In this edition, we will be looking at the common myth that the vaping industry is targeting teenagers to turn them into the future customers of Big Tobacco’s “cancer incorporated”. The vaping industry is under constant attack from all sides, it’s a simple, yet a sad truth. Of all the misinformation put out, the one that has aggravated me personally the most over the last few weeks is this one, which if I am being completely honest right now is the furthest thing from the truth in the majority of vaping companies minds.
Whether you are here because you are a concerned parent or an angry vaper, we will break the situation down in the simplest form, and we will use facts to make our argument. Please, keep an open mind while you are reading this whichever side of the fence you are sitting on, because you may be unwittingly pushing the teenagers you are trying to protect back into the arms of the Tobacco companies we all despise.
Nobody Wants Young People Getting Into Bad Habits
First things first, kids shouldn’t be picking up any bad habits. In a perfect world, they would be more interested in good grades and be getting a leg up in life, but unless you went through amnesia in the last few years, you will remember your own teenage years. We are all trying to protect our offspring from the same mistakes we made when we were younger, and unless you physically brick them inside a wall for their formative years, it isn’t going to happen. It doesn’t make you a failed parent because they experiment — if that’s the case, you and I must look at our parents as abject failures because the kids now have nothing on the way we used to party.
That being said, regardless of what you may have read on Facebook or in the news, the vaping industry does not want your children anywhere near our devices or our industry. Before the government stepped in with any proposed rules, the vast majority of the thousands of vape shop owners, e-liquid companies, our trade associations, and consumer advocate groups have all decided that our products are made by adults for adults. If your 15-year-old walks into a vape shop (not a convenience store that sells cig a likes next to the Marlboro’s) today, they will be asked for identification, plain and simple. Not because someone passed a law to keep your children from smoking, but because we decided that our products were to give smokers an alternative to cigarettes. The industry has a target audience of almost 60,000,000 people in the United Sates alone, do you honestly think that the vaping industry wants to threaten that by hooking little Mikey on the RDA.
