LOSERS

 

VAPING

Today on National Radio I listened to an interview with Lauren Etter on the vaping craze and its connection with the tobacco industry. See the link above.

It's worth a listen if you can get past that affected and annoying Californian creak in her voice. She discussed her book and how:

"The designers of the most popular vaping product in the world claimed the Juul was just the thing to get smokers to quit nasty cigarettes. But it turns out e-cigarettes just hooked a new generation of smokers with flavors (sic) like bubble gum and creme brulee. Bloomberg journalist Lauren Etter shows how greed fuelled the vaping craze and why lessons from Big Tobacco were ignored in her new book 'The Devil's Playbook: Big Tobacco, Juul, and the Addiction of a New Generation'.

4,000 New Zealanders die each year from smoking related illnesses which, from a population of 5.5 million puts us high on the statistical scale. Tobacco companies for decades, knew of the health risks and addiction properties associated with tobacco but, out of greed, pursued the most aggressive and expensive advertising campaigns. Initially these were geared to making tobacco smoking (in any form) attractive and later, when they knew that it was lethal, to try and hoodwink people that it was safe.

We know that various countries' governments (belatedly) censured 'Big Tobacco' and have put severe restrictions on them for their ability to advertise, promote and sponsor their brands and products and also to have to carry mandatory health warnings in their packaging. 

This hurt the tobacco companies and, no surprises here, they looked about to find ways to get around legislation. The problem was though, that they looked around trying to find a way of getting burning sticks of tobacco legalised and normalised. They were suffering from tunnel vision due no doubt to the fact* that tobacco smoking impairs cognition and were approaching the problem from a perspective of what they knew and were used to rather than from a lateral view. The pioneers of the vaping instruments including the leader Juul  were not part of the tobacco industry and actually approached the problem from a new and innovative perspective. The result was the vaping tool that we see now which went through many variations over the last decade but finally became something that is trendy, 'cool' and desirable (read the way cigarettes were promoted in the second half of the last century).

The vaping tool was initially promoted as a way to wean oneself off cigarettes and tobacco  addiction - well done those young inventors - before of course they sold out to 'Big Tobacco' for mega-billions but now there has been a whole new industry created around it.

Initially the idea was to minimise the effect of tobacco and ingestion of hot gases into the body.  Pretty soon this became just another way of getting tobacco into the system in a more acceptable (and unregulated) way. Obviously the tobacco industry muscled into the innovation technology and, with their muscle and money now control it. Anyone who now thinks that vaping is a safe and better alternative to smoking is deluded.

Sure, for the emphysemic and dying habitual smoker, a slightly safer way of ingesting the tobacco that they are addicted to without cooking their nose, throat, lungs and stomach is a sensible development. All accolades to the developers and, maybe a one-handed clap to 'Big Tobacco' but ....

.... the tobacco industry has for a long time recognised that their customers are dying, not just as a market group, but dying - full-stop. The newbies' development of the 'vape' must have been a revelation to them (kind of like when John's bible was 'discovered' in about the 4th century and the catholics pretended that it dated back to 95 AD) so they set about buying this new technology and continued to market it the way that the newbies had done - making it cool, sophisticated and, more importantly, seemingly safe. 

The new technology which they bought gave them a double whammy.  Of course they could continue to market to their most loyal (and most obvious dying) users with  their standard images of how successful you must be if you smoke a certain brand of cigarettes, cigars or pipe tobacco and  to still finance the TV and film industry with the guarantee of having the 'stars' smoking (has it ever made you wonder when intelligent  young  performers are seen lighting up a ciggie?). But, now the industry had the chance of marketing to those dying customers who believed that they had a chance of getting away from their addiction and maybe had a chance of living a bit longer by not sucking in lungfuls of overheated gasses.

Great. 'Big Tobacco' bought (heavily) into this marketing dream and are now marketing their poison to the existing, and maybe the next generation of users and they are happy as they make unimagined amount of profit by getting silly people to breathe in poisons that they sell. But, and here's the big but (cigarette pun intended), the tobacco industry is well  aware that its  customers are limited to the current and maybe one more generation. The future for them is in new users (read losers) who will willingly yet unknowingly adopt their messages and their products while believing that they are hip, cool, trendy, and ... safe.  This is what 'Big Tobacco' is looking to vaping as bringing them.

Addiction is addiction. The method of getting the desired drug to the addict is just a matter or technology, current legalities and logistics. Once future generations are addicted to tobacco and find that the vaping technology is cumbersome and that the industry has pushed the price up, who knows -  lighting up might be just what they want.

I wrote a post on vaping and the tobacco industry some time ago, see:

UNHOLY SMOKE

* The Curmudgeons Incⓒ does not rely on actual facts when making statements, preferring instead to go to that Samuel Clemens' adage "Never let the facts get in the way of a good story."