A recent blog entry
on Simon Clark’s Taking
Liberties website brought to my attention the poor response that
a European Union petition entitled ‘Vaping Is Not Tobacco’,
which Simon reported that has apparently attracted less then 50,000
signatures across the whole European Union (which was, until
recently, made up of 28 countries), with just 391 UK signatures.
I am not surprised
for a number of reasons.
Firstly, because the
UK is leaving the European Union, most UK-based vapers would probably
view it as not applicable in the UK.
Secondly, this
petition was obviously not widely known amongst the Vaping community.
I was completely unaware of it, despite the fact that I closely
monitor what is happening with legislation to do with Vaping and
Smoking. So quite where the existence of this publication was
distributed is a mystery to me.
Thirdly, the Vaping
community has splintered into a number of competing groups. The
result is that is very hard to coordinate petitions of this type as
different groups seem reluctant to support petitions started by
another group.
As many of you will
know, I was involved in vaping advocacy as far back as 2012. This was
a time when vaping was still in its infancy and yet to break into the
mainstream the way it has in recent years. However, it is also the
time that vaping was first starting to draw the attention of
Political and Health Authorities and when the real fight to save
vaping really began.
Despite the fact
that we vapers were few and far between in those days, we maintained
a siege mentality and would rush to head off any threat to vaping
through protests and petitions. Some successful, some less so. The
point was, we were not prepared to simply roll over and let the less
informed authorities have their way.
It was also the time
when I found myself as the figurehead for both a campaign and a
petition – the ‘Save eCigs’ campaign to stop the then Health
Minister for Wales – Mark Drakeford – from steamrollering a
public vaping ban as a subset of the larger Public Health Wales Bill.
It was through this
campaign that I learned just how hard it is to coordinate a petition
and get people to sign it. I did everything within my power to get
the petition as widely known around Wales as possible. From (almost
coercing) various Vape vendors to prominently display my flyers,
endlessly promoting the petition on social media, keeping all the
ecig forums that I could find up to date with the progress of the
petition and appearing on vape-related Youtube channels like Vapour
Trails TV.
Despite everything I
did and tried, that petition only ever got a tiny percentage of Welsh
Vapers to sign it. I was utterly soul-destroying.
The one upside of
the campaign (and petition) was that it opened doors to my being to
get my face in front of the AM’s in the Welsh Assembly to put our
side of the story to them. It enabled me to get the true facts and
figures in front of these AM’s, instead of them only hearing the
biased and ill-informed propaganda that was being peddled by
Drakeford.
Admittedly, very few
Labour politicians gave me the time of day. But many of the
opposition AM’s from the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats (they
had a lot more AM’s in those days) and Plaid Cymru were open to
speaking to me and my colleagues and many of them were very
supportive as a result.
Ultimately, our
campaign to save vaping from being banned in public in Wales was
successful. We managed to defeat the bill (albeit by a very narrow
margin) and Welsh vapers are still free to vape in public spaces to
this very day as a result.
However, something
else I learned from fronting that campaign was that critics can be
found in every walk of life, You would not believe the number of
times I would be told by ‘armchair warriors’ that I am doing it
all wrong, or that I didn’t know what I was talking about. Whilst I
used to get a lot of supportive emails, and messages through social
media, I would also get a lot of bile and criticism. Like most
people, I am only human and so this type of bile and criticism used
to get me down. Whilst I may not ever have shown it outwardly,
inwardly I would often question why on earth I bothered.
In the end, I simply
had enough of the criticism and bile and chose to walk away from it
all. I was not alone. For those Vapers who were around way back in
2012, just ask yourself how many of the advocates with whom you
became familiar are still around to be seen or heard ?
THIS, is the reason
why the Vaping Is Not Tobacco petition failed. People simply
got fed up of the criticism and back-stabbing to be found in the
vaping community and walked away.
This is one of the
many reasons why I have the utmost awe & respect for the NNA.
There are people involved in the NNA who have been there from the
start and are still there fighting for vapers across the world. These
are the people who were made of stronger stuff than I and who could
take the back-stabbing and criticism and, in some cases, even thrived
on it. But please, do not take these people for granted. The
influential advocates from yesteryear have turned their backs and
walked away. The last thing the vaping community needs is for these
good folk in the NNA to decide they have had enough and walk away.
There are still many
battles to be fought to keep Vaping, and no doubt there will many
more to come. That’s why we need them.
Don’t be an
armchair critic. Support the NNA.
