Most of you will remember the post Misinformation vs Information I put up a less than a week ago. That post led to Thud!. Both of those posts originated from a questionable article in Vox.
Of course, the author of that article immediately came under fire from many within the vaping community. However, there is some (relatively) good news. The author, Julia Belluz has taken some time to speak to one of us vapers and put out an opposing view.
Let me start this post off with the following statement:
I do not work for, nor am I affiliated with either the Tobacco or Vaping Industries. I am a semi-normal person that works a bog standard 9-5. I have opinions and feelings.
There, now that is well and truly out of the way, on with the post.
It seems that many in public health, and by extension the “smokefree” agencies don’t believe a single word anyone says. I’ve told my story on this blog, and it has been shared by me and many other vapers in an effort to make it heard. It seems that certain folk don’t believe a single word. That hurts.
This is definitely a recurring theme recently isn’t it. First there was “stillblowingsmoke vs notblowingsmoke” then we had Vox spreading the same drivel. Wired picked up the story, as did many others. All in all, the public are reacting to what those in Public Health are trying to tell them, but not in the way you’d think.
I am of course talking about TobaccoFreeCA who really don’t seem to know quite what to say. For one, being a “Tobacco Free” entity you’d expect them to be fully behind whatever the delightful Department of Public Health says about smoking, and by extension vaping. Not quite.
When I’m not working (or supposed to be working that is), I spend a fair chunk of my time surfing around in cyberspace. Not looking for anything in particular you know, just spending (alright wasting) time. On this occasion I ended up reading an article from down under and it got me thinking, which is always a worrying thing to happen.
This is the point where I normally write something along the lines of “the article in question is here” and provide a handy link for you to have a read of it yourself. Not going to do that as I really do not want to give the website any more traffic. Besides, the article itself is the main reason for this post.