The French equivalent of Stoptober is the Mois Sans Tabac. This year, MST features a three-second film produced by Public Health France titled “How to stop smoking in just three minutes”.
Quitting is easy, it contends, because “the urge to smoke stops after three minutes." Wow. It’s amazing all smokers haven’t quit if that is all it takes – just hold out for those minutes to pass by doing something like making a cup of tea, and bye-bye cigarettes forever.
You don’t even need a vape, which is fortunate because Public Health France forgot to include any information about vaping.
Research conducted in Germany emphasises just how important getting public health messages right can be. The research team looked at 9204 participants, aged 18-64, and asked them a series of questions.
They discovered:
- Individuals with lower education rated e‑cigarettes as more harmful
- Older people and women perceived e‑cigarettes as just as harmful
- Smokers considered e‑cigarettes to be more harmful than or just as harmful as conventional tobacco products
- The likelihood of using e‑cigarettes for smoking cessation was higher if people thought they were less harmful than conventional cigarettes
All told, “only one-third of the population knows that vaping is less harmful to health than tobacco cigarettes” – a shockingly low figure.
Such perceptions are influenced by media reports, and the recent feature carried by Canada’s CBC is a case in point. In “Vaping 'guinea pigs': E-cigarette health risks you may not be aware of”, the channel dug out a bunch of cranks to attack something that is now legal in the country.
"I think there's a general belief out there that if you switch from smoking to vaping that your problems are solved," said dentist Michael Glogauer. "That's a big misconception."
They even convinced Vincent Abou-Jaoude, Cold Turkey Juice Inc., to embarrass himself: “Anybody can just go and make e-liquid and sell it, which is terrible. Technically nobody knows how to make e-liquid.”
If that really were the case we’d advise our Canadian readers to steer a wide berth around Cold Turkey Juice. Of course, it’s possible his comments were selectively edited.
Glogauer blames vaping for causing a whole number of problems: “[vaping] creates many of the same oral health problems as regular cigarettes - gum recession, bad breath and increases teeth grinding, he said, and the heat … causes a dry mouth.”
This won’t be an issue for anybody because its utter nonsense, but it certainly won’t impact upon vapers in Chicago – they won’t be able to afford to buy eliquid anymore.
Jim McDonald of Vaping 360 writes to tell us that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to grab every penny he can from vapers. “Chicago vapers already pay one of the highest taxes in the country: $0.80 per bottle of e-liquid with nicotine + $0.55 per milliliter (mL) of liquid. On top of that, Cook County imposes an additional tax of $0.20 per ml,” says Jim.
The additional tax, if implemented in Britain, would make the cost of a 10ml bottle come out at over £40. And people complain that some liquid here is too expensive already! We feel for you, Chicago.
Photo Credit:
French coverage - jeanyvesnau.com/2018/10/05/nouveau-comment-arreter-le-tabac-en-trois-minutes-seulement-par-sante-publique-france/
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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