Vapoteurs - standing up for smokers?

I wrote this in June last year - We ARE smokers which said:- "This might be a touchy point for all vapers who feel holier-than-thou over those poor souls who still smoke. I know, I sometimes wonder why smokers don't vape - I feel cleaner, better, fitter and and internally delighted that I don't have to go outside and stand in the rain to have my fix. I can vape anywhere - even in taboo places - by vaping in the loo. That's an advantage over smokers. There are advantages that vapers have over smokers - but that is ALL they are, advantages and not indications we are in any way better than smokers.

I watch how smokers are persecuted. I place myself firmly against anti-smoking witch hunting. I will not do it myself - I am a smoker who vapes. What happens to smokers is very important to me, watching how the persecution is rolled out, gives us vapers foreknowledge of what might happen to us. We ARE smokers!"

I had several cross responses to my post on Google+ and Facebook.

Yesterday's post by me, received two important comments. One pointed out that when we approach our MEP's we need to be polite. My post was not to my MEP and Bill Hicks was not polite in the clip I embedded!

And this comment is important, Pat Nurse MA has left a new comment on your post "How should the EU regulate e cigarettes? Rabecca T...":

"Smoking became a problem when it became an "industry"" - Yep - same for E-Cigs too.

It is completely offensive that E-Cig companies try and market their product on the back on smoker denormalisation and smokerphobia.

I will stand up for E smokers - because you are still smokers however you try to sanitise the difference between us - but will they stand up for me?

Time will tell."
 
So, I have been thinking about the e-cig "industry". Currently e-cigs are not actually a whole "industry" - yet. They are fragmented, chaotic even. But many small companies are marketing themselves by seeming anti smoking, that's true. Of course, they do this at their own peril. Big Tobacco have entered the game with Blu in USA and purchases of some companies here in UK. So I think the "industry" is forming. One aspect is to make money off smokers trying to quit. And the other aspect is to make profit from smokers who have become vapers. So, we need to ask - Do we need to stand up for smokers at all?

Are we sanitised smokers? Should we be begging MEP's to "save our lives" and the lives of millions of smokers by not interfering with electronic cigarettes too much?

We are trying to save our skins by riding on the back of all the poor dying smokers?

On one side there are smokers consisting of people who smoke, smokers who vape, hobby vapoteurs and people who feel it is everyone's right to smoke or vape without persecution and on the other side there are anti smokers that include anti vapers and those trying to quit smoking and hoards of sheeples trotting along behind.

I think the confusion in this situation is that some of us vapers have got muddled up with the sheeples.

What do you think?

I  know which side I'm on. I'm too bloody-minded to be a sheeple. And as I said at the top of this page in June last year, I'm a smoker that vapes.

I am perfectly aware that as soon as the vaping "industry" clocks in properly, vaping will be promoted by marketers to everyone. And the whole witch-hunt, twististics and lies tactics used against smokers will be used against us.