Are “fun” E-Liquid flavors responsible?
When you’re looking through breazy’s affordable e juice collection, you’ll likely find a lot of different flavours, but today, I want to open up a bit of a debate.
Is it responsible to be selling these “fun” flavours in a product which is related to smoking? What impact is this going to have on young people? Are we infantilising the idea of vaping?
Or do we need to take more responsibility for our own actions?
I’m not going to take a side today, but I will be looking at both arguments, and allow you to make your mind up.
I want to answer the question, are fun flavours responsible?
There’s so many!
One thing that has shocked me is the massive variety of E-Liquid flavours that you can buy. At first, it was just tobacco and some fruit. But today, if you can name it, there’s a good chance that there is a vape that tastes like it.
Most of your favourite fruits, and desserts, and even novelty flavours such as bacon are available. If you’re not too sure what you would like, there is no shortage of options for you to choose from.
Popcorn? Apples? Cinnamon buns? Custard?
You name a food, you can almost certainly vape it.
Might be seen as too tempting
With so many cool flavours, some people, particularly young people, may be interested in giving it a go, and potentially even taking it up as a habit.
While some of these people might be former smokers, others will never have even touched a cigarette but choose to take up vaping or dry herb vaping for the flavours.
These young people might not be too aware of the negative impacts that vaping can have, and therefore get their hands on it without thinking. Some studies have suggested that people who vape are more likely to smoke when vaping is not available.
Better than smoking
However, the majority of people who vape are former smokers. Whilst vaping is not risk-free, it is far healthier than smoking.
If we want to encourage people to stop smoking, surely it would make sense to do everything we can to try and make the alternative more appealing. And if that means having fun flavours, what’s the issue?
Self-Responsibility
Even if you do believe that these kinds of flavours aren’t too responsible, there is someone else who is accountable, the vaper!
We have the choice of what we put into our bodies. And any consequences that come about are our own doing. It’s not the responsibility of vape companies to hold your hand and do whatever is best for you, they’re a company, they need to make money.
If you don’t believe there should be so many tempting flavours, you don’t need to have any. But you don’t have the right to tell others they can’t either.
The Law
The law is clear. Nobody under the age of 18 is allowed to be E-Liquid anyway.
Therefore, these companies have no obligation to be responsible for children or anyone under the age of 18.
This is similar to how having super sweet alcoholic drinks are fine because nobody under the age of 18 is allowed to buy them anyway.
Some of you might say “but under 18s will still get the vapes”. But you could say the exact same thing about cigarettes. Surely it’s better they’re vaping, and not smoking.
Conclusion
Ever since it came on the news about New York banning vapes, and rumours about Trump banning it across America, and got interested in what responsibility the vape makers have.
Some will say that we shouldn’t be encouraging vaping. Whereas others will say that it’s much better than smoking.
But what do you think?