Time for smokers and vapers to unite?

[Midnight]

I'm talking to someone with another view on FB and he suggests Vapers are the condescending *****s constantly distancing themselves from tobacco and talking about 'stinkies' and 'smelly smokers'. I kind of get his point but also feel it's all a bit inevitable. Maybe I'm wrong . I may have to think a bit on this one.

I still feel I am a hairs-breadth away from being a smoker, even as an ex-smoker. I was one for most of my life. I don't care who smokes and who doesn't. it's our own business. The guy you are talking to has a fair point too. I really don't like it when I see/hear people calling smokers 'smelly' or smoking those 'stinkies'. I find it offensive because there's no need for it.

 

[man_d]

My friend smokes. A lot. She smokes in the car when we go out. I sit outside cafes with her because she smokes. I could go back to smoking tomorrow (I very much doubt it though) and I would be a smoker again. I've just gone 6 months smoke-free but I smoked for about 30 years.

30 years?! Did you start smoking when you were a foetus?!

 

[Midnight]

30 years?! Did you start smoking when you were a foetus?!

LOL! Started when I was 12. Unfortunately.

 

[man_d]

LOL! Started when I was 12. Unfortunately.

I can't click 'like' on that

 

[AndyC1971]

On the other hand we were all smokers. And in a sense we are fighting a similar battle. The freedom to do what we want. We do face the same stigmatism from certain quarters in the ANTZ. I think the health message that we Vapers often use to defend ecigs and the repeating of evidence for the harm caused by smoking that we state, rightly we may say, distinguishing that risk of harm from that of ecigs, is seen by smokers rights groups to be unhelpful from their point of view. I'm talking to someone with another view on FB and he suggests Vapers are the condescending *****s constantly distancing themselves from tobacco and talking about 'stinkies' and 'smelly smokers'. I kind of get his point but also feel it's all a bit inevitable. Maybe I'm wrong . I may have to think a bit on this one.

I agree with you 100%, and I still deem myself a smoker, just by association of nicotine addiction, its just I have changed the method of that delivery. I like to think I have evolved in my habit. I dont think I am superior to smokers, but then I dont think non-smokers are superior to me. Its my body, my choice, the same as someone who wants to smoke

 

[totalEliquidTONY]

It's a good article, the author called Pat Nurse used to have her own blog called Tea and Cigarettes (I think.) Used to be a right rattling read it did.

She's just pissed off with some of the anti-tobacco rhetoric from some vapers and I completely agree with her, there's a lot of BS going around. I myself am very pro-choice and try not to slate smokers at all because as Pat has pointed out (amongst others) that they are now coming for us vapers too because as another great blogger called Dick Puddlecote said, "it was never about health."

I can't see us uniting but respecting each other will be a great start.

 

[vaporsizer]

I think ,as an ex smoker that yes, cigarettes stink & they're horrible & damaging blah blah blah but we already know all that.
I don't have a problem with smokers. When i vape in my house i fill the room with vapor...Am i better than a smoker ? Or worse ?
Neither is the answer. I have just found a better alternative that's all, better for me. The same goes for all of us who came to vaping from smoking.
What i would say is be outright, be straight up & defend the right to choose what you as an individual want. If i want to fuck my body up (Not that i do want to) ,it's my body. Drinkers drink, smokers smoke, vapers vape.

I'll tell you what's bad for all of us ! Greedy bastards in power & politicians disguised like wolves in sheep's clothing.

 

[Mawsley]

I was luck in that my final six years smoking were in South America where you'd be arrested if you weren't doing something a little bit dangerous. I have no experience of stigma or of the smoking ban. Returning home to be able to watch a film without looking up at the projector beam in the smoke was a real shock.

I think what the author of the article misses is that the bulk of the objection to ecig advertising, according to Marketing magazine this week, is brand association. Tobacco brand buys ecig company, advertises ecig and links ecig to fag brand elsewhere thereby promoting the brand that has been banned from advertising.

Last year media spend by ecig companies was in the region of £8.3million and that figure is set to be dwarfed by the spend in 2014.

As far as joining forces with them I couldn't imagine a worse move.

I can, it involves an ad campaign involving the corpse of Jimmy Saville, a young boy, a dead dog and a pack of cigalikes.

 

[Mark]

As far as joining forces with them I couldn't imagine a worse move.

I may be wrong (perhaps I need to read it again) but I think he is referring to uniting with smokers (albeit in some unspecified way) not the tobacco companies (if that was your point) Whilst I believe that ecigs in general should be as available as cigs and actively promoted I personally cringe at some of the ads being screened for the lookalikeys.

 

[Gonloopy]

For me , as 20+ year ex smoker, I can identify with how the smokers now feel.
I would never look down on a smoker ( how could I , I was one of them) -but I don't support smoking. Mainly due to both professionally and personally, I have seen far too many lives lost and the distress caused through the dreaded weed to ever be pro tobacco. If vaping ever joined forces with smoking, I think that would be the time I go my own way
#justsaying