Time for smokers and vapers to unite?

[Mark]

@LilyRed
The case against smoking for health reasons is well documented and accepted.

Largely I agree but the science behind the second hand smoke argument is not as clear cut as we were led to believe. The outcomes of studies were exaggerated and manipulated to scare the public and justify excessive laws about smoking in public places.

Smokers and Vaper share a heritage, are both recreational nicotine users (albeit with an element of dependence akin to caffeine) and I suppose if nothing else we can use our knowledge and experience of how smokers (all of us) have been treated to wake up and realise we are next.

As Vapers we KNOW we are right but witnessing the last two years is evidence enough of the power of the vested interests to skew the evidence, manipulate the public and generally get their way. Maybe 'unite' is too strong a word. We are distinct from smokers I agree

 

[steffijade]

I've noticed that some vapers can go through a period of feeling superior to smokers.. probably caused by the exhilaration of finally finding an effective way to break the seemingly endless cycle of quit attempts and failures.

This can cause new vapers to try and distance themselves as much as possible from tobacco cigarettes in a similar way that a 'conventional' quitter can become a fervant anti smoker as they seek to distance themselves from their own perceived past 'weakness'.

This kind of attitude tends to fade once the new vaper realises that the antz want to continue literally tarring them with the same brush they use for smokers and that even if vaper wants to define themselves as a quitter, the antz won't confer that label on them unless they also go on to quit vaping.

The pedestal starts to wobble a bit at this point and the vaper begins to realise that they haven't actually escaped the demonisation, they just stepped up a rung on the ladder of the antz perception of what constitutes being a human being.

I'm speaking from personal experience here.. I thought my shit didn't stink anymore when I first started vaping, but luckily for me, I was able to converse with folk such as Rusty who made me see how I was deluding myself and realise that I was applying the self same demonisation (albeit in less vitriolic terms) as the antz themselves.

All that said, I still do think it's important to make a distinction between vaping and smoking.. not so that I can feel morally superior to smokers, but to try and prevent the antz from applying the same justifications for treating smokers as sub human, to vapers.

I reckon the author of this article needs to examine her own presumptions... it does us all good to engage in a little self analysis and examine our own motivations from time to time.

 

[Motorheaded]

Largely I agree but the science behind the second hand smoke argument is not as clear cut as we were led to believe. The outcomes of studies were exaggerated and manipulated to scare the public and justify excessive laws about smoking in public places.

Smokers and Vaper share a heritage, are both recreational nicotine users (albeit with an element of dependence akin to caffeine) and I suppose if nothing else we can use our knowledge and experience of how smokers (all of us) have been treated to wake up and realise we are next.

As Vapers we KNOW we are right but witnessing the last two years is evidence enough of the power of the vested interests to skew the evidence, manipulate the public and generally get their way. Maybe 'unite' is too strong a word. We are distinct from smokers I agree

Hence my careful choice of words, and not "proven".
As a vaper, I feel under more pressure than smokers, at the moment.
I mean we are doing what they wanted. We stopped smoking. We are not killing ourselves. We don't pollute the air around us, or leave cig butts on the floor. The smell of what I do is, currently, liqurice and eucalyptus. We will be less of a drain on the NHS. etc

All the arguments they threw at us as smokers, we have negated by switching to vaping.

And yet they are STILL after us!!

They are still after us because they missed the boat.
The treasury, big pharma, big tobacco have all seen money draining away from them, and that is the only reason our pasttime is under threat.
They canvas politicians more directly than us, and they do it with funds/bribes.

If all the smokers in Europe and the US couldn't fight legislation, what difference will it make, now 10% are vapers?

The draconian measures were used under the explicit assertion that smoking/2nd hand smoking kills. It is hard to argue against the idealogy, if you accept that it is deadly.

We as vapers are being targetted for financial reasons, possibly at the expense of our health.

And there the difference lies.

 

[vaporsizer]

@LilyRed
I'm with you all the way, until the last sentence.
The single greatest argument we have when asking to be left alone to go about our business, is that we have chosen to leave behind the more dangerous option.
Our number one point is "It is not smoking!" It defines us.

We can lend support to smokers when their rights are under threat, but seriously, what good did we achieve while we WERE smokers, losing our rights?
The case against smoking for health reasons is well documented and accepted. Our existence as vapers is the acknowledgement of that.

We don't have to get very far into a debate for that to split our two groups.

I have to agree with that. Valid points all round from everyone but yeah, we do represent Ex smokers & the truth that vaping is a real way of kicking tobacco.

 

[vaporsizer]

There's one difference it will make to me. If i'm ever challenged face to face while i vape in an outdoor public space, i can look 'em straight in the eye & ask "O.K, so what do you know for a fact about this that i don't then ?" & i feel confident in an saying to anyone who has been blinded or jaded by incorrect media " This is brilliant, i love vaping, it makes me feel good & i'm gonna keep doing it as long as i fancy "

I'm learning the facts right here on the planet in anticipation of many such situations to come. With smoking i always agreed with them & my only defense was that it was my right to choose what i do but really i wanted to give up but couldn't... Until....

 

[LilyRed]

Motorheaded, you are preaching to the converted.

I maybe wasn't very clear to you in the last line. What I mean is that the tobacco companies are, by lobbying for and backing the EU TPD regulations, and putting in place products in line with the EU regs, pushing both vapers and smokers into using their products - whether we like it or not - and so by default we are in the same boat as uneasy (and mostly unwilling) allies. Does that make sense?

I am not saying we shouldn't fight about it, and I have done so from the start, as I would and always have done with other political decisions I think are untenable, unfair and immoral, even though I rarely post or write about it here.

It is a very uneasy truce, I am now a non-smoker and nor do I ever wish to be branded as a smoker again (or a 'tobacco user' as the TPD would have it).

I visited my GP a couple of months ago to tell her how vaping had helped me to quit and how successful it is - I took in some of my kit to show her - it was productive as my GP is one of the more enlightened ones - and so I have now officially been a non-smoker since October. However, the TPD would once again mean I was called a Tobacco user, and probably by association to the less well-read or informed, a smoker...

Now do you see what I meant?

 

[Motorheaded]

LilyRed
I guess we are being included with smokers in the TPD, but I still don't consider us to be in the same boat.
We are defending a safe activity. They are defending the right to continue with an unsafe one.
We may have a problem with the same motion, but our reasons are polar opposites.

Congrats on quitting. October seems a popular month for it.

 

[LilyRed]

@LilyRed
I guess we are being included with smokers in the TPD, but I still don't consider us to be in the same boat.
We are defending a safe activity. They are defending the right to continue with an unsafe one.
We may have a problem with the same motion, but our reasons are polar opposites.

Congrats on quitting. October seems a popular month for it.

Yes. Vapers and smokers are coming from polar opposites, but both are defending their freedom of choice - I'm hoping we vapers have the stronger argument for the freedom to vape and neither be considered smokers, nor as tobacco users, though!

 

[steffijade]

nor as tobacco users, though!

The WHO already have plans for us on that front for later on this year.. the fight has only just started.

 

[gords1001]

This is my biggest problem with all this.

I moved house at about the same time my vamo's arrived and my tobacco tin went on the cupboard top. Despite only moving a couple of miles, I had to change doctors, which nessecitated a check up before being accepted by the new doctor.

I'm a fridge engineer, summer is needless to say pretty busy, like 300 hours a month busy, so I didn't get in for my check up till November, two or three months after I'd started vaping.

When asked if I smoked I answered honestly, I did smoke, now I use this *produces huge mod with davide glassomiser* my doctor looked at it, and said "ah, an ecig, congratulations, your a non smoker"


So in my medical notes, I'm now described as a "healthy ex smoker".

By very definition, we no longer smoke, and I dont honestly believe that the nicotine we use is all refined from tobacco if there are cheaper options to extract it from.......I could be wrong there, hence I believe.

If that is the case, I fail to see how we can even be described as tobacco users, we are nicotine users pure and simple, like about 99% of the population, just most dont realise it and no one other than us is eager to point this out because "vegetables form part of a healthy balanced diet".

Everyone knows nicotine is a leathal poison right?

Imagine the public outcry if what we now know thanks to pouring over piles of online research data, were anounced fully and brutally on every media source on the planet, by every "reputable scientist and health advisor" *spits on the carpet in disgust*


That's how shafted we are, in reality, they cannot acknowledge the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, because it not only frees us from the demobisation attributed to smokers, but it undermines their rationalisation for that demonisation AND throws the whole issue of healthy eating into dispute because it turns out everyones been happily consuming that evil poison and inconveniently NOT DYING.........


Excuse me while I put on my tinfoil body armour I made, complete with tin foil cod piece......


I'm pretty depressed now having put all that into text, now I have realised for myseld just how legally fucked we are.

Time to become an outlaw, I'm sure ad hell not giving up, but I just realised what an uphill struggle we really face, lumped in with smokers, siding with smokers or, doing the worst and treating smokers with contempt.