Apologies in advance for jumping around, but I'm trying to comment on a complex subject, trying to cover as many gases as possible, without writing a book.
Before the tobacco giants started to buy into the e-cig market vaping has been seen as a big danger to the anti-smoking lobby. The WHO wants them banned for the same reason that some countries have already banned them, 'e-cigs hinder the de-normalisation of smoking'.
Big tobacco wants to sell e-cigs as 'a new kind of cigarette' in order to keep as many customers as possible, plus big tobacco wants to persuade non-smokers to start the habit,
I think that's why the ad and the report based on it talk about smoking and cigarettes.
The anti-smoking lobby is funded by Big Pharma and ehat lobby has a knee-jerk reaction, if Big Tobacco fights something they're succeeding.
The fact is that the number of smokers hasn't dropped since 2002, when I remember informative health warnings on much cheaper packs and anti-smoking ads that gave information and didn't rely on shock value which people soon get used to by repitition. This desire to shock is behind the 'plain packaging campaign' for cigarettes which experts say will make it easier to sell far more poisonous counterfeit cigarettes.
On smoking rather than vaping, I can remember a pack designed for youngf people. The brand was 'Death' and the pack was black with a skull and crossbones logo. That brand no longer exists I think because all packs do the risk and rebellion advertising far better than that brand did.
The anti-smoking campaign reached a peak 10 years ago. Everybody who smokes now either couldn't quit, didn't want to quit, or started in spite of, or maybe because of, anti-smoking campaigns and laws.
But I'd rather my children took up vaping than smoking. The fear of creating new vapers isn't a black and white issue and even if tobacco was banned we'd still have smokers only they'd be smoking something far more dangerous than the cigarettes bought today, probably paying a lot less for them.
The anti-smoking lobby has the 'quit or die' approach.Nobody who quits will avoid death, it's a condition of living.
I think that in the USA the aim has been to get ecigs classified as tobacco products so as to avoid medicine regulation. I don't like that and I think it raises a question about NRT. As eliquid uses the same pharma grade nicotine as NRT, if ecigs are tobacco products then surely patches, gum, and the rest are as well. The nicotine comes from the same source, tobacco.
Smokers consider vaping often because they can use something that looks as much like a cigarette as possible. That's why one reason used for banning is because a lot of people think a cigalike is a cigarette. I'd like vaping devices to look nothing like them, but a lot of smokers would never even try them if they didn't mimic smoking almost completely.
So we have the WHO pushing for banning, and European governments are or have considered that. For ammunition there are plenty of studies funded by Big Pharma that are searching for the slightest evidence of the slightest harm.
If things stay as they are I don't think that Big Tobacco will have ant effect on us, but could get more people vaping. Maybe because BT wants to make big profits, some will become vaping converts and then move to the kind of stuff most of us use.
I think the important thing is to keep to the message that vaping is saving health and saving the government money, without mentioning that without a 'sin tax' the covernment will get a lot less tax income. In the UK we already have regulation in Health and Safety and Trading Standards, so all manufactureres and vendors have to comply.
Banning something, a fear a lot of us have about vaping, has proved not to work. That can be seen by Prohibition in the USA in the past, and the lost 'War on Drugs' today.
I think we should try and do the impossible, try to convert the members of the anti-smoking lobby who are on a crusade and have closed minds. Some in the UK have been persuaded, my local NHS now sees vaping as a legitimate way to quit and classes vapers as non-smokers, and we have the 'nudge unit; coming down in favour as well as at least a part of ASH.
The anti-smoking lobby sees tobacco companies as their enemy. Maybe we should join them in part by saying we don't want Big Tobacco or Big Pharma taking over?
Just my very rambling two pennies worth of random thoughts.
