Jan 212016
 

vaping1I’ve recently seen two vape-shaming attacks. I’d like to point out this is different from mocking people for their hat or beard styles. If this sort of thing succeeds in reducing incidence of vaping it will
A. make your enviroment less pleasant (assuming you dislike the smell of tobacco smoke) and
B. lead directly to more preventable deaths from lung cancer.
If you vape-shame, you are contributing to deaths that could be prevented. Might as well mock designated-drivers while you’re at it.

  5 Responses to “What fresh bullshit is this?”

  1. It’s also just a super weird and counter-productive argument. If they’ve got good arguments or studies against vaping, it says something that they are posting something like this instead of those arguments (or maybe just that someone is too lazy to seek out good arguments for their beliefs).

    I say this as someone who generally dislikes the act of smoking, but if someone characterized me like that, I’d see them as a fundamentally dishonest strawman cobbler. Any arguments they made before are now going to put doubt in my mind, maybe elicit some isolated demands for rigor, or get them ignored altogether (the opposite of what they presumably want to happen).

  2. Somebody quitting vaping does not automatically lead to somebody (re)taking up smoking cigarettes.

    • Of course not. But it’ll certainly increase the prevalence of smoking in the population if vaping is ruled out.

  3. How clear is it that the recent popularity of vaping has significantly reduced smoking? It’s pretty common among non-smokers, and recreational use seems to have overtaken the original focus as a “quitting” aid in the popular consciousness by a wide margin.

    Unrelatedly – it seems crass to treat “shaming” some inconsequential behaviour as “contributing to deaths”. This is the same nonsense people use to attack teenagers on Tumblr who they feel drew a character the slightest bit too thin, and it’s bullshit. That someone, somewhere may or may not have insulted a broad class of people you’re a member of in an ambiguous manner is in no way a crime on a par with murder.

    • I think it will increase smoking in the populace by some amount if vaping is ruled out, and that will lead to more deaths.

      I’m actually against any sort of insult-by-branding (calling someone a “fedora” or “neck-beard”) because I think it’s stupid as hell. One has nothing to do with the other. But causing people to stop wearing a type of hat in order to not be associated with a hated minority doesn’t lead to increases in lung-cancer, so I just roll my eyes and get on with life. Using vaping as a slur will, I think, actually hurt people.

      The numbers I’ve seen supported that a large percentage of vapers displace smoking by vaping. However I will admit that these numbers are years old now, and the situation could have changed. If people who would have counterfactually never burned tobacco are picking up vaping anyway, that is very unfortunate, and perhaps vape-shaming could prevent that.

      I’m not actually a vaper in either case. I haven’t touched a vape-precursor device in years (the term “vaping” didn’t really exist yet back when I did it).

      And I’d like to point out that I was careful not to suggest that it is a crime, nor did I say anything about it being on par with murder.

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