Will somebody please think of the adults?
Sep 11 2014
Filed In: Uncategorized
I want to tell you about something that happened to me the other day as I was going about my business visiting a client in their offices. Yes I do have a job – despite being repeatedly told by eminent public health figures that I am somehow in the employ of Big Tobacco and Big Vapor their checks never seem to come through and so, as much as I dislike doing so, I have to supplement my income with a real job. As opposed to one that exists only in the imaginations of some of the smartest people in the land. A girl gotta eat.
I digress. Get on with the anecdote, Joanne.
Sorry. I keep doing that. It’s like the time I was at the airport, went for coffee, and wound up buying… oops. Doing it again. So anyway, my anecdote. Which is entirely factual but, as I didn’t shoot several hours of video and take sworn affidavits to support its veracity, we’re just going to have to leave it filed under anecdote. Well, it goes like this. I arrived at the client’s office for my late afternoon appointment, parked my car somewhere I shouldn’t have and, pausing only to stash my e-cigarette in the little compartment that I presume was designed for sunglasses or something, bounded up the stairs to their office. Except it was late afternoon and so I didn’t bound up the stairs. Sauntered would probably be more accurate. Let me just add at this point that whenever I have visited this particular client in the past, and a brief check through my Outlook tells me that the last time was 10 months ago, I have always been greeted by at least one of the six people who work there standing outside, shiftily smoking a cigarette. That didn’t happen this time, which made me think that I had got my times mixed up and they had all gone home. Mildly disconcerting.
And then it all became clear.
The first thing I saw upon breezing into the office – except I didn’t breeze, I kind of pushed the door open sighing heavily because it was late afternoon – was one of the people who work there behind her iMac gripping between her teeth an e-cigarette colored an almost impossible shade of green. The e-cigarette was green, not her.
I was… well, I don’t know. Mildly surprised? Of course, I wanted to demonstrate my solidarity and so I commented on this, adding that I had left mine in the car. “We’re all on these now”, she replied. “Mike held out longest but even he cracked in the end”. And with that, I sat down and commenced with the meeting I had come to have.
Given that the office in question doesn’t have a meeting room, rather it’s an open and informal workspace, I was able to discreetly observe what everybody was using. Make that five ego/ clearomizer combinations, and an SVD with what I think was an Aerotank of some description on top of it. Not a cig-a-like in sight. Now, I understand only too well that six people in an office in the North West of England is hardly a representative sample of the wider population, but I found this interesting all the same.
As proceedings drew to a close, I thought it would be fun to conduct a quick straw poll on flavors amongst my impromptu and entirely unrepresentative sample, and so, in my customary retiring manner I quizzed everybody to find out what they had in them. The results are in, and are as follows:
Odd results, given that adults don’t like flavors other than tobacco. Odder still was that Mike, he who was the “last to crack”, added that he started out with a tobacco flavor but after a couple of weeks couldn’t deal with it as it tasted like… no I’m not even going to publish the metaphor he used. But he didn’t like that flavor.
Wait… what? Those are hardly flavors for adults. Are they?
Well yes actually they are. As we all know, everybody likes flavors. That’s why we are designed the way we are, with a sense of taste. It’s hardly rocket surgery is it? When a public health talking head is wheeled out on TV or radio, or in the press, to tell you that adults don’t like nice flavors it’s nothing more than bluster. It’s like saying black is white. It’s so patently untrue that you have to question the regard in which some people hold the intelligence of the public whose health they claim to serve.
While we’re at it, let’s spend a few moments on the public health approved flavor option – tobacco. I have absolutely no idea how many smokers actually smoke for the taste of tobacco. I suspect it’s an infinitesmally small number. What I do know is that to reproduce that taste of burning leaves and paper in vapor form is something that, if not impossible, has never been achieved to date. So-called tobacco flavors taste nothing like lit tobacco. Nothing at all. The ones I have tried myself range in flavor from something vaguely reminiscent of a cookie to something else entirely different and utterly revolting. But still, nothing like tobacco. If the people calling for tobacco to be the only flavor option available were paying attention, they would know this.
Of course, in order to know this, and so many other things about e-cigarettes, there needs to be formal study into them. With this in mind, you really have to question the wisdom and ethics of a public health professor whose policy of discouraging PhD students from research into e-cigarettes is a matter of public record. Would some of those students’ studies cover flavors and adult appeal? You betcha they would, somewhere along the line. It’s such a fundamental and organic element of study into e-cigarettes that as to be inconceivable that it wouldn’t form part of such studies. So don’t throw this nonsense at me that “we don’t know what’s in them” or that “these are not adult flavors” until you get off your high horse and engage with reality.
But… the adults!
Yes, let’s get back to the adults. In particular, “my” tiny group of six adults, all blissfully unaware of public health machinations to get their preferred flavors outlawed on the remote offchance that by using them they are corrupting untold generations of children. These six people are all regular, relatively well adjusted adults with no knowledge (and probably even less interest in) the politics and ideologies surrounding their recreational use of nicotine in a harm reduced form when compared to smoking cigarettes. In fact, the common sentiment expressed amongst them was that they were just happy to be off cigarettes, for all manner of reasons ranging from cost to the benefits they had experienced at first hand to their personal feeling of wellbeing.
What I would like to do now is imagine a scenario in which these six people wake up one morning, and visit the store where they buy their e-cigarette supplies from. Where they are told, quite unexpectedly, that the flavors they have been enjoying for some considerable length of time are no longer available because somebody, somewhere, had a hunch that they were attracting children to using e-cigarettes.
Some may shrug, buy the shiny new PH approved tobacco flavors, and get on with their lives. Albeit a life with slightly less pleasure in it. Others may wonder “what’s the point of this then?”, and return to smoking. Of course there is no hard evidence to support this latter idea but it is entirely possible.
Is that a risk worth taking, given that it’s basis exists in nothing more than ideologically driven supposition? I’m not sure I can be convinced that it is. I’m fairly sure that I would return to smoking if all I were allowed to use was some bizarre mystery flavor whose only relation to tobacco was the name given to the flavor on its label.
It’s time we really started to think about the adults who are by an overwhelming majority those most attracted to, and the primary users of, electronic cigarettes. Most of all we need to think of those adults who represent the average, most numerous, user. Those who would have no idea about what to do if it were all taken away from them. They are the ones who stand to lose the most if their choices are arbitrarily taken away from them because of flimsy and unsupported excuses.
source:http://www.redheadfullofsteam.com/will-somebody-please-think-of-the-adults/
Sep 11 2014
Filed In: Uncategorized
I want to tell you about something that happened to me the other day as I was going about my business visiting a client in their offices. Yes I do have a job – despite being repeatedly told by eminent public health figures that I am somehow in the employ of Big Tobacco and Big Vapor their checks never seem to come through and so, as much as I dislike doing so, I have to supplement my income with a real job. As opposed to one that exists only in the imaginations of some of the smartest people in the land. A girl gotta eat.
I digress. Get on with the anecdote, Joanne.
Sorry. I keep doing that. It’s like the time I was at the airport, went for coffee, and wound up buying… oops. Doing it again. So anyway, my anecdote. Which is entirely factual but, as I didn’t shoot several hours of video and take sworn affidavits to support its veracity, we’re just going to have to leave it filed under anecdote. Well, it goes like this. I arrived at the client’s office for my late afternoon appointment, parked my car somewhere I shouldn’t have and, pausing only to stash my e-cigarette in the little compartment that I presume was designed for sunglasses or something, bounded up the stairs to their office. Except it was late afternoon and so I didn’t bound up the stairs. Sauntered would probably be more accurate. Let me just add at this point that whenever I have visited this particular client in the past, and a brief check through my Outlook tells me that the last time was 10 months ago, I have always been greeted by at least one of the six people who work there standing outside, shiftily smoking a cigarette. That didn’t happen this time, which made me think that I had got my times mixed up and they had all gone home. Mildly disconcerting.
And then it all became clear.
The first thing I saw upon breezing into the office – except I didn’t breeze, I kind of pushed the door open sighing heavily because it was late afternoon – was one of the people who work there behind her iMac gripping between her teeth an e-cigarette colored an almost impossible shade of green. The e-cigarette was green, not her.
I was… well, I don’t know. Mildly surprised? Of course, I wanted to demonstrate my solidarity and so I commented on this, adding that I had left mine in the car. “We’re all on these now”, she replied. “Mike held out longest but even he cracked in the end”. And with that, I sat down and commenced with the meeting I had come to have.
Given that the office in question doesn’t have a meeting room, rather it’s an open and informal workspace, I was able to discreetly observe what everybody was using. Make that five ego/ clearomizer combinations, and an SVD with what I think was an Aerotank of some description on top of it. Not a cig-a-like in sight. Now, I understand only too well that six people in an office in the North West of England is hardly a representative sample of the wider population, but I found this interesting all the same.
As proceedings drew to a close, I thought it would be fun to conduct a quick straw poll on flavors amongst my impromptu and entirely unrepresentative sample, and so, in my customary retiring manner I quizzed everybody to find out what they had in them. The results are in, and are as follows:
- Watermelon x 2
- Cherry
- Cola
- Strawberry
- “It’s supposed to be apple but it tastes just like Jelly Babies to me”
Odd results, given that adults don’t like flavors other than tobacco. Odder still was that Mike, he who was the “last to crack”, added that he started out with a tobacco flavor but after a couple of weeks couldn’t deal with it as it tasted like… no I’m not even going to publish the metaphor he used. But he didn’t like that flavor.
Wait… what? Those are hardly flavors for adults. Are they?
Well yes actually they are. As we all know, everybody likes flavors. That’s why we are designed the way we are, with a sense of taste. It’s hardly rocket surgery is it? When a public health talking head is wheeled out on TV or radio, or in the press, to tell you that adults don’t like nice flavors it’s nothing more than bluster. It’s like saying black is white. It’s so patently untrue that you have to question the regard in which some people hold the intelligence of the public whose health they claim to serve.
While we’re at it, let’s spend a few moments on the public health approved flavor option – tobacco. I have absolutely no idea how many smokers actually smoke for the taste of tobacco. I suspect it’s an infinitesmally small number. What I do know is that to reproduce that taste of burning leaves and paper in vapor form is something that, if not impossible, has never been achieved to date. So-called tobacco flavors taste nothing like lit tobacco. Nothing at all. The ones I have tried myself range in flavor from something vaguely reminiscent of a cookie to something else entirely different and utterly revolting. But still, nothing like tobacco. If the people calling for tobacco to be the only flavor option available were paying attention, they would know this.
Of course, in order to know this, and so many other things about e-cigarettes, there needs to be formal study into them. With this in mind, you really have to question the wisdom and ethics of a public health professor whose policy of discouraging PhD students from research into e-cigarettes is a matter of public record. Would some of those students’ studies cover flavors and adult appeal? You betcha they would, somewhere along the line. It’s such a fundamental and organic element of study into e-cigarettes that as to be inconceivable that it wouldn’t form part of such studies. So don’t throw this nonsense at me that “we don’t know what’s in them” or that “these are not adult flavors” until you get off your high horse and engage with reality.
But… the adults!
Yes, let’s get back to the adults. In particular, “my” tiny group of six adults, all blissfully unaware of public health machinations to get their preferred flavors outlawed on the remote offchance that by using them they are corrupting untold generations of children. These six people are all regular, relatively well adjusted adults with no knowledge (and probably even less interest in) the politics and ideologies surrounding their recreational use of nicotine in a harm reduced form when compared to smoking cigarettes. In fact, the common sentiment expressed amongst them was that they were just happy to be off cigarettes, for all manner of reasons ranging from cost to the benefits they had experienced at first hand to their personal feeling of wellbeing.
What I would like to do now is imagine a scenario in which these six people wake up one morning, and visit the store where they buy their e-cigarette supplies from. Where they are told, quite unexpectedly, that the flavors they have been enjoying for some considerable length of time are no longer available because somebody, somewhere, had a hunch that they were attracting children to using e-cigarettes.
Some may shrug, buy the shiny new PH approved tobacco flavors, and get on with their lives. Albeit a life with slightly less pleasure in it. Others may wonder “what’s the point of this then?”, and return to smoking. Of course there is no hard evidence to support this latter idea but it is entirely possible.
Is that a risk worth taking, given that it’s basis exists in nothing more than ideologically driven supposition? I’m not sure I can be convinced that it is. I’m fairly sure that I would return to smoking if all I were allowed to use was some bizarre mystery flavor whose only relation to tobacco was the name given to the flavor on its label.
It’s time we really started to think about the adults who are by an overwhelming majority those most attracted to, and the primary users of, electronic cigarettes. Most of all we need to think of those adults who represent the average, most numerous, user. Those who would have no idea about what to do if it were all taken away from them. They are the ones who stand to lose the most if their choices are arbitrarily taken away from them because of flimsy and unsupported excuses.
source:http://www.redheadfullofsteam.com/will-somebody-please-think-of-the-adults/
