I'm specific in telling them that "I quit smoking cigarettes", so they don't nitpick that I really am still smoking something.
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I go a step further. I don't let them nitpick because it's not nitpicking. It's flat out wrong. I'm NOT smoking anything. If you consider yourself to still be smoking, and you allow other people to hold that misperception, you do us all a disservice.
Vapor is not smoke. No matter what it looks like or what anybody thinks.
Smoke is a particulate product of combustion. Wood smoke is not wood.
Vapor is a differing form of a substance that does not change it's elemental structure. Water vapor is still water.
On a cold day, your breath is not smoke. Your teapot doesn't smoke. You don't use a "smoke" iron to iron clothes and fast food places don't put burgers on a "smoke table".
Only an uneducated child refers to the product of the vaporizer in their bedroom as "smoke".
I just got done reading the first 10 google pages on a search of the term "electronic cigarette safety".
Other than the phony "review" sites, 90% of the other sites were anti e-cigs and a common thread among all of them was that they referred to "smoke", "smoking" and the fact that e-cigs were a bad influence on children because they look like cigarettes and glamorized "smoking", or they gave the impression that "smoking" was safe.
To the average Joe, you didn't quit smoking. You just quit smoking regular cigarettes and now you smoke e-cigarettes. That's a dangerous attitude for us to perpetuate by not making it perfectly clear that we are in no way, shape or form, smoking.
This is not just a matter of semantics. It's far more important than that if you value your right to vape.
We are in a war, people! If a referendum were held to outlaw e-cigs tomorrow, we would lose. Much of the reason is due to the perception of vaping as smoking and the average American's scientific illiteracy, preventing him from knowing the difference between vapor and smoke. The same ignorance is why people don't laugh out loud when e-cigs are included in smoking bans. And it's the reason people are too ignorant to educate their children about the difference between vaping and smoking. Instead, they expect you to go away so that their children don't become confused.
Don't let anyone get away uncorrected when they refer to vapor as smoke. In the end, the war against e-cigs will be won or lost on the basis of public perception. The antis know it and so do their hired PR goons. Now, you do too.
