is possible in the future. They are well funded and politically powerful, they feel they can wait.
Vaping advocates should at this point seriously re-examine this strategy. So far it has not produced any significant gain for the vaping community. Likely it will not produce it. If it goes on vaping advocates may end up becoming employees of the vaping department of tobacco control. The horrible thought of future vapers ending up buying their e-cigs and e-liquids in the local pharmacy, with a medical prescription, should really shock them (it shocks me as a dual user vaper).
"We vapers won't lie down meekly, we are not smokers and while we think everyone is entitled to their choice, we won't sacrifice our choice for the sake of a lost battle."
But that is exactly what you did while we smokers battled on alone. You are the former self hating and apologetic smokers who shafted us by rolling over time and again - and then you refused to fight alongside us believing that you only had to say "ecigs save lives" and Tobacco Control would leave you alone and bully just us.
Vaping is giving in. Without smoking bans, vaping may never have been invented. Ecigs are the bastard child of tobacco control who bullied you to change and Tobacco companies who made you "addicted" in the first place and I feel sure that most vapers are addicted.
What if vaping hadn't come about? What then? Would you be the exsmokers moaning about smokers all the time? There really isn't much difference. You think you have more chance to become socially acceptable by becoming vapers. If vaping is so great, why do some of you moan because of the "alluring" scent of tobacco smoke that vaping advocates also use against us to try and push us out further.
We are still fighting. We have been fighting officially since Forest was founded by a smoker in 1979. We have fought longer and harder than you think or even want to know. That doesn't suit your "smokers hate themselves and what they do and are desperate to quit" narrative. .
You wonder why we get annoyed with vapers. This is why. Too many employ casual smokerphobia and will pump out any old healthist scaremongering crap in the smoker's name to win favour for vaping from the thugs in Govt and tobacco control.
Stop lying about us to further your own cause ... and stop taking OUR voice. We are still here. We haven't rolled over, and some of us have been fighting longer than some vapers have been breathing.
That fight will continue. Without you if that is how it is going to be but remember, we know this fight, we have literally decades of experience of it. You lot are just finding out.
Many advocates of vaping are so deeply engaged with the anti-smoking industry it's difficult to tell them apart sometimes.
Far from resisting tobacco control and excessive regulations some are effectively collaborators, happy to throw smokers under the bus if it helps their cause.
Yep. There are a few of them on this comments board. They don't get it at all. As they finish claiming that they are not antismoking, they then spout some condescending antismoking/antismoker drivel.
The Godber Blueprint is a prohibition crusade. Rather than an outright ban on the sale of tobacco, the plan has been to impose a variety of [baseless] punitive measures (e.g., smoking bans, taxes, employment bans, "denormaliztion") to coerce smokers into quitting. Through "salami slices" the intent is to ban smoking indoors and out, i.e., most of the places where people typically smoke. So while there is still the capacity to purchase [highly inflated] tobacco products, there are almost no places to use them legally.
Through a variety of punitive measures, the prohibition goal is to progressively reduce (through force) the number of smokers, hopefully to zero. Any intent/plan that involves the "reduction of smoking/smokers" is prohibitionist. Vaping has shown up a number of factions within the prohibitionist ranks. There are the abstinence-only prohibitionists. For these, people must not smoke. Any use of methods to quit smoking, e.g., NRT, must be only temporary. A much, much smaller faction is "Tobacco Harm Reduction" (THR). For this faction, permanent, less harmful methods, e.g., e-cigs, for quitting smoking are acceptable. Vocal vapers have attempted to endear themselves to the THR faction. But make no mistake. Both abstinence-only and THR are prohibitionist. They both seek the eradication of, particularly, smoking.
Enough of prohibitionists, whatever their slant. They should be outed for the deranged fanatics with a "god complex" that they are.
#Without the politics and smoking bans, I think vaping would have evolved naturally as a 21st century technological advance on smoking. # - Pat Nurse
That's my belief too...vaping is an upgraded version of those 1mg tar cigarettes that appeared in the 80s and 90s (brands such as Carlton or Now).
I don't really see a reason for the smugness and superiority complex of some vapers. All they have to show is that they've swallowed TC propaganda, that nicotine and 'tar' are the boogie man. The fact they are harassed by TC should be a wake up call and an incentive to question all that the 'settled' anti-smoking 'science' has taught them.
A few starting points: nicotine is not more addictive than caffeine is. Tobacco smoke not only hasn't harmed lab animals (in quantities much higher than normal human smoking), but the smoking animals lived longer, thinner, and with less cancer than controls. Correlations on non randomized samples (smokers, non-smokers, ex-smokers are self selected groups of people) doesn't mean causation. Using this flawed logic, one would conclude that antidepressants cause depression or blood pressure meds cause hypertension because people on those medications have more of those conditions than people who are not on them.
Furthermore, tobacco smoke has a lot of beneficial effects, some of which are quite known and admitted even mainstream (usually attributed solely to nicotine).
Do your own research, don't rely on 3 letter bureaucracies and PR people like Arnott from ASH.
Interesting comments. Very. Without jumping into the heart of them, two clarifications and an observation for consideration:
1. There is widespread misunderstanding of what harm reduction means. I have admitted that I am sure I contributed to that. The first pillar of harm reduction is reducing caused harm (i.e., harm that would not exist merely due to the behavior, but that is added to it via policy etc. -- e.g., criminal punishment). No one who favors harming smokers (e.g., via punitive taxes) actually supports THR. There is room to be pro-THR and, say, support usage place bans *in spite of* the fact that they harm smokers, for any of several reasons, but supporting them *because* they harm smokers is anti-THR. Anyone who supports prohibition, either outright or incremental moves toward it, is anti-THR.
2. Calling either of the products in question "addictive" is not terribly meaningful. The only solid definition of the word involves engaging in a behavior to the point that it seriously interferes with functioning in life. Obviously no normal tobacco product has those characteristics. Whatever it is that someone means by that term in the present context, it needs to be clarified for claims to have any meaning.
C. Always a useful thought experiment is to ask what someone seems to think (based on actions, or rhetoric if those are absent) about smokeless tobacco. It was demonstrated to be a low-risk product more than a decade (and arguably longer) before the current version of e-cigarettes appeared on the market. So ask what these supposed friends of tolerance, or even just risk reduction, have done or said in that area. And by "these" I obviously mean the (for the moment) pro-vaping tobacco controllers, but also the other ecig cheerleaders.