It’s 1954. Cities are filled with smoky jazz clubs and seedy bars. The overpowering stench of burning tobacco is brimming in every corridor, restaurant and even hospital. Walking from one side of a building to another is a treacherous journey. One were your prize is irreversible lung cancer from second-hand smoke. It doesn’t matter though. 80% of Britain smoke and after all, a camel a day keeps the doctor away.
In comes the swinging sixties. Sure were all coughing our lungs up by now but who cares. Smoking makes you look intelligent and sophisticated. Inhaling burning chemicals is bad for you? Bah! That’s just a myth, you’ve been smoking too much of that evil reefer.
Okay, late 60’s now and people are starting to catch on. Smoking is at all all time low of 45% and the guys in Madison avenue are starting too freak. They utilize the ultimate brain washing machine of the media to get their message out. Smoking is everywhere. Every movie, every song and every billboard. It is clear that smoking causes death but that doesn’t stop widespread and sly manipulation to give smoking a cool and edgy look.
The tobacco industry knew they were in for trouble. So, this mass marketing continued, frantically trying to push all of the risks under the carpet and save a multi-million dollar industry. Eventually, the inevitable happened. By 1970 advertising of any tobacco products was banned across all formats. Many thought this would leave the industry in ruin, but sadly their message still stayed. The social conditioning from their genius marketing warped a generation and their children to take up smoking as a dangerous pastime. It was still perceived as cool, dangerous and edgy for many years to come and still lingers to this day. Nowadays though, thanks to the help of millions of time and money spent on anti-smoking campaigns, we can safely say that smoking is no longer cool. What’s cool about smelling like shit with lungs that look like fried chicken.
Hospitals and tax payers rejoiced by the late 2000’s when smoking, a huge public health issue was reaching lows such as 20% in some countries. However, their efforts were soon squandered and tore apart when one nefarious little bastard came in to spoil the party.
In barges the electronic cigarette. Fucking shit up like that overly drunk girl at a party that won’t shut up. Their EVERYWHERE. Forums, television shows, radio (Who the fuck listens to radio.) They’re portrayed as safe and somewhat beneficial to society by improving a public health issue. But wait doesn’t this sound familiar? Something we don’t know the dangers of, becoming ingrained in our culture? Portrayed as safe (Oh it’s just water vapour man.) Sounds a lot like tobacco to me.
Unregulated advertising showing cool, sophisticated and now healthy people “vaping”. Stick MTV on and you’ll see countless music videos with people smoking them. If they were cigarettes we would be up in arms. But no e-cigs are safe. The truth is we don’t know if they are safe due to lack of research. They NEED to be regulated. No not prohibited REGULATED. Letting these things lose in a society that loves mind altering substances is like throwing a trip-mine into a bouncy castle.
Granted, all research so far leads to them being safer, but to be be fair… As far as the regulation goes, I could shit in pen lid and sell that to somebody as an e-cig. We must regulate these things and stop mass marketing or we’ll end up back where we started. Back round the loop; years of research gone to waste. Look at how long it took us to convince people that cigarettes were deadly and not cool. We don’t want more dying because media and marketing told them e-cigs were safe.
Regulate e-cigs so we know who selling them and what’s going in them. Stop brainwashing people to believe it’s safe, just because it’s not a cigarette. After all, unlike the 70’s we already have some solid evidence on the dangers and previous statistics to go of. If we stop it before it starts then hopefully… We won’t be fooled again.
–THE LONELY CROWDED WEST–
The Lonely West 