April 3, 2016
Los Angeles-The vaping community and its counterparts are trying to be swayed by what is now called The Great Vape Debates. Many strategies are in place. Legislators are doing their part by attempting to tarnish the image of the vaping community. The latest propaganda is that mixologists are intentionally using fruit, candy and dessert flavors as a targeted method to lure the interest of minors. This is a false and poor biased attempt to show vaping in a negative light; fruit flavors have been used for years after all with alcohol and liquor companies catering to an existing market. Could this be about the tobacco industry losing its customers?
While cigarette use has plummeted in California and nationwide as the dangers of tobacco have become well known, electronic cigarettes – also known as e-cigarettes – have emerged in recent years as a popular alternative. Vaping lounges, in which customers can sample different flavors of the liquid within vaping devices, have sprung up around the country.
Public health officials are saying however that e-cigarettes contain both addictive nicotine and chemicals linked to cancer and birth defects. They warn that the sweet flavors contained in vaping devices, which function by heating a chemical liquid into a mist that can be inhaled, appeal to young Californians.
“California has been a world leader in tobacco use prevention and cessation since 1990, with one of the lowest youth and adult smoking rates in the nation,” California Department of Public Health director Karen Smith said in a written statement. “The aggressive marketing and escalating use of e-cigarettes threatens to erode that progress.”
The new television spots suggest that e-cigarette makers are intentionally targeting young people. They compare e-cigarette purveyors to a tobacco industry that has been demonized for long concealing or downplaying the health hazards of cigarettes.
One, entitled “Kids Aren’t Alright,” displays images of young people with e-cigarettes and the text “for the next generation to be hooked by big tobacco.”
In “What Could Go Wrong,” an image of cigarette packs gives way to the words “lung cancer” and the claim that vaping is as addictive as heroin.
“There’s a lot the e-cig industry isn’t telling us about vaping,” the ad says.
“You do not see the Department of Public Health running ads about how the liquor industry is marketing flavored spirits – if you walk into a liquor store, you can find cotton candy vodka,” Conley said. “I quit with watermelon flavor” vaping, he added, “and there are multiple studies showing adult smokers – the people who are dying by the hundreds of thousands every year – they find flavors very helpful in getting off cigarettes.”
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