Vaping Advocacy - What do I Care?
Fri 16 Feb 2018
Well, presumably as you're reading this, you're a vaper and you'd quite like to carry on vaping... But as we're seeing around the world there are laws like the TPD coming into place and we're even seeing countries banning vaping outright, and this is just ridiculous!
I don't want to have to get my tin foil hat out and become too much of a conspiracy theorist, but I think we can all agree that vaping is taking money away from the big tobacco companies and presumably they aren't very happy about this. They are also some of the largest companies in the world, Phillip Morris who own Marlboro had sales of over $47 billion in the year 1999, and so they have rather a huge amount of political pull! We also see slightly worrying stories like this of MPs here in the UK wining and dining tobacco firms.
Source : Tory and DUP MPs Criticised Wining Dining Tobacco Firms
In Canada, which I like to think of as a free-thinking well rounded country it is technically illegal to sell vaping products, thankfully it's widely unenforced, but it's still madness!
A lot of mud is thrown at the vaping community for being appealing to children, and while some very irresponsible companies do brand their wares to look like candy bars or fizzy drinks, the majority of the industry is very responsible and enforced customer ID checks before it was a legal requirement!
Now, there isn't a huge amount we as common citizens can do, but there is something... and you may feel like it's a lot of hassle, but it's really not! We can all write to our representatives in government and let them know how we feel, and tell them in no uncertain terms that unless they support vaping we simply won't support them. Here in the UK we all have a Member of Parliament that represents us, and its very easy to get hold of their office address or email address, it's also just as easy in the USA or Australia.
UK: Contact Your MP
Australia: Guidelines for Contacting Senators and Members
Now, I'd like to stress here, we're not contacting these people to shout at them or give any kind of abuse, but instead we need to send them a nice, happy email, letting them know in no uncertain terms if they don't support vaping then you won't support them.
We see articles all the time telling us all the time that vaping is lethal and that it will kill us, (I, however, refuse to link to the most recent article, as it was utter nonsense). We do also see pieces from the likes of Cancer Research UK that wholeheartedly advise vaping and tell us that it is far safer than smoking!
In short, if you want to keep vaping, you need to fight for your rights...
Written by new ELFC contect creator The Beardey Vaper
Further reading: Why Vaping Really Matters
