Vaping, victimhood and the right to live
Wednesday, November 10, 2021 at 13:13 Further to yesterday's post, the new Prague-based Smokers Rights Movement has responded to a tweet querying the use of 'Smokers Rights' in the name of a pro-vaping campaign.
Forest’s tweet read:
Traditional definition of smokers’ rights:
‘The right to choose to smoke a legal product without undue harassment or discrimination.’
Now redefined as ‘The right to quit smoking’.
In reply SRM gave their definition of smokers’ rights as:
The right to maintain health and life that was oppressed by governments via artificially limiting smokers choices.
To be clear, Forest supports the right to vape and I accept that in many countries that right has indeed been suppressed or severely limited.
What I don’t get is that no-one is forced to smoke - potentially putting their health at risk - but millions of people have been forced to quit as a result of prohibition, punitive taxation or general harassment.
The bigger picture, which many pro-vaping campaigners seem to ignore, is that millions of adults continue to smoke, despite the health risks, because they enjoy it more than vaping.
All too often though vaping advocates like to portray smokers not as independent-minded consumers but as victims of their habit and without e-cigarettes and other reduced risk products there is no alternative other than to continue smoking - ergo they will die.
Let’s be clear. If you are a smoker and are so worried about the effects of smoking on your health there is nothing to stop you quitting today.
I accept that many smokers find it hard to quit but I have never accepted the argument that smoking is a habit that is almost impossible to break without 'help' or that nicotine is more addictive than heroin.
Millions of smokers have given up, many overnight. For others it takes multiple attempts but very often the deciding factors are willpower and incentive - a health scare, for example, or a new baby/grandchild in the house.
Some people will say I don’t know what I’m talking about because I'm not a smoker but through friends and family I know that if the incentive to quit is big enough most people can and do stop smoking.
According to SRM however:
It's time to wake up and remember that smokers are humans and smokers are dying. And with existing government regulations on tobacco, smokers have almost no choice.
I absolutely agree that smokers who want to quit should have the option to switch to reduced risk products but to say that 'smokers are dying ... [and] have almost no choice' is another example of victimhood.
Of course smokers have a choice. They can choose to stop smoking!
It may be harder for some without alternative nicotine products but the reality is that most smokers who quit do so without using any smoking cessation aid.
Meanwhile, in bold capitals on the home page, the SRM website screams 'THE RIGHT TO LIVE' as if smokers are being condemned to die through no fault of their own.
I'm sorry but smoking is a choice and playing the victim card makes very little sense to me, not least because it plays to the stereotype that smokers are addicts who can't cope without a regular hit of nicotine.
That said I can see a future for 'The Right To Live' slogan, if adopted by Forest. After all, adults have a right to live as they choose (within reason) and that includes the right to take risks or, as some might put it, to live.
As the Mail Online wrote last year (Don't tell me not to smoke! Artist David Hockney, 82, sees his 60-year habit as an 'act of defiance'):
A desire to live life with purpose and pleasure has always been fundamental to him and his art - as such it's no surprise that David won't be curtailing his smoking habit.
The right to live – living on your own terms and seeking pleasure even at the expense of one's health – is, for me, a fundamental human right.
Not as fundamental as having food, water and a roof over our heads, but important nonetheless, even if most of us choose a more conservative, risk-averse path through life.
Either way it has to be our choice and the right to smoke is just as important as the right not to smoke.
See also: Britain needs a cigarette (Unherd, June 2021).
Reader Comments (5)
As a smoker who enjoys smoking, who has smoked a lifetime and who wil never quit, I resent this group campaigning to force me to switch, which is really what they want, and claim some right to my life and my body.
Fight for vaping of course, but do not use the name of smokers falsely in vain to get it.
We already have a Smoker's Rights Movement on Twitter and we have Forest which fights for the rights of both smokers and vapers to use legitimate products of choice without harassment or discrimination. This bunch of vaping wolves wearing sheep's clothing are smokerphobic zealots who describe themselves as vapers and go to almighty efforts to shout from the rooftops how different they are from smokers and vaping is from smoking - except for when pretending to be smokers can win them more privileges for vaping.
They should butt out of our cause because it is not theirs.
This is just a cheap shit publicity stunt using negativity about smokers to get what they want for vapers. How much lower into the gutter can they sink 🤮🤮🤮
Oh and btw, I totally agree with you. I was told by a nurse 20 years ago that I was a "victim" because I began smoking in childhood. I pointed that I wasn't a victim because like a billion other people who quit smoking, it was my choice and I could have quit at any time in the years before then, and of course since.
Vapers like this lot are precisely the reason I will never switch.
Civil rights and human rights are quite different. There is indeed a human right to health but none to pleasure (maybe there should be). The human right to health states everyone should have access to the best medical treatment possible. This is what vaping advocates refer to in their “right to live healthy” narrative. This view of vaping being such a medical treatment implies that e-cigarettes should be made available and accessible everywhere and not be banned.
However, this human right to health also states specifically that everyone has the right to refuse a medical treatment offered to him. In this line of thought, the right not to quit smoking (as the right not to be vaccinated or not to get chemotherapy) is a human right as well. You cannot have it both ways, something vaping advocates seem to forget conveniently.
However, the choice between vaping, smoking or none is about as much a human right as the choice to use butter, olive oil or no fat at all when frying your eggs and bacon for breakfast. There are health consequences to everything we do but as also stated in that human right to health, at the end it is about choice and taking personal responsibility for those choices.
Note: Needless to say that making sure a product (or a product disguised as medical treatment in this case) is legally available and coercing people to accept that medical treatment against their will are two different things. Making e-cigs available has been dealt with once and for all in pre-Brexit EU by a civil rights’ movement in the TPD2. It was only after the availability was secured, EU-vapers under the impulse of the UK started to talk about the human right to health. So one could wonder what those vaping advocates in Europe that have shifted their focus are doing nowadays. Looks a lot like violating the second part of that same human right.
Luc, it appears to be an idea adapted from this paper.
Social movements and human rights rhetoric in tobacco control
2004
"After achieving breathtaking successes in securing state and local restrictions on smoking in public places and restricting youth access to tobacco products, the tobacco movement faces difficult decisions on its future strategic directions.
The thesis of this article is that the tobacco control movement is at a point of needing to secure its recent successes and avoiding any public retrenchment. To do so requires rethinking the movement’s strategic direction."
"The new tobacco control strategy should encompass a focus on voluntary non-smoking strategies, use human rights rhetoric to its advantage, and strengthen the public health voice to be more effective in political battles. In developing a new strategy, tobacco control advocates need to build a social movement based on a more forceful public health voice, along with the strategic use of human rights rhetoric, to focus on the power of voluntary non-smoking efforts.
Using human rights rhetoric can help frame the movement in ways that have traditionally appealed to the American public. Perhaps more importantly, doing so can help infuse the tobacco control movement with a broader sense of purpose and mission."
https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/14/suppl_2/ii45
Tobacco Control appear to have liked the idea and now the vapers seem to have made their own variant