There's your headline. It has just two more words than "Mary had a little lamb, whose fleece was white as snow."
That's some pretty effective messaging. Didn't take long for the ANTZ to put it in place, either.
Let's see ... as of Feb 26th, the media was still using phrases like "fears" or "concerns" to describe the meme that teens were targeted by marketing, or the possibility that minors who vaped would become regular smokers.
Two weeks later, those ideas are established "fact[oids]" which are coming to a press outlet near you (even if you don't live in the US).
No more fears ... no more unknowns ... no more concerns. We're now talking about facts that "everybody knows."
***
Putting aside the question of how the effective, well-funded, and professional tobacco Control PR Machine put these memes into place, it seems to me that vapers can only counter them with our own - easy to remember - theme.
How about:
More likely than what or who?
a) More likely than older smokers.
Well, for starters we know that it's harder for older smokers to quit. The data from Dr. F's survey is out there. Maybe what's needed is to evaluate it again. What about the U. OK health center study? The prof who did it (can't remember his name) seemed to be sympathetic to THR. Maybe the Amer. Society of Public Health Physicians [sic?] can help.
b) More likely than young adult smokers who don't try vaping.
This is trickier, because it would require the funding to do better than the Lancet study, which just compared the patch to cheap all-in-ones ("cigalikes"), which is hardly a real world comparision. But perhaps something like this could either be done, or the data might already exist in either Dr. F's survey or elsewhere.
***
It may already be too late to beat the "E-cigarettes are marketed to children, who are seven times more likely to become smokers."
There's an old saying in politics: "When you're explaining, you're losing."
One good catchy headline is worth a whole bookshelf full of explanations. Even if the latter is "correct." This is politics, it's messaging: one can't win with the truth alone. (In fact the truth isn't even necessary, as we've seen recently.)
If we lose the national messaging war, then action at the state and local levels (or the FDA's rules, for that matter) will become increasingly irrelevant. Congress will do the ANTZ' bidding. (Congress could even mandate states' actions on indoor clean air acts - c.f. the 21 y.o. drinking age which was put into place by the threat to withhold state's highway funds.)
***
"Seven times more likely." I like that. And so does the media.
