Message on World Vape Day - smoking is not the enemy
Saturday, May 30, 2020 at 11:07 The WHO’s World No Tobacco Day (May 31) is now preceded by World Vape Day (May 30) organised by ‘grassroots consumer organisations from around the world’.
It’s quite a good idea to piggy-back on WNTD although the prospect of more anti-smoking propaganda is a bit nauseous.
I know many vapers will say they’re not anti-smoking, and it’s true, but that’s not how initiatives like this come across.
‘To mark their win in the battle against smoking, over 40 million vapers from across the globe will come together on Saturday to celebrate World Vape Day.’
‘World Vape Day ... celebrating our win over smoking.’
Battle? Win? It’s not a war, for goodness sake, and if it was smoking is not the enemy.
The real enemy are the opponents of choice and individual responsibility - politicians, the public health brigade, and thousands of well-funded anti-smoking activists.
What makes me laugh is the way some organisations that claim to represent consumer choice think nothing of abandoning consumers who choose to smoke.
“We’re not anti-smoking,” they protest, “we’re pro tobacco harm reduction.”
Except that we rarely if ever hear from them when smokers are under fire.
Sure, one or two will be vocal on intellectual property rights (plain packaging), an issue very few smokers care about, but smoking bans, denormalisation of smokers?
Silence.
Vaping organisations complain that ‘Vaping policy and laws are being unduly influenced by flawed science, anti-harm reduction lobbying, and sensational news exaggerating the risks of vaping.’
All this is true but they appear to forget that smoking policy and laws have also been unduly influenced by flawed science (on secondhand smoke in particular), relentless anti-tobacco lobbying, and sensational news exaggerating the risks of smoking (primary and secondary).
One of the reasons for this is that many of the people now advocating on behalf of vaping were once part of a tobacco control industry that is guilty of all these things, often on the basis that the ends - the eradication of smoking - justifies the means.
And talking of eradication, here’s what the International Network of Nicotine Consumer Organisations (INNCO) tweeted today:
Conventional tobacco control responses to the smoking crisis [my emphasis] have achieved some success but they haven’t eradicated tobacco use.
Oh no!
But seriously, why would an organisation that represents consumers align itself with the eradication of a legitimate consumer product?
And not just smoking, but ‘tobacco’ in general. That should interest users of heated tobacco and snus!
Meanwhile the World Vape Day account has tweeted:
Nicotine use should not be a death sentence. Denormalize cigarettes.
Denormalise cigarettes? Be careful what you wish for. Denormalise cigarettes and the next target will be e-cigarettes.
Truth is, a lot of vaping activists are so wrapped up in their own world (‘Vaping saved my life’, ‘Smoke free for xxxx days’) they are oblivious to the fact that consumers of other nicotine products deserve to have rights and choices too.
Of course there are parts of the world where vapers are more sinned against than smokers - in countries, for example, that prohibit the sale of e-cigarettes.
But whereas I would campaign for those bans to be lifted, most vaping advocates are far more likely to side with tobacco control than raise a finger in defence of smoking.
I know there is a significant difference in risk between smoking and vaping but the ‘battle’ should be about consumer choice as much as the relative health risks.
If, as I have often argued, scientists were eventually to find a significant risk associated with long-term vaping, the vaping industry will be screwed because it has rolled the dice and put all its money on e-cigarettes as a harm reduction product (even though it’s currently not allowed to make health claims).
Free of legal niceties, however, many vaping advocates are actively talking about e-cigarettes as a reduced risk smoking cessation aid, albeit a short-term one. (Their aim, as we know, is to get people to quit nicotine altogether.)
In my view it’s a flawed strategy because, should the evidence ever change, vaping advocates will have nothing to fall back on.
In contrast genuine advocates of consumer choice (not the restricted choice many vaping advocates want you to have) will always be able to say, “Look, whatever the health risks, adults must be allowed to make an informed choice.”
That argument is consistent and will still be valid in 100 years, although whether anyone will be listening is a moot point.
As the Covid-19 pandemic has shown, it seems that an increasing number of people are happy for government to make everyday decisions for them.
That, I guess, is the inevitable legacy of a cradle-to-grave welfare state philosophy but I fear for the future if governments continue to take personal responsibility out of our hands.
Anyway, final thought on World Vape Day: nice try, could do better, especially if you want the support of confirmed smokers.
Oh, and don’t forget who your real friends are. Hint: it’s not tobacco control.
Update: World Vape Day has just tweeted:
‘Vaping is a consumer driven revolt against cigarettes.’
And, by association, smoking.
Oh dear.
Nicotine use should not be a death sentence. Denormalize cigarettes. Denormalize premature death. Denormalize tobacco-related disease. Normalize harm reduction. #WorldVapeDay #SayYesToTHR pic.twitter.com/7DaZnp8MNt
— World Vape Day (@worldvapeday) May 30, 2020
Reader Comments (3)
Vapers agree with the old time prohibitionists, that nicotine is the drug they need.
And they are welcome to it.
US ruling turns smokers into junkies
1994
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14319381-300-us-ruling-turns-smokers-into-junkies/
Vaping is a way former self hating smokers can feel righteous and superior to those who still enjoy smoking and do not hate themselves - and vaping company and shop owners looking to grab some of Big T's profit.
As a consumer who loves cigarettes, I am really sick of those people who no longer smoke telling my enemies what I think. They are the ones we consumers revolt against and find revolting.
World Vapng Day more than anything else will put me off the idea of vaping for good - as it will the billions of other tobacco consumers in the world who don't hate cigarettes.
Hands up, who didn't see it coming that vaping would become just another tool handed to tobacco control and its pathetic stooges by fools as yet another weapon to bludgeon us with.
I just wonder whether all those enthusiastic, obedient vapers have yet clocked the fact that those countries which have banned e-cigarettes may very well be doing so because they have fallen for Tobacco Control’s old mantra that “If smoking was discovered today, it would be made illegal.” What those countries are doing is exactly what Tobacco Control indicates they should have done all those years ago when tobacco use first spread around the world. They are, in effect, using the precautionary principle and banning e-cigs now, so that in 20 or 30 years’ time there won’t be a big Vaping Control lobby pointing its fingers at them and saying “If you’d banned vaping just like you should have banned smoking, we wouldn’t have all these problems .....”
So, by jumping into bed with Tobacco Control in order to try and gain a bit of short-term leeway, vapers are effectively hoisting themselves to a petard cunningly set by their own new Big Best Friends. I’m just stunned that they can’t see what’s happening. More proof, if any was ever needed, of the diminution of the ability for critical, objective analysis suffered, in my experience, by just about anyone who ever gave up smoking.