Vaping is the future, its are right, we should not be complacent.

[Wickless]

Strong words, Eh?

I mean every word of it. We have two factions that are essentially going to end up going to war with each other.

1) the consumer, the voter

In this instance, smokers make up (lets just say) 10% of the population. A huge percent of this population will transition to vaping. You know how you feel when you were jonsin and couldn't find your smokes? Its a powerful feeling. 10% of the population driven by that same powerful feeling has a lot of power in the United States court of law. If the vaping population gets bigger at a fast enough rate, we might stand a chance.

2) The people who benefit from smoking.

The obvious: Big TObacco.


The not so obvious:

Cancer FOundations (Guess who are some of the biggest financial supporters of Cancer foundations.): To justify all the havoc their product reiks, Big TObacco supports these sort of organizations. Their opinion will be biased against vaping, they will be geared to help big tobacco in one way or another.

Pharmacutical Companies: We pay big tobacco to kill us and then we pay the pharmaceutical companies to try and fix us back up. COPD, Cancer treatments. High Blood PRessure. High Cholesteral. All kinds of stuff.



Just these organizations have a powerful influence on politicians.

Man, the next few years are going to be rocky, but if the government screams freedom when they allowed the cancerous, nicotine-laden death sticks to be sold on every street corner, then we damn well better scream louder now that theirs a safer alternative to save us.

Power to the people!

 

[Susan~S]

Hello and welcome to the forum Wickless. Glad to have you here!

Here's a link for you: CASAA - The Consumer Advocates for Smoke-free Alternatives Association

 

[Jwaterski]

You left out the one entity with the most to lose when anyone switches from cig's to vaping, ever pay much attention to the taxes on cigarettes?

 

[Tygear]

Well said We need to be heard

 

[malaki66]

im a month plus off of analogs and love vaping. I love that I feel so much better physically and mentally i feel good about myself. Makes me extremely nervous to enjoying vaping this much, and not smoking, just to lose the ability to continue to do so because of politics and money hungry corporations

 

[zahzoo]

Nice thoughts... but the logic is a little off.

Approximately 18% of the US population out of 318 million smokes. There's no available figures on what percentage of that group has made the change to vaping. But cigarette sales in the last 2 years have only dropped a couple of percent... so it's safe to assume optimistically maybe 10-20% of the smoking population has entered the e-cigarette market.

While that sub-group may include several thousands of people... the other 72% or 229 million don't smoke and don't have a vested interest in this industry beyond maybe some well wishes for improved health and those involved in the retail market.

In the context of shear numbers... we're not much of a force to influence social change and with the millions of available cash and lobbying strength from the Tobacco and Pharmaceutical industries not to mention the overriding tobacco tax funding at risk at local, state & federal levels... It's not easy to build much confidence in winning many battles at a government level.

There's nothing that says vaping is our right... At the moment, we are just darn lucky and should take full advantage of this free, unregulated market while it lasts... Join CASAA and become a voice. Change is approaching... but there's a steep hill ahead.