What is dumb and true?

[Berylanna]

I have noticed the media, Congresscritters, and others we need to convince seem to be able to understand sound bites and visual images, but will be lost immediately by long treatises and logic. And most of them don't have time to stop, look, and listen.

So, what can I say that is easy, idiot-proof, visual, but still supportable by science? Is there an "Ask Dr. Phillips" blog anywhere?

For instance, instead of saying "e-liquid contains blah blah, there was a study of exhaled vapor, the FDA is lying because xyz" would it be true to say "Second-hand vapor is no more dangerous than sitting in a restaurant where the cooking is done on-site" ?
and link it to a couple of actual studies?

Can we say "Discouraging e-cigarette use will kill N smokers and M non-smokers in your town per year due to the harm of continuing to use combustibles" ?

(I'm thinking of Petaluma, and also of large airports and outdoor smoking bans being applied to vaping. Given that there is a learning curve and start-up expense for vaping, the act of applying ALL smoking bans to vaping would have the net effect of encouraging smoking.)

Can we say "The American Lung Association is a well-funded organization that actively advocates smoking for people that need e-cigarettes to quit." (See Petaluma....no vaping allowed in your condo....)?

Can we say "N house and apartment fires were prevented last year by e-cigarettes" based upon statistics of smoking-caused fires mixed with numbers of e-cig users these days? What about Snus?

You get the picture. Make pictures. With words. Let them "see it on the radio" as the old ad used to go.

 

[zapped]

Ive always wanted to build two clear plexiglass tanks and put them in a high traffic area. One would have a smoker inside and another someone vaping. Then I'd like to invite normal citizens to go inside each and film their comments afterwards.

Maybe we could even hide the smoker and vaper from sight.

 

[MarVp]

I have noticed the media, Congresscritters, and others we need to convince seem to be able to understand sound bites and visual images, but will be lost immediately by long treatises and logic. And most of them don't have time to stop, look, and listen.

Ive always wanted to build two clear plexiglass tanks and put them in a high traffic area. One would have a smoker inside and another someone vaping. Then I'd like to invite normal citizens to go inside each and film their comments afterwards.

Maybe we could even hide the smoker and vaper from sight.

That's it! Those are the sorts of promotions that would get media coverage. Hopefully the message would transfers across too - not just the action of a stunt. You would have to make sure the message was precise and "bite sized" (i.e well thought out) for the media organizations to digest (as Berylanna has pointed out). May even help to (professionally) film the event yourselves, package it up and send it to the networks with easy to interpret press release.

Does ECF have any marketing guru's on-board? Hope so, because what might be needed now is a co-ordinated effort to start getting the message across. A team of dedicated volunteers whose focus was to assist with these type of events would also be needed. I'm hoping your CASAA is thinking down these lines as a matter of urgency.

 

[rolygate]

I've tried to distill some facts out of the smog in various articles and blog posts on the ECCA site, for example:

THR - An Explanation

It finishes up with a nice pithy quote from Carl Phillips that is probably the sort of thing you are talking about.

One excellent development is that it looks as if CASAA now has the funding to look at a modest media campaign to put our perspective across. We might also think about trying to get all the other diverse players together to join in with this, as it is now time to move on this process. For example CASAA, ECF, community sites and trade associations could put their heads together on this now, it is the right time.

 

[Berylanna]

I've tried to distill some facts out of the smog in various articles and blog posts on the ECCA site, for example:

THR - An Explanation

It finishes up with a nice pithy quote from Carl Phillips that is probably the sort of thing you are talking about.

One excellent development is that it looks as if CASAA now has the funding to look at a modest media campaign to put our perspective across. We might also think about trying to get all the other diverse players together to join in with this, as it is now time to move on this process. For example CASAA, ECF, community sites and trade associations could put their heads together on this now, it is the right time.

I cut this way down here, hoping it would then be "fair use", but this is from your link and I LOVE it!

What if we were tea smokers instead of tea drinkers?

If we all smoked tea instead of drinking it, and we did this instead of smoking tobacco, what would be the results? Exactly the same as tobacco smoking: widescale disease and death;

Nevertheless, advocates of tea drinking would receive exactly the same opposition, from the same quarters, as advocates of THR do today. Above all, the pharmaceutical industry would have a huge investment in preserving the status quo. The reasons for this are explained next.

 

[rolygate]

Yeah, there is nothing like a punchy analogy or basic hard-hitting facts. Love 'em!

The whole area is way too complicated, we need to distill out the core issues and make them very clear. There's a nice quote from Carl Phillips in there that does the job well; plus the Malignant Circle thing is also good. And the Tea Harm Reduction thing is very clear on why we have a problem, too. It's funny too, so a win-win there. Most of the stats and stuff is way too dry and dusty for many readers. I used to hate stats until these ones got up and hit me in the face. Can't really avoid them because of that, but most people don't like stats and for good reason. Nice juicy analogies and quotes might work better.

 

[MarVp]

One excellent development is that it looks as if CASAA now has the funding to look at a modest media campaign to put our perspective across. We might also think about trying to get all the other diverse players together to join in with this, as it is now time to move on this process. For example CASAA, ECF, community sites and trade associations could put their heads together on this now, it is the right time.

That is very heartening! It would be great news if a collective becomes organized for the purposes of public campaigning, both to the wider public and e-cig/snus consumers. I would certainly donate if such an entity was set up as long as it had clear goals of educating the public through advertising and other media strategies. I envisage that the more people made aware that Tobacco Harm Reduction works would be directly proportional to lives saved. What is obvious is the vast majority of smokers are not aware of the much safer alternatives and secondly, everyone (smokers and non-smokers) have an uncle Bob or aunt Bessie whom they are deeply concerned about because they observe their declining health and struggles with smoking.

A co-ordinated strategy would be great as education would likely need to be started from the beginning. You couldn't come out hitting directly at big-Pharma, NGO's or the FDA as most the public are unaware of what has been going on behind those scenes. Speak the truth, educate the public and then the word will get around.

A collective of retailers and trade associations would mean (localized) information could be sent out to every e-cig/snus consumer (with their latest order) at important times, such as when a partition needs to be signed, event be supported or letter sent to politician. Simple cards could be produced with basic information on why and how to voice your opinion and shipped to the different retailers for inclusion with customers orders as per the location they live. The card would also contain a QR code so (tech-savvy) smart phone owners could quickly and easily follow a link to the on-line resource.

 

[Rickajho]

I sure appreciate the concept. But putting politicians and logical arguments in the same room and then adding visual aids... Makes heads explode. Too messy.

 

[MarVp]

Point taken yes would be messy!

 

[rolygate]

The time is right now to start on the process of putting the THR message in the public eye. The later we leave this, the bigger the obstacles get.

The key to this will be to speak to people who have never heard that such a debate exists, and who have no idea that there are valid alternatives to smoking. Currently we are preaching to the converted, mainly because it's free. That has to stop - we need to move out into the wider world.

 

[MarVp]

Count me in! I'm sure there will be many others too.

I think the beauty of this is that it's just about the same story right around the globe. This might make some sort of global THR collective a good approach. We need to create education and media strategies and then apply them back to all the regions.

Wouldn't it be great if it became common knowledge the sorts of things we know... Tobacco could be De-demonized by educating people with the facts, such as that it contains no cancer causing agents until such time as the leaf is fermented during curing, which is why Snus is effectively benign. The amount of times I have heard ANTZ representatives interchange the words Cigarette and Tobacco causing them to be used in incorrect contexts really makes me cringe.

 

[Berylanna]

The time is right now to start on the process of putting the THR message in the public eye. The later we leave this, the bigger the obstacles get.

The key to this will be to speak to people who have never heard that such a debate exists, and who have no idea that there are valid alternatives to smoking. Currently we are preaching to the converted, mainly because it's free. That has to stop - we need to move out into the wider world.

All this is already going on, it's called CASAA. Join and go to meetings. I finally attended one, then had to miss the last 2-3 because of family obligations, and same goes for the next one I think.

But I've just realized that WE ARE ALL NERDS. So we keep overestimating the value of logic and proof. The general public cares about approval, not proof. So, I was hoping folks could think up some great visuals, and hoping the people that have all the THR facts and statistics could correct and/or bless them.

Hence....dumb AND true.

 

[rolygate]

Beryl, you will see me at the CASAA meetings, where I handle EU issues or ECF-related topics.

In the above post, what I'm referring to is that our community does not have a media message currently being presented to the public at large; we mainly preach to the choir, as most of our publicity only reaches those already interested in the topic.

What we now need to do is try to reach the general public, who have never heard of THR or that there is any consumer alternative to cigarette smoking.

For example if you told the average person on the street - or even the average smoker come to that - that in Sweden there are 45% less smokers than here because there is a much safer option available to them for consuming tobacco, and that because of this they have the lowest smoking-related death rate of any developed country by a wide margin, then I'm fairly certain that you would be met with a blank stare. They wouldn't have a clue what you are talking about.

My argument is that this situation is fundamentally wrong, and that it can only be fixed by addressing the wider public rather than those of us who already know about it. I'm basically talking about an advertising campaign although that's not really the right term.

The reason I'm bringing this up right now is that the funds are now there; and we can't wait any longer, due to various developments in the pipeline.

 

[Berylanna]

I have an idea for a web cartoon (1-shot, total about 8 panels) but I can't draw for ...... I don't want to talk about the idea in public, though.

But the point of this thread is not whether or not to campaign, it is HOW. We need to be pithy, funny, to the point in a manner that would get through to a woman with 4 kids screaming at her or a guy in a bar with 4 drinks under his belt -- AND they'd have to like it enough to repeat it to their friends. Because CASAA does NOT have the money to try to convert all the non-nerds in the world to nerds, which means forget left-brain logic, it has to be REFLEXIVE logic.

 

[sonicdsl]

On that topic, see this post I made in the CASAA sub-forum.

 

[MarVp]

Just had a thought that we need an International Tobacco Harm Reduction Day that everybody interested in Tobacco Harm Reduction can own. Started a thread over here... http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...international-tobacco-harm-reduction-day.html

 

[Berylanna]

I saw a GREAT analogy in an EU magazine, but I can't figure out if I saw it on ECF or casaa.org, so I googled for it:


http://rodutobaccotruth.blogspot.com/2013/02/making-european-case-for-snus.html

Imagine this news story: “As Sweden celebrates the fifty-third anniversary of the seat belt as a standard accessory in Volvos, the European Commission health directorate reiterated its seatbelt ban for all other EU countries. ‘All automobiles are dangerous; seat belts have not been proven to make cars safer and may promote riskier driving,’ said the EU health commissioner.

 

[freakindahouse]

Hi, all,

While this may not be quite what you are after, we have produced a 2-sided handout that might be useful. It can be downloaded from our site: http://ecita.org.uk/a4 2 sided handout feb 2013.pdf

Obviously, it's more concerned with the EU/UK situation, but as someone pointed out earlier in this thread: this is a global issue and is affecting all of us! Many of the arguments would translate, so help yourselves if you want to use any of it.

There is also now a free downloadable book of all the collated studies and research about ecigs here: http://ecita.org.uk/collated scientific research on electronic cigarettes feb 2013.pdf

I hope this is helpful.

Cheers,

Katherine

 

[Berylanna]

I was trying to "hide" this but I give up. I'm now trying to develop cartoons because I think text is just not doing the job (though I will probably take your 2-sider to an event this weekend if I think they'll "get it", they are not vapers.)

So I did a snus cartoon, I commissioned my sister to draw it and I filled out the text. Please note that Tonio Borg is the current leader of the "ban snus and ecigs" movement as the EU Health Commissioner.


View attachment 178710

I've got more ecig-related ones planned but for now, consider the above cartoon free for reuse without modification (other than size or density), I'd really like to see it viral in the EU before Feb 23 or whenever they vote on the Tobacco Directive.

 

[Berylanna]

I thought of another one. I have read examples like "Outlawing vaping is like telling people on the Titanic to stay off the lifeboats because they have not been long-term tested" and "Outlawing snus is like outlawing seat belts because people have been injured while wearing seatbelts, and providing seat belts might encourage reckless driving."

But as nice as those images are, they are too extreme for a lot of folks (though I still would like to make cartoons out of them.)

How about "Would you let your child who drinks milk and water and fruit juice start drinking Coke or Pepsi all day? No, you wouldn't. But would you tell your uncle who drinks whiskey all day that Pepsi is not a safe alternative to whiskey if he was thinking of switching?"