It is all so predictable
I have been idly watching the Vaping Wars for a while now.
Twitter is alight with people frantically trying to stem the tide of anti-vaping rhetoric which started with the deaths in the States. Quite frankly I am amused at the whole affair because it was so predictable.
When electrofags first came into prominence, Vapers were very quick to jump on the anti-smoker bandwagon. Think of all the lives that will be saved [a billion?!] they screamed. Electrofags are the answer to dirty filthy cigarettes they roared. They hoped that they could ally themselves with the anti-smokers to drive people off cigarettes onto electrofags. However they should have realised there was something wrong when the anti-smokers gave them a very tepid welcome at best.
There are many obvious reasons for the current war. First and foremost Anti-Smokers have a pathological hatred for anything to do with Nicotine [apart from their paymasters in Big Pharma, of course]. They had their eye on electrofags from the outset, but their problem was that they could find nothing wrong with the devices and could only muter about “passive vaping” and “the long term effects”. When the first hospital admissions were announced in the States, this was a godsend. At last they had an excuse to attack electrofags. The deaths were the icing on the cake. The fact that the deaths were mostly in a specific area, all involved THC and all in the States meant nothing, as Anti-Smokers believe in propaganda, not facts.
So now Vapers are drowning in the tide of Anti-Vaping rhetoric sweeping the world. Electrofags are lethal – just look at the deaths! The fact that vapers are reverting to smoking cigarettes is irrelevant, except of course it means greater tax income for the countries. Cigarettes are familiar territory for the Anti-Smokers whereas Electrofags are a threat and an unknown. Also removing vaping removes an enormous threat to the paymasters in Big Pharma.
I doubt that Vapers can win this battle. Anti-smokers are experts at propaganda and at twisting, distorting and ignoring facts. They have the bit between their teeth now and have the ears of the lawmakers. They won’t be happy until vaping has been driven off the scene and they can just concentrate on torturing smokers.
Welcome back to my world!
Here in Pennsylvania there are many bills in the legislature to ban flavored E-cigs. There is also a bill to ban on E-cigs completely. The most current thought of the Anti's is that flavored E-cigs are marketed to children. E-cigs have to be bad because of all those deaths. There is no mention of the illegal THC cartridges. In states where pot is legal THC E-cigs are legal but not regulated so who knows what's in them. They are great by the way in that they don't smell like pot thus you can vape them almost anywhere. Marijuana should just be legalized and regulated. Then there would be no problems like the kids dying from vaping who knows what along with their THC.
Stupid anti's!
I'm all for regulation in the sense that people are entitled to know what substances they are using along with any inherent dangers. Banning stuff outright always has unintended consequences. Banning flavouring will simply drive sources underground.
Not all vapers are like you described here GD, I've always been of the opinion that smokers and vapers are on the same side against a common enemy. I see myself as a smoker who now vapes and now it feels like I'm stuck in limbo between the two warring tribes. The real enemy of everyone is the antis. And we must not forget, there must be quite a lot of people who jumped onto the anti's bandwaggon who like a tipple, or meat or sugary drinks, or are a bit overweight. Some of those would have probably felt smug and righteous because they neither smoked or vaped and are now reaping the whirlwind. So please don't tar all vapers with the same brush. Just sayin'.
What I am talking about is the vocal minority on "social media" who persist on repeating the Anti-Smokers tag-lines – "smoking kills 7000 [or whatever] a year and vaping saves lives" – type of thing. A lot are businesses selling vaping stuff, so I can understand why they would wish to drive cigarette smokers into their business, but they played a dangerous game.
The bottom line should always be that it's nobody's business to dictate how people should follow a particular lifestyle or pleasure. Why should anyone be forced to quit smoking, vaping, alcohol or whatever? If people want to kill themselves with under the counter THC carts then that's their business, provided they know the dangers.
Well GD, I can't argue with anything you say here, you are absolutely spot on. From the beginning I recognised that there were two types of vaper – those who were in it for the business (since 2013 when I started vaping I have used a lot of vape shops, and I can say with experience that NONE of those running the shops either vape or know anything about the products they sell) and ordinary Joe Public Vaper, like me. I've personally heard none of the kind of rhetoric you mention from my fellow vapers.
That leads me to an anecdote that I'd like to offer, if only to see your thoughts and those of your commenters on it. As you know, for a few years now I have hung around on pro-smoking/choice blogs like yours, and have read many comments about the 'hand waver' and 'fake cougher'. Now, previous to taking up vaping I had smoked for around 45 years, and never encountered such a person. The public in general seemed not to care whether I was smoking or not when out on the street. Fast forward to last week – I was walking into work, vaping as I went, and two guys were walking in behind me, rather faster than I was going, so I knew they were going to beat me to the clock machine. One of them commented to the other as they passed, how disgusting vape smelled and how horrible it was to walk through the clouds of vapour, and he was hand waving as he passed me. The other guy remained silent. I was too shocked to react so I just let them pass – shocked because, the commenting hand waver had a lit fag in his hand. We all know that a large part of the non smoking, health fanatical public was brainwashed by the antis, but smokers? Really?
Maybe he was just being ironic? Personally I have never noticed any aroma off vape vapour. Cigarettes on the other hand make my eyes water and play havoc with my sinuses. I suffer in silence, living with a thirty a day smoker!
Oh, many smokers have been just as brainwashed by all the anti-smoking rhetoric as all the non-smokers have, believe me. For every smoker who’s wise to what’s going on, there’s a smoker-apologist who mindlessly believes all the same stuff as the non-smokers do. And, being of the mindless type, they’ll believe all the stuff about vaping, too. Just as they believe all those public health “experts” who tell them that they “should give up smoking” they’ll believe the same public health “experts” who tell them that vape “smells horrible” or “is bad for you” or “harms children” or whatever other old clichéd, previously anti-smoking mantra they want to roll out against their latest target.
And of course, it’s also possible that there are some people actually do dislike the smell of vape more than they dislike the smell of cigarette smoke, and that might include some smokers, I guess. A newly-anti-smoking ex-smoker colleague of mine surprised me greatly recently when he said that he loathed the smell of “those e-cigarette things” and that at least there was something sort of organic and “natural” about the smell of smoke (something I never thought I’d hear him say in a million years), whereas the smell of vape was just sort of completely chemical and artificial and “hung around the place much more than cigarette smoke used to” – something else I never thought to hear emanate from an anti-smoker’s lips. In truth, I suspect that he doesn’t actually dislike it as much as he says but, being a poacher-turned-gamekeeper anti he is predisposed to accept that he dislikes vape because he’s been told he should, just like he accepted that he disliked real smoke for the same reason – until of course his “controllers” in public health told him that he must dislike something else more! Don’t worry, though, once the anti-drink brigade manage to fabricate some mythical health risk in beer fumes and get the backing of Public Health for hating that, I expect he’ll then be saying how the smell of beer is so much worse than the smell of vapes!
I don't consider myself an extremist or a zealot: I started smoking cigarettes at 16, and from the age of 55 or so I switched to hand-rolling as I knew people who regularly travelled to Sunny Spain, and they brought me back sufficient hand-rolling baccy that I never had to pay UK prices, with the thought that each time I lit up, Customs & Excise/Inland Revenue were getting bugger all from me being an added sweetener. Since I retired some 5 years ago, I joined my wife in knocking the combustible baccy on the head and switching to vaping. As the UK price of a packet of Bensons is now around a tenner, and my vape liquid (baccy flavoured, if you can call that flavouring) costs me an absolute maximum of £2 per week, it doesn't take much brainpower to see that it's much less than the £70 per week ordinary fags would cost me.
Since a substantial part of my theoretical £68 per week saving would have been diverted to gubmint's "squander fund", the reason for their anti-vape stance is all too clear. Others can do what they want as long as they all sod off and leave me alone!
Ever wondered what will happen when vaping achieves critical mass? Yup, they will start to tax it, slowly at first, but gradually creeping up to the equivalent level of tobacco – first lesson of government, find a captive market, or create one, then tax it – never fails.
The revenue from taxing Tobacco has plummeted. The Gubmint have started a conscious campaign (actually driven from the EU I believe) to start taxing vaping to replace that revenue. Hence all the propaganda about the ills of 'children and flavoured juice'. I expect this to accelerate since FOREST are not vaping champions anyway.
I switched to vaping due to the cost of cigarettes (£10 a pack!!). Tobacco flavour isn't really a replacement for a cigarette but I do smoke a fag occasionally cos the desire still hasn't gone away. I smoked since I was 17 and even though lung cancer took my Mum, I don't really care because I feel really old age is over-rated.
I bought some 24 mg tobacco flavour vape juice in New York a while ago and it tasted better than anything now available in the UK following the ban by the EU of higher strength juice. You can only get 18 mg in the UK now unless you order over the internet.
Felipe
Herself tried vaping for a while. Her particular favourite was Menthol but she idn't stick with it. I bulk buy her fags so I'm not sure of the price of a pack here. €12? Somewhere around that mark.
“I expect this to accelerate since FOREST are not vaping champions anyway”
Actually, Simon Clark over at FOREST has spoken up on behalf of vapers on several occasions, but has been rebuffed by them quite often for commenting to newspapers etc when asked, even when his comments have been supportive of the rights of vapers. It seems that, as pointed out on here, the loudest voices in the vaping community have made it very clear that, as proudly born-again anti-smokers, they don’t want the support of any organisation all the time that organisation has the audacity to speak up also for the rights of their new “enemies” – real smokers.
And, as far as taxation goes, sadly FOREST isn’t in any position to influence Government policy on that issue. If they were then smokers wouldn’t be paying the exorbitant taxes that they are. They’ve certainly tried, for sure, but as usual the Government has simply ignored objections from all quarters – including FOREST’s – and shoved the tax skywards. So I doubt that, even if they tried, FOREST would be in any better position to try and halt the inevitable slide towards taxation of e-cigarettes, either. It's a shame, but there it is.