Effects of Vaping Propaganda in the UK
According to an independent report commissioned by Public Health England, smokers in the UK incorrectly believe that vapes are equally or more harmful than smoking. This is despite the UK governments continuous education and studies showing the opposite.
A huge cause of this is the CDC and their framing of the health problem that happened in the US last year. The deaths from “EVALI” were caused by vaping on vitamin E acetate, which is both illegal in the UK as well as not something that is used in nicotine vaping products anywhere. This substance is a thickening agent usually added to cannabis to dilute the solution in order to save money. What this has caused is countless more smokers to keep smoking and thereby killing themselves. While experts have consistently concluded that using vaping devices are far less harmful than smoking, it raises huge question on why people are refusing to believe the experts?
Confirmation bias is one reason. Smokers see vaping as a change and a challenge that rocks their own view of themselves and the world around them. In the backs of their mind, vaping represents a choice that they don’t want to make but should make because of their health and is the rational switch. However that option also means that every day they don’t make the switch they are being irrational and just wrong.
They want to believe that this is not the case; that they are stuck smoking because there are no better ways of nicotine intake without the negative side effects of smoking cigarettes. These people ignore the truth and latch onto the fake news stories sensationalizing the tragedies that something unrelated to vaping nicotine caused because it’s the easy way to sleep at night.
If this propaganda is working in somewhere much farther from the US and in a country much more progressive towards vaping than Canada, imagine what smokers think here. We have to make sure that we are doing what we can in order to spread the truth about vaping as an alternative to smoking, because public perception is directly connected to regulations. If we want to be able to vape what we want at a price that is reasonable, then spread this blog post and the truth.