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On June 5, 2018, the city of San Francisco fell victim to Big Tobacco's brilliant (if underhanded) tactic when misguided voters passed Proposition E, a ban on tobacco products which erroneously included flavored e-liquids for vaping. Despite evidence that e-cigarettes and vaping are much safer options than traditional combustible tobacco use, the madmen of Big Tobacco continuously manage to manipulate voters into throwing out the baby with the bathwater. In this case, they threw out the healthy benefits of flavored e-liquids for vaping with the cancerous hazards of tobacco cigarettes.
In this post, we'll explain how Big Tobacco uses feel-good legislation such as San Francisco's Proposition E and enlists government agencies such as the FDA to encumber the one beneficial industry which can put an end to smoking in very short order if the vaping trend is permitted to continue. You can check out Big Tobacco's arsenal of Big Lies in this article at Vaping 360 titled "9 of the Worst Lies About Vaping in the Media".
A quick look at why Big Tobacco is pulling out all the media stops can explain the motivation behind their rampaging anti-vaping campaign of misinformation. According to this informative article by the BBC, vaping is on the rise worldwide in crucial categories and that phenomenon has Big Tobacco worrying about the dubious future of their traditional and highly profitable cancer sticks.
This is all great news for vapers, but the prospect of 55 million fewer consumers for Big Tobacco within the next three years is prompting their Madison Avenue madmen and CEOs to pull out the big media propaganda guns. Amidst growing concern that vaping will make tobacco smoking as obsolete in the 21st Century as the candle after the invention of the lightbulb was in the 20th, Big Tobacco companies such as Lorillard, Altria (Phillip Morris), and RJ Reynolds will stoop to any level of subterfuge to kill the infant vaping industry.
San Francisco's Proposition E was a campaign of misdirection on both sides. Proponents in favor of repeating the historically disastrous prohibition experiment were led by the deceitfully named group "San Francisco Kids vs Big Tobacco", which ironically isn't comprised of any actual kids at all. The group operating under this emotionally charged misnomer is a coalition of adults playing the ever popular and erroneous "We are protecting youth from addiction" card. (As you'll see further on in this article, there is no evidence that vaping is a gateway to tobacco smoking). According to the group's own website, it allegedly consists of doctors, parents, and community groups all of whom have bought into the vicious myths about vaping perpetrated over the past few decades to benefit who else? Big Tobacco.
With tobacco giant RJ Reynolds publicly providing most of the funding to "oppose" the flavored e-juice ban, Big Tobacco delivered the knee-jerk reaction from well-intended San Francisco voters they were counting on to shut down the small e-liquid entrepreneurs whose healthier products are slowly but surely rescuing smokers from the tar-encrusted clutches of Big Tobacco products. To ensure that no voter was spared the outrage, RJ Reynolds conducted a mailbox campaign with a weak defense of smoking and no defense at all for e-cigs or flavored non-tobacco e-juices for vaping.
After years of devious manipulation of consumers, the minions of Big Tobacco are like PR jiu-jitsu masters. They skillfully use their opponents' revulsion of the cancer-causing, COPD-inducing cigarette industry to their own advantage. Voters have been conditioned to believe that if evil Big Tobacco is for it, we must be against it, and attaching itself parasitically to the vaping industry is one of Big Tobacco's strategic masterstrokes. Including flavored e-liquids for vaping in the notorious category of "flavored tobacco products" was truly a black belt maneuver by the masters of manipulation.
As vaping continues to grow in popularity Big Tobacco is willing to take a few hits to maintain its $35 billion dollar dominance in the nicotine delivery market. Temporary setbacks like San Francisco's ban on menthol and other flavored cigarettes is a price they'll willingly pay if they can cripple the small businesses which make up the majority of the vaping industry to ensure another century of profit in the cancer-inducing combustible tobacco business.
One of the most nefarious strategies used by Big Tobacco is to buy into the vaping business and then appear to shoot themselves in the foot by using labeling scare tactics to demean their own e-cig products. Vaper City's article "Big Tobacco's Hidden Agenda Against Electronic Cigarettes" points out that tobacco companies are attempting to use the FDA as a stooge to increase vaping regulations on e-cigs to "level the playing field" and preserve the health benefits for smokers switching to vaping by preventing "poorly made and potentially dangerous devices to infiltrate the market".
Meanwhile, tobacco giants like Atria infiltrate the vaping market themselves with products such as the Mark Ten e-cig which are issued with ominous 117-word warning labels, ostensibly for "honest transparency" but which in reality serve to level the playing field between e-cigs and Big Tobacco's traditional coffin nails. In contrast, the Marlboro, Virginia Slims, and Parliament cigarettes which Atria also makes in abundance, feature a minimal cautionary message such as, "Nicotine is addictive and habit forming, and is very toxic by inhalation, in contact with the skin, or if swallowed."
Altria conveniently forgets to mention the nasty carcinogens in these traditional tobacco products such as tar or other hazardous addictive ingredients (ammonia for one!) on their benign labels, which by the way they use voluntarily while encouraging the FDA to follow suit with more regulations intended to encumber other e-cig manufacturers. In this way, they can push smaller companies out of the market with a barrage of labeling and packaging regulations that can sink a small business trying to keep pace.
It's quite possible that the decision makers in Big Tobacco have seen the writing on the wall and are now positioning themselves to take over the vaping industry. Lorillard CEO Murray Kessler admitted at a recent Big Tobacco conference in Virginia that vaping could make traditional cigarettes "a thing of the past".
For once we at Velvet Cloud hope this Big Tobacco kingpin is right, and we're doing our best to make the hazardous tobacco cigarette "a thing of the past". We provide the vaping community with the best available 100% vegetable glycerin, vegan-friendly, artisanal quality e-liquids that keep our informed customers coming back for more.
Sadly, this good news is really nothing new which just goes to show how effectively the Big Tobacco anti-vaping media campaign has been at indoctrinating the public consciousness. Research confirming the healthy benefits of vaping versus smoking has been accumulating for decades now.
In an article from the WebMD archives from as far back as 2014, HealthDay News reported that a review of 81 prior studies revealed that e-cigs could cut tobacco-related deaths and illnesses significantly. The study was partially funded by the US National Institutes of Health and published prominently in the journal Addiction.
The senior author of the paper was Dr. Hayden McRobbie, of the prestigious Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine at Queen Mary University of London. The good doctor concluded that:
"No evidence has shown that the vapor produced by e-cigarettes is harmful to users or bystanders in contrast to cigarette smoke. It's not the nicotine in cigarettes that kills people."
The study also debunked the prevailing media myth that e-cigs are a gateway to tobacco smoking. Dr. McRobbie emphasized the finding that "Use of e-cigarettes by people who don't smoke is very rare," adding that:
"There is simply no evidence to support arguments that e-cigarettes are a gateway to smoking".
What the evidence did show is that e-cigarettes enable users to eliminate smoking completely or at the least, significantly reduce their tobacco consumption. In light of these facts, the doctor recommends that e-cigs and vaping liquids should be easily obtained and should not be regulated as heavily as traditional tobacco products.
It's always been the mission of Velvet Cloud to provide the vaping community with a broad spectrum of choices with the highest quality VG e-juices, and it's always been our policy that "nothing weird" finds its way into our vegan-friendly artisanal blends. Our customers know that Velvet Cloud produces e-juice done right, with no artificial colors, no artificial sweeteners, and zero sugar, to produce unique GMO-free, diacetyl-free, gluten-free vaping perfection.
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