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?