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Sunday 24 March 2013

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.



















2 comments:

  1. Good post. However, I think it is needed to be understood that the anti-smoking crusade is not a health issue - it is a business issue. The aggressor is Big Pharma - and they want the nicotine. Their enemies in the nicotine war are NOT the cigarette industry, but the snus (smokeless) industry and the E-cig industry.

    Big Pharma used app. 25 years to set up the war on nicotine, with Nicorette (& other anti-smoking products), the addiction theory, massive grants to doctors & anti-smoking "experts" in the health sectors to vilify passive smoking, lobbyism for smoking bans world wide & the snus ban in EU, the media hype - and finally Big Pharma was ready to cash in on a huge scale, when suddenly, unexpectedly ...

    The E-cigarette turned up on the stage and took a mega bite of "their" turnover. This is how things look from that side of the table. And that is why Big Pharma use all their power (and all their paid experts & ani-smoking frontgroups) to keep snus & E-cigarettes out of the EU market - They are aiming to have a monopoly on smokeless nicotine:

    http://www.tinyurl.dk/38001

    For these reasons it is more important than ever, that smokers, snusers & vapers stand together in their demands to politicians - and thus not letting Big Pharma & health authorities "divide and conquer".

    It is tempting to frame demands to politicians for health reasons - that they must free the E-cigarette in order to "save lives". Anyu politician would love that. But since Big Pharma has already framed the health issue with the precautionary principle, it is not possible to do so.

    Therefore I think it will be much more effective to use the free choice argument when adressing the question to politicians. Smokers, snusers and vapers should tell the politicians to get Big Pharma off our backs and reinstall the competitive market - which is after all the whole idea of the common market.

    A pharma-monopoly on nicotine will definitely not fuel economic growth in the EU, while completely opening the market to snus and E-cigarettes definitely would.

    E-cigarettes should be regulated like any other food & drink-like consumer product - not like cigarettes (which would ban them in public places) and not like medicine (which would hand them over to Big Pharma).

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  2. Very well said Liz! :) Fortunately I think we've seen some real change in the general attitude of vapers toward smokers in the past two years or so. Of course part of that has simply been driven by the harsh realization that the Antismokers were going to treat vaping the same way they've treated smoking, but it's still a welcome change!

    I forget where it was a couple of days ago, but there's some wackoid new study out there pushing the idea that e-cigs are "entry devices" or somesuch for "the children" to take up smoking.

    The rough figure they gave was that 67% of the 12 year olds who'd tried e-cigs were not regular smokers. Gasp! Horrors! Sounds bad at first, right? Until you stop a minute and realize that about 90% of 12 year olds are not regular smokers, so OF COURSE a majority of those who try a puff from it are ALSO likely to be nonsmokers. If they'd studied 6 year olds they probably would have found that 98% of six year olds who'd tried e-cigs were not regular smokers.

    The fact that there might only be 3 six year olds in all of England who'd tried them would be irrelevant compared to that massive 98% figure! It'd be a PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS!

    ::sigh::

    In any event... excellent column! I agree completely!

    :)
    Michael J. McFadden
    Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"

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