Do you remember the campaign that featured the slogan ‘If you smoke you stink’?
Well, the World Vapers Alliance – a lobby group funded by British American Tobacco – also wants to stoke up a stink about smoking.
Not content with running a campaign – Back Vaping, Beat Smoking – that features a boxing glove and an image of two boxers in a ring, one cowering in a corner – the WVA has now decided to highlight what it calls the 'nasty smells' of smoking.
In a tweet posted last Saturday, the WVA commented:
Here's an awesome extra benefit of vaping over smoking – no nasty smells! People around you don't have to suffer [my emphasis].
The tweet included a banner (below) that features the slogan:
Vaping – because vapor doesn't bother anyone
Seriously?!
The odour of stale tobacco can be unpleasant, I grant you, but even though I'm not a smoker I quite like the aroma of fresh tobacco smoke.
Smells are subjective of course and while it's true that some people don't like the smell of tobacco smoke, it's equally true that many people don't like e-cigarette vapour either.
Some may have an aversion to the rather sickly smell of certain flavours. Others may simply not like being exposed to clouds of vapour, however small.
The reality is that if you dislike being exposed to even a whiff of tobacco smoke the chances are you won't like being exposed to e-cigarette vapour either.
That’s why many places where smoking is banned often extend the policy to vaping, regardless of the law.
The idea then that you can win people over to vaping by highlighting the 'nasty smells' of smoking is optimistic and possibly counter-productive because all you’re doing is drawing attention to a feature of vaping that, for many people, is no less 'nasty' than tobacco smoke.
So this is my question to the World Vapers Alliance.
By all means stress the potential health benefits of vaping compared to smoking, but do you really think you will ‘beat smoking’ by describing the smell of tobacco smoke as “nasty” while claiming, in the very same breath, that e-cigarette vapour “doesn’t bother anyone”?
Throwing smokers under a bus may have become the norm for many vaping advocates but it's hard to accept when the organisation behind the World Vapers Alliance calls itself the Consumer Choice Center.
Confirmed smokers are consumers too. Should their choice to smoke not be supported as well?
As I wrote here (Back Choice, Beat Prohibition), there are millions of adult smokers who don’t want to quit. In a free society their choice must be respected and publicly defended.
Abandon them and you're no liberal, however much you try to convince yourself that you are.
