The first is that the e-cigarette companies are aiming their wares at the under 18 market. Hard to argue when you see flavours such as ice cream, bubble gum and candy floss.
The second is that the 'safe' aspect of vaping will tempt people to try smoking who would not have necessarily have and i've already met people who have tried vaping, liked it and then tried a cigarette.
Tied into the second argument is another reason that doesn't seem to have been aired, it will make smoking cool again.
As e-cigarettes are allowed to be advertised on television, the companies are benefiting from hitting a wide audience and it is this, coupled with celebrity endorsements, that concern me.
Advertising works and if you can get a celebrity to help shift your product then more the better and something we do see now is celebrities endorsing e-cigarettes and newspapers pictures of celebrities vaping.
A quick Google search bring up pictures of Jenny McCarthy, Kate Moss, Simon Cowell, Katy Perry, Jack Nicholson Lindsey Lohan, Leonardo de Caprio, Paris Hilton, Sean Penn, Britney Spears, Johnny Depp, Charlie Sheen, Robert Pattinson, Jimmy White, Tom Petty and even Alan Titchmarsh using e-cigarettes.
The UK's medicines regulatory body, Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, have said that e-cigarettes could help save 57,000 British lives over the next decade and they are undoubtedly a great way to give up the much more dangerous tobacco cigarettes but i do have one concern over that they may make smoking cool again.
E-cigs do help people to reduce or quit cigarettes, i haven't had a real cigarette for almost 15 months since i took up vaping, but as well as helping smokers cut out a dangerous addiction, it also works from the other end as well and introduces non-smokers to the same dangerous addiction due to their 'safe' label.
The best course of action is to not smoke at all and e-cigarettes are great for smokers who are addicted to nicotine already but there should be the concern that the cool image and images of celebrities vaping will prove attractive to non-smokers and may even act as a gate-way to real cigarettes.
4 comments:
I get the sense that e-cigs have acquired a veneer of cool that cigarettes haven't had since everyone realized they were bad for you sometime before I was born. I can't imagine the e-cig fad making cigarettes cool again.
And having some total increase of tobacco users may be a fair price for reducing the number of cigarette users.
If anything it will be the celebrities making it look cool, i saw an advert with Jenny McCarthy and it screamed 'LOOK HOW COOL THIS LOOKS' the same way cigarettes were marketed back in the day.
I hadn't seen that one (I don't watch too much live TV nowadays). Just by coincidence, a few buddies of mine were telling me today that they know people who have increased their nicotine consumption through e-cigs and people who took up e-cigs who weren't smokers. I guess I had to hear about real people doing this to believe it.
I've never smoked cigarettes or anything else but a half dozen cigars, so I'm not on the up and up on smoking culture. But I've even heard that they have additives to simulate the "lung burning" feeling of real cigarettes, which I guess is desirable for some smokers.
Yep, it is happening, i have seen it also. Not heard of the lung burning sensation thing but i stick to the one website to order my stuff so most probably is going on.
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