memnoc said:
Lets just get back to the point. E-cig use should take over traditional cig use solely because of the health benefits. If that is the case, why wont Big Tobacco try to create their own e-cig? If they lose real smokers and gain e-smokers its a win for both sides. How hard is that tio understand?
I hear what you're sayin', memnoc, and I agree with you that it would seem to make sense for Big Tobacco to become Big-Whatever-Best-Delivers-A-Super-Addictive-Drug-And-Doesn't-Make-Us-Look-Like-Disney-Movie-Super-Villains. Yet, it appears that Big Tobacco doesn't think like you and I think. It appears that they, sadly, think more along the lines of what Tropical Bob and Cashmere are saying. I offer the following as proof:
I invented e-smoking. Years ago.
Before you treat me like a loon, hear me out, please.
I smoked fairly regularly (although lightly) until I got married. I'd managed to hide my smoking from fiancee, but now that she was my wife, it just didn't feel right. So I confessed my habit to her. Obviously, she was not pleased. She didn't nag me about it, but she made it clear that she'd like to have me around past the age of 35, and that being severely overweight AND a smoker was not the right way to go about meeting that goal.
So, fast-forward a few months, and I'm out on the front porch with my older brother on a Saturday evening, ...... off because I'm in the middle of one of my first few quit attempts, my brother is smoking, and I really want a friggin' cigarette. I'm ranting and raving about the tobacco companies:
"Why the *bleepity bleep* are cigarettes so *bleepity bleepin'* dangerous? For freakin' sakes, this is the year 2005, and we can't come up up with a better way to get people their nicotine in an enjoyable way other than to roll up some *bleepity bleepin'*
leaves and
set them on FIRE?! What are we,
cavemen?! And don't give me this nicotine gum/lozenge *bleepity bleep*. Can I blow smoke rings with a lozenge? Do those things even come anywhere
near satisfying
any of the rituals and habits of smoking? *bleepity bleep* NO! Asthmatics have been inhaling stuff for years, why can't we have something like that?! How about you just have a device that vaporizes a small amount of nicotine whenever you suck on it? And then you could just buy little refill containers when you run out of nicotine? C'mon, Big *bleepity bleepin'* Tobacco! Get to work on that. You don't
have to actively kill your best customers! *Bleep*!"
Can you tell I hadn't had a cigarette in a while?
That's all in took. It took one halfway intelligent dude being fed up with not being able to lite up because cigarettes are so freaking dangerous to birth the idea of the electronic cigarette. It didn't take billions of dollars and a genius research team. Yet, Big Tobacco
has billions of dollars and genius research teams, and all they can come up with is, "Here, we made this lighter cigarette. It only kills you a little bit now! Holy crap are we great or what?!"
My point is, this is not rocket science... it's easy stuff that they should have been looking into years ago. The fact that they obviously haven't tells me that they just don't care to. They, like most people, don't want to change anything unless they absolutely have to change something. Since tobacco is still legal and addictive, I don't see them being interested in changing any time soon.
I'd really like them to prove me wrong though.
