Propaganda wars
Friday, September 10, 2021 at 10:24 We Vape, the vaping advocacy group, held a rally in Parliament Square on Wednesday.
As far as I can tell it attracted around 14 people including representatives from the UK Vaping Industry Association (UKVIA) and the New Nicotine Alliance (NNA) who were addressed, apparently, by Mark Pawsey MP who chairs the All Party Parliamentary Group on Vaping.
I don’t mean to damn the initiative with faint praise because I know how difficult it is to generate support for events like this. (The term ‘armchair activist’ exists for a reason.)
I also like and respect the organiser, We Vape director Mark Oates.
However, aside from the turnout - and the fact that not a single participant appeared to be vaping - I couldn’t help noticing the neatly printed placards, several of which read:
BACK VAPING
PROTECT THE NHS
Protect the NHS? Smokers help PAY for the NHS!
The estimated annual cost of treating smoking-related diseases on the NHS is £2.75bn.
In comparison the annual revenue from the punitive taxes on tobacco is £10bn, or £12bn if you include VAT.
Smokers are therefore huge net contributors to the Treasury and, consequently, the NHS.
‘Back Vaping Protect The NHS’ is the sort of mindless slogan thought up by anti-smoking campaigners to denigrate smokers and their habit (except the words ‘Back Vaping’ would probably be missing, replaced by ‘Stop Smoking’).
Invoking the NHS in this context is particularly nauseating because it implies that the health service is in danger of being overwhelmed by millions of sick smokers.
If that is true show us the evidence but I find it impossible to believe when smoking rates are currently at their lowest recorded levels since the invention of the manufactured cigarette in the late 19th century.
Unfortunately ‘protecting’ the NHS is now a default setting that plays into the hands of politicians whose real agenda is not to ‘protect’ the heath service but to create a risk free utopia in which all ‘bad’ habits are eradicated.
The irony is that advocates of e-cigarettes are quick to condemn anti-vaping propaganda but disinformation about smoking is alright if it furthers their cause.
PS. I suspect that obesity-related illnesses are a far bigger strain on the NHS than smoking but the biggest threat is probably longevity - an ageing population living well into their nineties and beyond.
But that’s another story which I may (or may not) come back to.
Reader Comments (2)
They cling to disinformation about smoking to ensure they can push vaping.
Just imagine if they were not smokerphobic, their 14 protestors could have been joined by many more smokers and together in support of each other, we could have a voice and been heard instead of laughed at.
Meanwhile we sit back and watch them making idiots of themselves . There is nothing more excruciating to watch than vapers licking the backside of public health by throwing smoking and smokers under a bus.
Yesterday I read that vapers are under fire "for the misleading claim that Vaping juice is just water and only produces steam when vaped."
Same tactics first used against smokers and yet there they are, the vapers, on the wrong side of the battle trying in vain to appease our enemies.
Propaganda is a tool for furthering an ideology. Ideology replaces the need to think. Both erode liberty.
Vaping advocates are certainly within their rights to promote access to vaping. Doing so by attacking smoking with exaggerated information denies others the same liberty they seek.