Nicotine has been a likened to caffeine ie it's a stimulant, or a feel-good drug. As Whitespirit66 says, there are plenty studies concluding that nicotine is pretty harmless, and some that say it's beneficial, but the traditional tobacco burning delivery method is bad. When people see you vaping they automatically ask when you intend quitting vaping, as if nicotine is the black plague. I usually answer by asking when they're giving up drinking coffee or something.
I've read a few studies by respected people/organisations and some are breathtaking. For example I think it was ASH (Action on Smoking & Health) who did a survey on the effects of passive smoking years ago and their conclusions were that it was virtually harmless. They have "buried" that survey and now refuse to answer any questions on it. Or how about the fact that although Native American Indians have one of the highest rates of smoking, they also have one of the lowest rates of lung cancer. Similarly, Chinese women have one of the lowest rates of smokers, but one of the highest lung cancer rates. Maybe smoking's not as bad as we're led to believe, I'm sure we all know an old uncle so-and-so who's smoked since he was 12 and, although he has a bad cough, he's still going at 85.
The govt "we'll get you off the fags" brigade (I forget their name at the mo) recently proudly announced that they got 145,000 UK people off cigs in 10 years. That's 14,500/year. Their figures are based on "refraining from tobacco for two weeks", so they include the 90-odd percent of people who try the crap patches/gum etc and go back on the cigs after a couple of weeks. And why are nicotine patches so expensive anyway? They're an elastoplast and a ha'penny worth of nicotine. Anyway, the service cost us, the taxpayers, a fortune on prescriptions and advertising, not to mention the cost of having the department to begin with. Vaping, on the other hand, has gotten an estimated 1.3 million UK people off cigs from a standing start around 2005/2006, with zero expense to the taxpayer, no help from the govt, and no advertising. That's around 10 times better than the govt brigade, who can argue with that?
Well, the govt can, cos they're losing a fortune on revenue. So, realistically, the govt don't want you to stop smoking. They pretend they do, but they don't. They want to take your £8/packet thank you very much. They also want you to die early, cos that saves them a few bob too. So, keep smoking, then get some nasty disease, then pay their Big Pharma buddies through the nose for some treatment to "manage" your nasty disease, then die early, and they get a shedload of cash at every turn.
So how do they deal with vaping? They keep giving their Big Pharma (BP) buddies cash to go and do a survey which says vaping's bad, which would allow them to ban it. The problem is nobody can find anything wrong with it, even their BP buddies. So, next best thing...regulate it. Make out that it's deadly dangerous for anyone to vape this "unregulated" stuff, even tho as far as I could find out, there's not been a single death blamed on vaping. But if they can get the general public on their side, they can recoup some of the lost baccy revenue by way of passing it to their BP buddies. They'll make you buy a small bottle of too-low strength nicotine e-liquid from the chemist, complete with a wee safety leaflet telling you not to let your dog drink it. Oh, and it'll be expensive too, marginally cheaper than fags, but not much. And a handy by-product of this is that it'll be so low nicotine content that it'll not work as well as it does at the moment, so you'll buy fags again.
They're trying hard with things like "kids are starting to vape cos they can get custard flavour", but failing to mention that the kids who are vaping would be smoking anyway, so maybe they're starting a healthier addiction than they would have, had vaping not been available. The govt will get away with it too. Their original plan of "vaping should be a medicine" got knocked back cos a medicine is something which manages a condition, and vapers don't have a condition any more than coffee drinkers do. So it's back to the think-tank, but a bit more mis-information here and there to the press and they'll get Joe Public on their side, and therefore have the carte-blanche they need to get their cash back.
