People have been smoking cigarettes for hundreds of years. And  within the space of ten years we have seen smokers bullied, vilified, and marginalized. Today  being a smoker is more akin to a social disease than a pleasant pastime. Is the same thing going to happen to vapers? Will the community, governments, and the media turn against vapers like they have turned against smokers? Or have they already?

The Balance of Power – Can Vapers Hold on?

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If you were a betting person, you may bet that once pressure groups have gotten rid of all smokers, they will turn their attention to RipTide vapers and e-cig vapers. Cigarette and cigar smokers are in steep decline, and yet marijuana smokers are on the rise, and more and more countries are relaxing laws regarding recreational smoking drugs. If pressure groups were done with cigarette and cigar smokers, wouldn’t they come after marijuana smokers next?

Prohibition Did Not Work

If you have watched the movie “The Gentlemen” (2020) as directed by Guy Ritchie, you may have heard the speech about prohibition in American and how it took ten years for the country to rebuild its supply.

 

Governments, communities, and pressure groups went after alcohol and won. Yet, the tide turned and alcohol came back. The tide is unlikely to turn when it comes to smoking, but the rise and fall of prohibition shows that such trends need not always march in the same direction. Even if pressure groups target vapers, they may only win temporarily.

The Vaping Community and the Gaming Community

Vaping has more of a community. You can enter a vape shop and talk for hours on the subject with the sellers and with the customers. The gaming community is a lot larger, is online, and is more established, but has many similarities with the vaping community.

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One similarity is that the gaming and vaping community will fight against those who wish to cause damage. The gaming community has been fighting for years to keep sexy women and violence in games, and they have won. Gamers fought Uplay and (mostly) won, and gamers have fought virtue signaling and (kinda) won (despite the fact that “Last of Us 2” gave the middle finger to fans).

 

There have been rumblings against the vaping community, especially regarding legislation brought out by extreme leftist groups that target vapers. However, the vaping community has pushed back with online posts, social media, and even with their wallets. If pressure groups, both political and non-political, start targeting vaping in a big way, it is likely they will see a lot of push back from the vaping community.

Some Anti-Smoking Pressure Groups on the Vaper’s Side

What many people do not know is that “some” of the same groups that are stopping smokers are helping keep vaping alive.

 

It is true that some anti-smoking pressure groups would like to see the end of cigarette, cigar, recreational drug smoking, and would like to see the end of vaping. However, there are some groups that see vaping as a reasonable alternative to smoking. There are some groups that promote vaping because it helps lower the number of smokers.

 

This may be one of the biggest reasons why the online and offline community has not turned against vapers. Many news companies over the years, like CNN and MSNBC have tried to release medical reports claiming that vaping is bad for your health, but nobody really listened to their scaremongering. Part of the reason for this is that pressure groups from the anti-smoking camp were not targeting vapers, so there was no money or profit in promoting health scare tactics.

 

If you want further proof that some anti-smoking groups are actually supporting vaping, then take a look at the propaganda put out by the British Heart Foundation who made a very big noise about how non-smokers should “NOT” start vaping, yet have made it clear here that their secret agenda is to convert cigarette smokers into vapers. Here is a rather telling line from the same article, “Within just one month of ditching tobacco for electronic cigarettes, people’s blood vessel health had started to recover”

Will The World Turn on Vapers When Drugs Are Involved

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Many people have tried vaping with the addition of drugs, and even though it is possible, it is just not as good as traditional drug taking methods (bongs, spliffs, etc.). Ergo, the vape-drug trend never really took off. But, if it did, would it spell the end of vaping?

 

People in the Middle East have been using a “Hookah” also known as the Qalyân for hundreds of years as a way to smoke drugs. The notion of vape-smoking drugs is not new, and so is unlikely to take off as a new trend any time soon. Yet the real enemy is “image.”

 

Vaping is popular and is not seen as a drug-taking methodology. When people see other people vaping, they do not assume they are smoking drugs. Vaping has a clean image, and unless a massive trend for smoking drugs using vaping starts up, then vaping is probably safe at the moment from pressure groups and from the sort of hate campaigns that have plagued the cigarette smoking community. Or perhaps not.