The Case (Study) For Flavours

Mark Buchanan is a 58-year-old retired mechanical engineer from Cumbria. He reached out to the UKVIA to express his desperate concern that such a measure could drive him and many others back to deadly smoking. He said the BMA, and anyone else who puts forward counterproductive vape policy proposals, needs to engage directly with smokers and vapers so they can fully understand the impact of their actions.

A member of the UKVIA team conducted an interview with Mark as they believe his voice needs to be heard - and so the BMA can see one of the people who will be most hurt by their recommendation for a flavour ban.

 Mark began smoking when he was 30 following a bout of severe depression. The number of cigarettes he’d smoke use would vary, but would veer to a pack a day at times.

“I wanted to stop for my daughter, but traditional Nicotine Replacement Therapies just weren’t working for me; I tried the gums but after furiously chewing I would still want a cigarette, and the patches weren’t an option as they triggered an allergic reaction,” Mark said. “To make matters worse, my social anxiety meant that I struggled to access support through stop smoking services. All in all, I was smoking for about 23 years.”

Mark first tried to switch to vaping five years ago after another ex-smoker recommended it as a way to stop smoking. It took him a few days to acclimatise to the change and figure out how to make vaping work for him. 

“I was off and I’m proud to say I haven’t touched a cigarette since,” Mark said. “If I’m honest, I didn’t realise how much smoking was affecting my health until I started to experience rapid improvements from vaping. Suddenly, I wasn’t feeling breathless and that stubborn cough, which I had put down to ageing, was gone – after just two months it was blindingly obvious that I was physically better.

“The other thing I noticed was the cost savings. A pack of cigarettes costs a small fortune now but I’m spending just £2 per week on e-liquid. It also helps that I’ve been able to escape the heavy cigarette smell and that I don’t feel I need to stand in the freezing weather to use my vape.”

These days Mark uses a small set up at 12 watts and mainly vapes menthol – he really doesn’t like tobacco flavours because he doesn’t “want to use anything that makes me think about cigarettes.”

For Mark, “one of the good things about vaping is that you can lead your own stop smoking journey, set your own pace. Over the years vaping has helped me completely stop smoking and cut down my nicotine consumption by about half.”

And this is where the threat of bans on the flavours he likes impacts him. Mark is convinced that if all bar tobacco flavours were banned then he would return to smoking – and he believes that it would push people – especially young people – to the black market to source juices.

“I wouldn’t want to see people forced down the line of going to illegal products – it’s very dangerous.”

UKVIA asked Mark: “If you could give one message to the BMA on the call for a flavour ban, what would it be?”

Mark said: “Please don’t. Far from improving the health of the nation I think the recommendations put forward by the BMA stand to make things worse. If a flavour ban was introduced, I could well end up smoking again – and I expect this is a danger for a lot of others like me.”

Dave Cross

Journalist at POTV

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Dave 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.