Examiner Misrepresents Ecigs
Ecigs were covered on an American medical show but the events were twisted by a news outlet
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by Dave Cross
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“Addiction is devastating,” explains the episode overview. “The hardest part of having a family member or a loved one with an addiction is watching them deteriorate. It’s a condition that starts off innocently, with a person ingesting a substance like alcohol, nicotine, maybe one of the numerous drugs available, or possibly engaging in gambling, even shopping. It typically starts off as fun and pleasurable. But then things change. The continued use or act becomes compulsive and starts to interfere with one’s life. Work, relationships, and health start to deteriorate. Sadly, many users may not be aware that their behavior has changed, they’ve lost control and it’s causing problems for themselves and others.”
The point of the episode was to focus on Christian Guzman’s addiction to cannabis and the work he did with Inspirations for Youth in order to overcome it. There were aspects of the show that might seem critical of vaping but the key issue is that the under-age boy had access to, abused large quantities of and became addicted to the illicit drug.
The Examiner carries a story of the show that is easy to encounter online through shared links. For reasons that will become clear we will not be including a link to the story. The writer, their Miami Health journalist, tagged the piece with the following keywords: “Health News, teen, Vaping, drug, ecigarettes” and filed the copy with a headline declaring the show was about “teen vaping”.
He tells us how the use of vaping for the consumption of hash oil, dry cannabis, cannabis wax and flakka has become “wide-spread”. Of course, there was nothing in the show regarding this outbreak of illegality – and nor does he cite sources supporting the allegation because, well, there aren’t any because it’s utterly ridiculous.
What he does is link the use of electronic cigarettes strongly to drug use and throws in a “vape addiction” fear for good measure. What motive could be served by twisting the story in such a fashion? Well, The Examiner is not an online newspaper as it is a collection of blogs from people who are paid for every visitor to their article. The more angry you can make people the more who will visit to comment and earn the writer more reward – and vapers have shown they can be very angry online. The moral is to either avoid visiting vape article on the website entirely or, at least, not share them.
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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