Personally, and I don't think I'm alone on this, the education has to start from within. I mean that in at least 2 ways, but for sake of public discussion, I mean it as we who understand SHS to be hyped up propaganda / deceptive have a duty to educate... our own. Or put another way, how does it benefit us (in the vaping community) if there are many vapers who strongly believe SHS is deadly?
The education I speak of is being done on this thread, here and now (or recent days), but IMO it needs to persist. There are too many vapers, IMO, who either are anti-smoking type people and are fairly vocal about it, or echo anti-smoking rhetoric without backing it up with anything other than pleas to emotion and appeals to authority ("well all the top scientists say thus and so").
It's not just SHS that is the propaganda / deception. Granted first hand smoke is the tougher battle, but it is still a battle worth having. Even that is debatable, but if anyone wishes to explore why that is worth it, I'm game. I think in the long run (and possibly in the immediate term), it will greatly benefit perceptions of vaping and vaping 'rights' or at least keep anti-vaping rhetoric at bay.
I think both can be done, that society in general is educated regardless of how it is perceived within vaping community and the educating within the community. I think 'the within our own ranks education,' is more important and because onlookers might discover our discussions via internet searches, they'll get to see both sides adding to what is already a contentious debate.
I don't think it helps us to have discussion after discussion of 'smoking vs. vaping' as if one is inherently better than the other. Yet, I recognize that is unlikely to change anytime soon. But do wish to state that if that is allowed, it just makes the education I'm getting at tougher, cause smoking/SHS will probably always be seen as the worse activity, therefore (inherently) bad. All this, to me, is the appeal to emotion aspect of the debate. Nothing to back up this type of position other than, "it's not as good as vaping is."
What I think throws a slight wrench into things is the lack of debate around third hand smoke (THS). I like that we all currently recognize that as a huge stretch in logic and pretty much are ready to dismiss it as baseless assertions. I bring this up though because a) I think third hand smoke is front that we've either already won on or are winning, b) while if we did have the debate on it, it would show we aren't closed off to looking at all the purported evidence. I guess I also have issues with the idea that we say THS is essentially a myth, and yet I've seen people (in this thread) claim that smoking indoors is bad precisely because of leftover residue, aka THS.
Which just brings all things (FHS, SHS, and THS) back to the annoying factor. It might be slight annoyance, say for a never smoker, but could be monumental annoyance, even for current or ex-smoker. I currently don't know the intellectual path around the annoyance factor. Wish I did. It can undo a lot of education, but can't eliminate the idea that lies/spin are occurring, and so like all things annoying, could add some perspective. Cause in shared reality, all things (literally all things) are possibly open to the annoyance factor. Bad science is annoying and when good science makes errors, it looks like bad science, and thus science itself is open to the annoyance factor. If that is for some people annoying, then really there is nothing that can be named that isn't annoying to at least some people. But realizing that (that all things are annoying, for some) I think helps put into perspective how not so overly annoying any aspect of smoking is, regardless of who's claiming it is monumentally annoying.
