Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge
Vaping has been endorsed by the UK government’s psycological “Nudge Unit”.
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by Dave Cross
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The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) was set up by the government in 2010 to use behavioural economics and psychology to improve government policy and reduce costs. Its previous work has looked at convincing the public to pay their vehicle excise duty, increase charitable donations and participate in elections. The use of psychology to convince people to do things rather than compel them through laws earned the unit the nickname The Nudge Unit.
As reported by Marketing, BIT believe ecigs offer the best hope for smokers to quit due to the similarity to the act of smoking – a point of view shared by ASH UK and Professor Robert West. The success of vaping at helping smokers quit was illustrated this week in a graphic on Accelerated-Nursing.net.
Section 2 of BIT’s report covers the adoption of e-Cigarettes. It explains how, over the last two years, it has “expanded significantly its health programmes ... focusing on behavioural drivers of health.” It believes the health of the nation can be improved simply through encouraging people to make different decisions.
“Since 2010, we have recognised the potential benefits of e-cigarettes. In our 2010-11 Annual Update, we pointed out that an important tenet of behaviour change is that it is much easier to substitute a similar behaviour than to eliminate an entrenched one,” it states.
What will stick firmly in the craw of pharma-funded shills is when they say: “Findings from the past 12 months are encouraging for those who see the behavioural benefits of e-cigarettes. E-cigarettes are now the most successful product at helping people to quit smoking, and the evidence shows that almost all users of e-cigarettes are former smokers.”
Sales of nicotine gum and patches have been plummeting due to the rampant success of vaping. In an act of desperation, Johnson & Johnson advertised their Quickmist product last year with the strapline 'Don't Vape. Quit for good’, a promotion that executives at Blu and E-lites slammed as nothing more than a “smear campaign”.
Michael Hallsworth, BIT’s head of health and tax, did go on to affirm that they felt it was it was important to put the correct regulatory framework in place and have been working with the government to design this.
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.
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