The cult of vaping and the scandalous hypocrisy of World Vape Day
Sunday, May 31, 2020 at 9:35 Yesterday afternoon, midway through World Vape Day, the WVD account tweeted:
Combustible tobacco products kill more than 8 million people every year. It’s estimated that 7 million people die from smoking tobacco themselves, and over 1 million more from second hand smoke.
Leaving aside the questionable figure of eight million deaths from smoking each year, the reference to over one million people dying from passive smoking was particularly shoddy because the figure is based on very little evidence.
Naturally the ‘estimate’ comes from the World Health Organisation, the very same body that has angered vapers and vaping advocates by insisting that e-cigarettes are harmful.
Yet here we have World Vape Day repeating without quibble some highly contentious WHO propaganda about smoking.
In contrast, when the WHO ‘lies’ about e-cigarettes it’s a disgrace, shocking, unforgivable etc etc. The hypocrisy is staggering but no more than I’ve come to expect.
Nevertheless I did my best to give World Vape Day the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately tweets like that - and others I highlighted yesterday - are unforgivable.
You can’t cherry-pick some bits of WHO propaganda just because it suits your agenda. Nor can you complain about the WHO telling ‘lies’ when you stoop to similar tactics yourself.
Vaping activists love talking about ‘the truth’. ‘Youth deserve the truth’ about vaping, said World Vape Day in another tweet yesterday.
Everyone deserves the truth, you pillocks, and that includes the truth about smoking and passive smoking.
In fact, the more you go on about second hand smoke the more you encourage businesses and governments to ban vaping indoors - not because vaping inside poses a risk to other people but because most people associate vaping with smoking and they don’t want people exhaling smoke or vapour near them in an enclosed space because an unfounded fear of passive smoking has changed what many people now consider acceptable in a public place.
Recycling unproven propaganda about ‘secondhand’ smoke does vapers no favours whatsoever. Not only are you endorsing junk science, you are feeding the Utopian myth that everyone has the ‘right’ to breathe air unpolluted by even a wisp of tobacco smoke or anything else (the vapour from an e-cigarette included).
That may not be the view of the tolerant majority but regulations and restrictions are driven by the intolerant vocal minority. Feeding their unfounded paranoia about tobacco smoke won’t help vapers, believe me.
I’m not sure why I get so annoyed. There is just something about some vaping activists that leaves me cold.
For example, the cult-like insistence that if only smokers had access to e-cigarettes or weren’t ‘misled about vaping’ all smokers would switch and millions of lives would be saved.
There are times when some vaping activists sound more like evangelical preachers exhorting smokers to abandon their unhealthy ways and live a new life free from the dangers of tobacco.
Behind this lies the apparent belief that smokers smoke only for the nicotine and if smokers can only be persuaded to switch to a safer delivery device one billion lives will be saved and they will be so much happier.
In some cases, perhaps, but this belief (and I use the word advisedly) ignores the fact that many smokers enjoy smoking - the ritual, the taste, the inhalation and exhalation of smoke, the warmth of the burning tobacco etc.
The reality that many born again ex-smoking vapers can’t accept is that many smokers - even confirmed smokers - have tried vaping and didn’t enjoy it. Why is that so hard to understand?
This issue was addressed by the Centre for Substance Use Research in a report funded by Forest (The Pleasure of Smoking: The views of confirmed smokers) and many vaping activists still don’t get it.
Unfortunately events like World Vape Day make no concession to this with the result that vapers can end up sounding like members of a cult when the vast majority are not.
Almost all vapers are ex-smokers who for a variety of reasons have stopped smoking, or are trying to cut down or quit, and they find e-cigarettes an acceptable (or more than acceptable) alternative to cigarettes.
Those people get on with their lives and leave others to get on with theirs. However there is a small number who feel the need to urge other smokers to follow their example, like the former fatties who decide that everyone should follow their example and go on a strict diet, or alcoholics who urge people to quit drinking.
In the same way that alcoholics will sometimes tell people how many years they’ve been dry, vaping activists love telling the world how many days it is since they quit smoking.
The irony of course is that unlike an alcoholic who has quit alcohol, vapers haven’t quit their nicotine habit, they’ve merely switched from one device to another.
Indeed, by focusing on their craving for nicotine, albeit in a safer delivery system, some vapers give the impression of being far more addicted to nicotine than many smokers, social smokers especially.
True, addiction to nicotine without the smoke does not appear to be significantly harmful, but the implication that vapers are essentially nicotine junkies who would die of smoking if there wasn’t an alternative to cigarettes is never going to placate those who believe any sort of addiction is a ‘bad’ thing.
That’s why portraying yourself as a victim who has a ‘right’ to tobacco harm reduction products that may be significantly safer but still feed your self-confessed addiction is not a great strategy because the goal of public health - even the more liberal wing - is to wean you off your addiction to nicotine in any form, not pander to it long-term.
One of the reasons I enjoyed my visit to Vape Fest a few years ago is because many of the people I met and saw appeared to be taking huge pleasure in vaping - the choice of flavours on sale at the many outdoor stands was extraordinary - and there was a real sense of camaraderie and community.
Sitting outside in the sun with lots of bearded men wearing Black Sabbath t-shirts and exhaling strawberry or melon flavoured vapes was a surreal but joyful experience. (I’m not making this up.)
It was obvious they had no interest in the politics of vaping which seems to involve taking sides and driving a wedge between smoking and vaping.
Unfortunately, by politicising vaping I’m not sure vaping activists have done their cause a great service.
It’s important to engage with decision-makers - in this case politicians and public health - and there has to be some sort of organised lobbying, but I’m not convinced that megaphone diplomacy like World Vape Day will do much to win over public or political opinion.
As for the underlying message that e-cigarettes can end the smoking ‘crisis’ (another ill-judged word used by World Vape Day yesterday), that certainly won’t win favour with many confirmed smokers who enjoy smoking and won’t be persuaded to switch by a movement that at times seems perilously close to a religious cult.
PS. One good thing about World Vape Day - it wasn’t hijacked by lots of vape businesses flogging products to consumers with special offers.
I’ve seen that happen with other pro-vaping initiatives and it seriously compromises both the nature and the spirit of those events.
To its credit, then, WVD was consumer rather than commercially driven. It needs to drop the anti-smoking rhetoric though if it wants to get more smokers on board.
Update: Frank Davis has some thoughts on the appeal of cigarettes v. e-cigarettes here. Always worth reading.
Update: A leading vaping campaigner tweets:
Many former smokers are celebrating their smoke-free lives on #WorldVapeDay and #WNTD2020.*
Celebrating? I’m not being funny, but is that normal?
Reader Comments (4)
Why wouldn't you get angry about the unproven abusive claim that smokers kill others? The invention of passive smoking was the launch of the hate campaign against smokers in a bid to turn their communities against them and strip them of all rights afforded to all other minorities.
I cannot count the times non smokers have told me they don't mind a wisp of smoke but they detest the "stinky" cloud of a sickly smelling vape noxious soup that engulfs them in the street as they go about their business.
I've also heard demands for vapng to be taxed - good idea I say because as a smoker and one of the highest paying tax consumers in the UK, tell me why I should fund the future harm that will come from the cult of vaping.
The only people who like vaping are a relative handful in comparison to smokers and non smokers and yet they are so cocooned in their bubble, they fail to see it.
The reason World Vaping Day was not followed by any vape business is that there is no money to be made. You need real, not imaginary consumers in order to attract business.
That elitist sect that were brainwashed to believe you could oppose to the WHO-FCTC by mimicking its ways, does not represent sufficient real ones for it to become commercially attractive.
"Vaping is a consumer driven revolt against cigarettes." In the olden days, vaping was a indeed a grass root movement, but against tobacco control. And as such it did attract a lot of supporters. Now it just has become tobacco control 2.0 and attracts no one in particular.
"Nothing about us without us" but INNCO and the lot have alienated themselves completely from their supporters; it is back to the good old “everything about you without you” smokers and vapers alike.
That just makes 2 days in a row both are officially ignored. On WVD, I light up a nice cigar, and get on with vaping for the 364 other days of the year I am not told by those who claim to represent me I should be ashamed for who I am.
Happy "Free Nicotine Use For All" Day starting the 1st of June, till May 29th.
“ ... persuaded to switch to a safer delivery device ...” (my emphasis)
I think that that’s the nub of their mistake right there, Simon, and it may well be one reason why the vape market has plateaued off in the last few years. Just because most vapers have switched to e-cigarettes primarily because their main concerns about smoking were health-related then, like so many converts to other “religions” down the ages, they therefore think that every smoker must be equally concerned about the health-related aspects of smoking, too. It’s a strange quirk amongst anyone “converted” to anything, that they seem to fall headlong into steadfastly believing that everyone thinks and feels just like they do and that everyone’s reasons for being “saved” will be the same as theirs was.
But vapers, blinded by their new-found “solution” to their own worries, are wrong – it’s as simple as that. Anyone who has smoked at all over the last 40 years or so cannot help but be aware of all the dire predictions made about smoking, but most of those who have continued to smoke despite the health warnings, have decided that they either don’t believe them, or that they enjoy smoking sufficiently that they’ll take the risk. But in either case, the health aspects of smoking aren’t enough of a concern for them to think about switching to a “safer” product. That’s like suggesting to a dyed-in-the-wool speed freak that they should buy a slower car or motorbike, because it would be “safer.” Speed-freaks know only too well that they run the risk of getting fined or losing their licence, and they know, too, that the run the risk of meeting a grisly and messy end, but they, like smokers, have decided that the thrill they get from gunning it at 120mph down a motorway is worth the risk.
What vapers and vape manufacturers don’t (or maybe won’t) realise is that many smokers may very well try another “delivery” system – whether e-cigarettes or something else yet-to-be-invented - in somewhat greater numbers if the alternative, rather than being touted as a “safer delivery device” to people who aren’t interested in safety, was touted instead as a “more enjoyable” one – because even if you ascribe to the “it’s only addiction” theory (which I personally don’t), it’s worth remembering that people don’t actually get addicted to “stuff” – they get addicted to the good feelings that the “stuff” gives them. If it was just the “stuff” itself, anyone who’d ever tried nicotine patches now wouldn’t be able to get through a day without those, even if they now no longer smoked cigarettes!
And the hard fact is, vaping just isn’t as enjoyable as smoking is. In the early days (when vape advertising was still permitted), they did try and hint that vaping was just as enjoyable as smoking, but to be honest it was a feeble effort from the outset because, to be quite candid, it isn’t as good and certainly all of the smokers that I know who tried vaping in the belief that it would be just as good after a very short time sussed out that "smoking reimagined" was just advertising hype, and returned to smoking real cigarettes. I now don’t know of a single vaper who honestly claims that they enjoy vaping as much as they enjoyed smoking – most see their vapes as the easiest way of “getting by without cigarettes” rather than as an activity all of its own to be enjoyed just for itself. So “health” is all that vape manufacturers now have left to tout their gadgets on.
So, smokers smoke because they enjoy it, and to date no vape manufacturer, or even any HNB manufacturer (which I understand most “purist” vapers strongly object to – feeling a bit threatened, perhaps?), have yet come up with a device which offers the same, or greater, enjoyment as the so-far unrivalled pleasures of the humble cigarette. And all the time the born-again-type vapers and vape-makers continue with the one-eyed delusion that everyone is as paranoid as they are about health, they’re unlikely to put in the necessary research or development to do so.
The use of fire is something that western governments seem to have recently been turned against and we are the last ones who routinely carry a means to make fire.
If they get their way, soon it will be a lost art.