The Tobacco Industry's Response To The Vaping Challenge

Vaping: Is this the healthier option?
Source: Vaping360.com

Words cannot describe how happy I was for a friend of mine - we will call him Max for the sake of assigning him a name - when he triumphantly declared to a couple of our mutual acquaintances and myself over a month ago, that he had finally stopped smoking - a habit that he had been slave to for almost ten years. Kicking a long-held habit, especially one that involves the notoriously addictive tar, nicotine and tobacco is no mean feat and I let him know this amidst copious congratulations.
So it was a bit of a surprise to see him smoking outside the gym of which we are both members three days ago. I said it was a bit of a surprise not a major surprise, because as I mentioned earlier, kicking a long-held habit is no mean feat.

"Max, I thought you said you had quit smoking," I had said from afar upon seeing him blow what looked like tobacco smoke into the air and obviously luxuriate in the experience.
"O boy, this is not a cigarette," he had answered when I had gotten close to him, holding up an instrument for me to clearly see. It was a vaporizer. "This is the healthy alternative to tobacco smoking," he had proclaimed sagely.

But how healthy is it? I wondered and still do now. It turns out that I am not the only one dubious as to the health implications of the inhalation of vapours from vaporizers and e-cigarettes - they are actually not the same thing - or vaping as it is popularly called.

It is true that the major ingredients in the liquid used in vapourizer and e-cigarettes, propylene glycol and vegetable glycerine have been used in the food industry for years now and are deemed safe for human consumption. However, scientists are still unsure of the nature of the interaction with the body of the other substances  added to the vaporizer liquid  when heated. This uncertainty concerning the effects of vaping on the health has been given as the major reason for its being banned in some parts of the world.

Other reasons given for the ban on vaping include: the risk of nicotine overdose, as in the case of Canada; the largely unregulated nature of the vaping industry, leading to the inclusion of ingredients of a dubious nature according to a report published by the United States FDA (Food and Drug Administration); and the fear - considered groundless by supporters of vaping - that e-cigarettes and vapourisers normalise the act of "smoking," causing children to take up vaping, and then eventually graduate to tobacco-smoking at young ages.

The latest blows dealt to vaping have been administered by the European Union which a few weeks ago, created a directive prohibiting vaping liquids from containing over 20mg of nicotine, and the Malaysian state of Kedah where the sale of e-cigarettes and vapourizers or "vapes" as they are also called, was declared prohibited effective January 1 2016. This ban in Kedah follows the ban in Negeri Sembilan where vaping was declared forbidden in Islam. These bans must be devastating to the vaping industry as the Malaysian e-cigarette market is widely considered the second largest in the world, and is worth an estimated 125 million dollars.Other parts of the world where vaping has been banned include Panama, Brazil, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Singapore, Israel, Mexico and Israel.

I believe that governments and other agenda-setting entities worldwide that are dubious with regard to the long-term effects of vaping on the human body, would be justified in adopting a tentative approach on the issue. However, I am also convinced that an outright ban on a commodity that has been scientifically proven to reduce and in some cases, terminate tobacco dependence, cannot be listed among the hallmarks of good governance.

The ability of vaping to reduce or end a habitual craving for tobacco cigarettes is the major reason for the boom experienced by the industry in recent years with the prevalence of vaping exceeding that of tobacco-smoking in the US in 2014. Most unfortunately, it is this propensity of vaping to ameliorate tobacco addiction that, in my opinion and that of other commentators, constitutes the major challenge to the vaping industry.

It is a fact, established by innumerable studies, most notably that of British epidemiologists Austin Bradford Hill and Richard Doll begun in 1951, that tobacco-smoking is deleterious to the health, and this, most unfortunately for anti-vaping lobbyists such as the mighty global tobacco industry, cannot be said for vaping. According to a Newsweek article, tobacco's harmful effect on the health has led to the industry being subjected to very stringent regulation by western governments over the years, such as the banning of TV advertising in the US in 1970 and tax accounting for 80% of the price of cigarettes in the UK. This has led to a continued reduction in annual sales of tobacco cigarettes in the US, UK and other western countries. However, this negative effect of governmental regulation of the industry is offset by the flourishing of tobacco smoking in the so-called emerging economies such as China due to massive population and an increase in disposable income according to British American Tobacco.

The tobacco industry does not seem to be pacified by the increase in the sales of its wares in places like China and Nigeria as it has launched a series of attacks on the vaping industry whose global sales was predicted to exceed £6 billion in 2015 according to The Telegraph, with 2017 seeing it becoming worth £10 billion according to Vape News Magazine. It is widely believed that Big Tobacco - the tobacco industry's biggest players including Japan Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco, British American Tobacco and Philip Morris - have lobbied against vaping over the years.

However, in recent times, they have adopted a new, more insidious, and more effective strategy: they have become players in the vaping arena by buying notable producers of vaping paraphernalia, with Imperial Tobacco going as far as striking a deal with Hon Lik, the Chinese dude who invented the e-cigarette and started the whole vaping craze in 2003. And the fruits of this marriage between the tobacco and vaping industries are already being harvested. Altria, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes now puts a lengthy 116-word health warning on the packaging of its American e-cigarette brand, MarkTen (could the name be inspired by the children's cartoon Ben 10?) according to a special report by Reuters and only heaven knows what else they plan to do with that brand. According to the same report, people are already beginning to view e-cigarettes in a negative light as 15% of people in Britain viewed e-cigarettes smoking as being as harmful as smoking as at last year, a 100% increase from the year before.

Being a Pragmatist, I am absolutely convinced that Big Tobacco's war on vaping is still in its nascent stages. No industry would just capitulate to such a challenge as that posed by the vaping industry to the tobacco industry without putting up a fight, and frankly, the tobacco industry has never been one to back down from a fight. I mean, look at how well they have done and are still doing even in the face of all the health, societal and even economic problems that scientists, doctors, sociologists and economists have put forward as the negative impacts of tobacco smoking and the tobacco industry in general. There is definitely more to come on the issue of the tobacco industry's response to the vaping challenge so stay tuned.