Big Tobacco Wants to Control Your Vaping

Cigarette maker Phillip Morris is excited to be entering the vaping market and, surprise, wants to “shape the regulatory debate” according to CEO Andre Calantzapoulos. Equally exciting for the genocidal purveyors of cancer is the potential for a “fair playing field”. That mythical place where only Big Tobacco can afford to compete for our dollars. Given Big Tobacco’s grand history of not playing well with others and laughing all the way from the undertaker to the bank, we should all be very, very wary.

Here’s what has Big Tobacco giddilly wringing its bloody, tar-stained hands: FDA, and many Americans who just don’t know any better, are hoping to give vaping the same social and legal stigma as tobacco cigarettes. If that happens, Big Tobacco will have successfully built a time machine back to Smoking’s Golden Era when Phillip Morris and its ilk controlled the market and harvested millions of tobacco leaves and victims and piles of cash.

Fortunately, Big Tobacco has some hurdles to get over: Namely, electronic cigarette hardware and juice makers, and all the former smokers who enjoy vaping. Right now we have small innovative businesses creating products that millions of smokers are using to switch from tobacco. The businesses are creating jobs, paying taxes, and, if you believe vapers who used to smoke, these entrepreneurs are improving lives.

Vaping uses five basic components all of which have decades of study and safety findings. Nicotine has been found safe for consumption. Propylene Glycol has been used in fog machines at least since I was a kid growing up in the 70s. Vegetable glycerine has been widely used in food products for decades, and the final component in vaping is plain old water.

That’s it, five basic components and sometimes as few as four because many people have successfully reduced their nicotine consumption down to zero. Compare the vaping ingredient list to that of the average cigarette’s, which includes dozens of known carcinogens. It’s also worth mentioning that Big Tobacco spent fortunes paying high powered lawyers to stonewall government attempts to determine all the chemicals in their cigarettes. Phillip Morris and others have killed tens of milllions of human beings, and now they want to “shape the regulatory debate”. Who do you think they’re looking out for?

Big Tobacco’s other ploy is to create a “fair playing field”. Now, for those of you who don’t speak Corporate Bullshit (CorpBS), let me help you. I speak several dialects of CorpBS including Big Tobacco. “Fair playing field” is code for “we want barriers to entry that only other multinational Fortune 500 Companies can afford to buy their way into.”

You see, Big Tobacco knows they can’t compete with the thousands of different juices, or the burgeoning personal vaporizer (e-cigarette) choices. Since they can’t compete with all those players, they have to limit the availability of those choices by creating a “fair playing field” that small juice makers and personal vaporizer makers can’t afford to get into because of FDA costs and fees. This would leave the 800lb Big Tobacco gorilla as the only game in town. Remember how well that went for American Consumers up through the 70s?

Unfortunately, many, many Americans look at vaping and only see someone doing something that looks like smoking. There’s no tobacco, no tar, no 4,000 chemicals, none of the dozens of carcinogens found in tobacco, no ash, no heat, and no smell. Vaping is technology, not tobacco. Still, some people think it’s the same as smoking tobacco. Equally unfortunate is the fact that many of these good-hearted people who just don’t know any better are law makers who are demanding restrictions that will lead former smokers back to Big Tobacco.

Don’t let Big Tobacco shape the debate, or create a “level playing field”. Vaping has already taken a bite out of tobacco sales. The industry stands to do even more damage to RJ Reynolds, Phillip Morrison and the others, but only if FDA tells Big Tobacco to sit down and shut up. Contact Jim Oliver at Durflinger Oliver & Associates, 253-683-4180, for information on vaping legislation and how to contact your elected officials. We need your help to win.