Quoted for truth and for emphasis. I'm going to re-quote my favorite line in bold because it's the one that inspired the rest of my post.
"Perpetuating lies because we're too scared to question so-called authority or to refute false statements is both lazy and defeatist."
There are some lies which, if allowed to pass unchallenged, can do tremendous harm.
Letting it pass when a father tries to explain away the hand-shaped bruises on his son's arms and legs by saying his son falls a lot is to passively condone child abuse.
Letting it pass when a woman with a black eye tells you,
"He loves me, it's just that he gets mad because of stress at his job" is to passively condone domestic violence.
Letting it pass when someone tells you that people of a particular race are "less than we are" is to passively condone racism.
Letting it pass when someone says or acts as if e-cigs are toxic is to silently condone the oppression of a potential cure for the global pandemic of tobacco addiction. An addiction that has killed ONE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE in the 20th century. An addiction that is expected to kill TEN TIMES THAT MANY in the 21st century
1.
How many more people have to die before those with authority will finally stand up and say,
"Maybe now is the time to change our strategies, because none of our strategies are working. More and more people are saying that using e-cigs 'saved their life', and more and more scientists are saying that e-cigs are not toxic to anyone. Let's take a closer look at e-cigs as a potential cure to this crisis."
Only if e-cigs are not completely trampled out of society might our leaders one day consider that perhaps e-cigs can do what a growing number of people will be saying they can do: Provide the most effective smoking cessation method in the history of tobacco use.
This is why we should never let it pass when ANYONE speaks wrongly about e-cigarettes. If it's the people in your company's HR department who are doing it, what you should do is
always obey their rules to the letter, and then
help educate them in a very respectful and constructive manner. Show them how e-cigs work. Show them that there are five chemical ingredients in most e-cigs, and provide concise information about each ingredient to demonstrate that there is nothing toxic in an e-cig. Show them concise information from scientific studies which show that those ingredients in second-hand vapor don't even come close to toxic levels when exhaled by an e-cig user. Show them how e-cigs can save lives, and how they in fact
are saving lives.
I think we get blinded sometimes by the "hobby" aspect of vaping. We love our myriad gear. We love our myriad e-juices. Yes, vaping has become a hobby for many of us, but it's not JUST a hobby. Vaping is important to human society. And it's not something at which people should turn up their noses simply because they heard exaggerated or blatantly incorrect information on the six-o'clock news.
E-cigs can - and God-willing,
will - save millions of lives in this century if, and only if, governments and commercial entities stop blocking their use, and instead learn verifiable facts about e-cigs so that they will know that vaping is not toxic to anyone, not to the vaper and not to the non-vaper standing nearby.
If our government and corporate leaders make it difficult for smokers to switch to e-cigs, a completely preventable tragedy will ensue.
If I were JasonK94Z, I would schedule a 30-minute meeting with my HR director. Half-an-hour is a reasonably small burden on a busy schedule, but it would give me enough time to present the information I described above, and to answer quite a few questions as well before the time is up.
You never know whether you can change a person's mind until you try.
1 Source: The American Cancer Society
P.S.: JasonK94Z, that's a hot looking bike in your avatar. I'm speaking as someone who has never ridden, but wants to more and more each year that passes. First book I sell, I swear I'm buying a bike.
The ignorance stated in the policy has really ...... me off!
