I would like to note that all the headlines I've come up with in this thread don't make a direct comparison between vaping and smoking. IMO, that comparison is not all that incendiary. I do think the comparison between the 2 activities is very challenging to avoid and does serve us, at times, to help discuss, debate, and correct a certain branch of lies and overreach by our opposition.
But tobacco control proponents and/or anti-vapers aren't just going in that direction to wage the battle. The flavor argument, from their perspective, isn't about smoking IMO, but is about nicotine. The limit on nicotine in eCigs isn't about smoking. The statements like 'ecigs are dangerous' (cause we don't know what's in them) isn't making that comparison to smoking.
I think a way to help understand where they are coming from is to imagine fellow humans who vape some substance that is a poison (perhaps think of an illegal drug here that you actually consider dangerous for humans to put in their body). Now, it would be likely deemed safer by those users, that they now vape it instead of smoke it. To the people outside of that community, it wouldn't be just about that it was once smoked. It would be about the idea that if it is vaped, it is still stupid/dangerous to consider it as not all that bad.
There's only so far I can make this point I'm making, because I do think it is very challenging to avoid the history of smoking as it relates to vaping. And I do see that the opposition is using some of same tactics / deceptive motives to control vaping as was used to control smoking. Plus some are coming outright and making the comparison directly (i.e. treat them the same when it comes to usage bans).
I just think that at a certain point of this larger debate, it helps if one realizes they were being highly deceptive about the 'facts' around smoking, which lead to a whole lot of mass conditioning (brainwashing) and is then setting us up to make false comparisons to some degree. In my opinion, comparing vaping to smoking, is often like comparing the general impression of walking thru a park with some well ingrained perception around skateboarding, in the dark, without any padding, on the bad side of town, while juggling knives. And our opposition is actually trying to convey that walking thru the park is dangerous cause we don't know what's in the park. While some others might try to say, walking thru the park is no different than the skateboarding activity, I think most don't say that cause they realize rest of society can see the obvious difference.
I also don't think it helps our cause (in matter of debate) to convey, by way of the analogy above, that if I am not allowed to walk thru that park, then I'll be forced to go back to skateboarding. In the dark. While I juggle knives. It is an incendiary comment, but one that I think seems hard to connect when looked at from the outside in.
Especially when we are the ones now saying the skateboard activity is inherently bad because of just how large and sharp those knives are.
I guess from my perspective, as a dual user, who walks in the park and still skateboards, it sometimes doesn't sit well with me, especially as I've learned you can skateboard in the day, on another side of town, and hold onto the knife as if it isn't some crap shoot that you're automatically engaged in.
