Tobacco control is obsessed with teen nicotine use. If it’s not statistical sleight of hand to disguise ever use as daily use, it’s outdated figures or anecdotes for hire. The media are only too happy to go along with or amplify the construction of the alleged nicotine “epidemic” because it gets clicks from busybodies with a lot of time on their hands.
One of their most common refrains about Big Tobacco is that they’re “hooking a new generation of nicotine addicts”. The thinking here is simple: if you don’t use nicotine as a teenager, you’re less likely to use the stimulant as an adult. Therefore, per tobacco control, if these products are not in circulation, then nicotine use rates will plummet.
Of course, the real picture is more complicated. You don’t have to be a student of history to know that prohibition does not change demand. Ban smoking alternative products, and people will either get them from the black market, return to smoking, or take up smoking.
These situations are not ideal. It’s not hard to have sympathy for anyone forced to roll the dice on the black market or buy combustible cigarettes. Well, it’s not hard for me. But it is seemingly very difficult for tobacco control visionaries.
The inconvenient victims
So, the basic tobacco control claim is that Big Tobacco are unbelievably evil, and they have been on a Machiavellian rampage to trick teens into becoming lifelong smokers. In the eyes of tobacco control, teens should be wrapped in cotton wool because they’re so impressionable that a few ads will drive them towards nicotine use in one way or another.
In other words, their position is that Big Tobacco is at fault for creating an army of people who are, according to some ads, possessed by nicotine.
So, if that’s the route that young people take, then what does tobacco control think happened to the 1.3 billion people who currently smoke worldwide? What mechanisms got them “hooked”? And why, as victims of this manipulation, do they not deserve sympathy?
According to tobacco control's own rubric, everyone who smokes cigarettes is a victim of predatory marketing. Considering the increasingly tough regulations around tobacco advertising over the last 20 years, it’s arguable that older generations were targeted more viciously and at a greater volume. Curiously, sympathy and respect are not afforded to older generations of people who smoke.
Instead of offering these ostensible victims the support they are surely due, tobacco control fobs them off with provably ineffective products or stop-smoking hotlines. Worse still, these lavishly funded groups campaign to have alternative products banned or limited, closing off credible and evidence-based pathways to quit smoking.
So, if tobacco control really thinks these teen-turned-adults are victims, it’s strange to abandon them just because of their age. Is there any other professional field where victims are treated with such contempt?
Similarly, if these people are victims of capitalist manipulation or whatever, but they have found their own way out of the maze, then what worked for them should be of great interest to any organisation that truly wants a smoke-free future for citizens. Of course, just like reality, consumers are always getting in the way of delivering tobacco control’s utopia.
Protecting the kids
Another thing that really bothers me about the “won’t someone think about the teens' rhetoric around smoking alternative products is that teens have parents, grandparents, and other relatives who smoke. Support for vapes and pouches would significantly increase the likelihood of these teens having these people in their lives for many years to come.
Flavour bans, disposable bans, or ridiculous and broken prescription policies all make smoking alternatives less attractive, effective, and available to adults.
Will any teen who grows up without a parent or grandparent be thankful to organisations that forced legislation that shut the door on their loved ones' attempts to quit cigarettes? If that’s what someone looking out for you looks like, then probably not.
If anything, I think we will see a whole new generation who are rightly disgusted with tobacco control self-appointing themselves to act on their behalf and, as a result, limiting or cutting off their parent's or relative's access to healthier products.
Public health groups are not elected. If anything, they circumnavigate the democratic process and lobby governments so their outmoded policy recommendations can get passed. Their prohibitionist ideology and misinformation cost lives, and we should make them accountable.
