The way I see it, and the problem that exists with people ignorant of our habit, is that you can put us into two groups.
There are the group that use electronic cigarettes to quit smoking.
And there are hobby vapoteurs who have taken to vaping instead of smoking.
The first group will have the sympathy of our masters in Government and the European Union because they actually seem to have figured out that electronic cigarettes are more successful in helping quitters than the old NRT stuff. The group that use electronic cigarettes to quit smoking are safe.
The second group - hobby vapoteurs will be considered smokers. We are the people who want to continue our addiction to the terrible drug, nicotine. Nocotine, is, of course, THE evil thing in tobacco that has enslaved all pathetic, disgusting smokers and the drug that will enslave all the children who touch cigarettes or try vaping. Nicotine is a dangerous and terrible poison. We all know that because it has been drummed into the world psyche as an unchallengeable truth (and proved by science!)
Our masters are guided carefully by the Anti Tobacco Industry whose meticulously unbiased science, and completely honest and translucent motive to improve the health of the world, has been a rallying light making interference in personal liberty seem quite moral and right. This has made smokers the most vilified species on Earth. Can you think of any lifestyle more evil? Smokers have complete disregard for polluting the air around themselves and causing illness and death to millions of poor souls worldwide, and polluting the air in their own lungs bringing about illness and death to themselves and costing the Health Services in all countries millions and millions in wasted money. There are no more despised people than smokers. There are no more persecuted groups in the West, than smokers, and, in the name of health, all of the world is expected to despise and persecute them in the way of the west. Anti smoking missionaries are busy everywhere.
Hobby vapoteurs are keeping the pleasure of smoking alive. They have no intention of quitting. They enjoy, ENJOY their hobby! Now, if you believed that it was quite moral to persecute one group of people for a lifestyle choice so that they are constrained by regulation never to enjoy their habit anywhere except in their own homes (and even those have been threatened), then lumping hobby vapoteurs into the category of "smoker" seems a logical extension.
Do we have any leg to stand on? Nicotine dependence is a horrible addiction. Nicotine comes from tobacco. Tobacco is evil. E-liquid is therefor a "tobacco" product. It must be controlled by our Masters for our own good. All the gains of the last 40 years of meticulously unbiased science, and completely honest and translucent motives by Tobacco Control to improve the health of the world, will be blown if a pleasing alternative to smoking establishes itself. Harm Reduction will not be good enough to justify allowing it.
I have watched how the world has been changed to persecution mode in my lifetime. It has frightened me to see it. I have watched how human rights have been honoured in all sorts of surprising and morally correct ways which has pleased me. Some things are much better than they were. The insanity that has distressed me is how easy it has been for a small group of people to take Second Hand Smoke as an excuse to twist the thinking of virtually the whole world. The end vision is a world without smoking, SHS was just a convenient scapegoat.
And we have just allowed it. People have stood by whilst smokers have been punished and made to abstain from the pleasure of smoking by banning smoking even in the outdoors showing that the legislation has got nothing to do with health, but with something much more sinister. Who has fought for the right of people to choose their own way of life? Who has protested at the hardships that MY generation has endured so that smoking can be stopped as any kind of pleasurable thing? How many old people, now, simply stay at home?
So, vapoteurs, if we are serious about our hobby, what do we do? I really don't know.
I didn't know what to do when, gradually, laws came in to constrain me as a smoker. I was always sure someone would speak out. But they never did.
And so, it continues.