Why Do People Protest So Much About Vaping?

[Aangelica]

I don’t like it for many of the same reasons I’m not fond of cigarette smoking - I don’t like the smell. I don’t like having the smell sticking to me and my fabric goods for the next X amount time, either. Yes, it has a smell. It has a myriad of different smells, actually. Some of them are okay, but I’m not fond of artificial aromas in general and some of them have been known to trigger migraines for me. Some are stronger than others, and therefore more annoying.

I feel about vaping the same way I feel about sharing an elevator with the lady from the 12th floor who apparently feels as though marinating in perfume is necessary and appropriate. Or, for that matter, the way I feel about the lady at the grocery store last weekend with the three year old who was screaming (not like hurt, just crabby because his mother didn’t want to get him the toy/candy he wanted and his choice of persuasion was a twist on the “I’ll hold my breath until I turn blue” technique - namely, screaming until he ran out of breath and then gasping in a huge breath and diving in again. He kept it up for the entire 20 minutes I shared architecture with them. Good lungs on that kid. Mom ignored him.).

It’s a mild irritation, a minor inconvenience, and (since vapers are, by definition, doing on purpose) mildly inconsiderate.

Because it’s a mild irritant, inconvenience and inconsideration, I rarely bother asking people to stop doing it (unless they want to do it in my own personal space - car, house, at my desk at the office) in public. That does not mean I don’t notice and wish to myself they’d knock it the eff off. If I fart in public - or have a nasty cough - I apologize for producing a mild irritant/inconvenience/bit of inconsideration. Good manners, and all that.

I’m sure there are considerate vapers - there were (and are) also considerate smokers. But puffing away at seated at a table in a restaurant (I want to smell the FOOD, thank you, not your mango/pina colada/chocolate/minty/tobacco/strawberry-wtf-ever vapor smell) or on a bus or train (where I’m trapped in with your smelly compulsion whether I like it or not) is inconsiderate and flat-out rude. Do your vaping before you get on the goddamn public transit - or step outside away from the door of the restaurant.

The whole question of whether or not the vapor emitted is safe for general consumption is one about which we don’t have any actual research (which isn’t really possible given that there currently exists to my knowledge - and perhaps I’m mistaken - no regulation or oversight of what goes into the liquid used). In the absence of any actual concrete information, I have a hard time blaming people who’d rather be cautious about what they’re inhaling. It doesn’t have anything really to do with why I, personally, don’t like it, but I understand the viewpoint. It’s not an unreasonable viewpoint by any stretch of the imagination - half of the containers of vaping liquid I’ve personally seen don’t even list ingredients. Or they say things like “X% nicotine and X% inactive ingredients”. It was largely the “inactive ingredients” that made cigarette smoke unhealthy.

[LSLGuy]

What Aangelica said.

Plus, we have spent about 20 years slowly driving the public nuisance of smoking largely out of the public space, both legally and socially.

I’d much rather slam the door on this new horse before it gets any farther out of the barn. I don’t want to spend another 20 years agitating to get e-cigs banned from public spaces versus getting it done right away.

Are e-cig less annoying to bystanders than traditional cigs? Yes.
Are they less annoying enough that we ought to welcome them as additions to the public space? Not only no, but hell no.

[Grumman]

@JustinC

Vaping is mostly consisting of a proved, safe substance (the same used in inhalers for asthmatics) and nicotine - something that stimulates your mind, like caffeine, when ingested but is more addictive.

We don’t want you taking an addictive drug turning it into an aerosol, because we do not want to inhale your addictive drugs.

[DrCube]

@Napier

But there is also this: by any reasonable technical definition of “smoke”, these “e-cigarettes” emit smoke. There doesn’t have to be a lit match involved. Just like spilling oil on your car engine, or getting something stuck on an electric stove burner, or having an electric appliance overheat, this is smoke, and it doesn’t necessarily need a flame there to be smoke.

Are clouds smoke? Should fog be illegal?

[Fair_Rarity]

I saw my first “no vaping” sign the other day at a pediatrician’s office. That made sense. I can get behind that.

I wish people could be trusted enough to have sufficient common sense to use them appropriately, get ones that don’t smell (mine doesn’t), be discreet, etc., but I guess expecting people to be polite is just too pie in the sky.

I really don’t want there to be mass crackdowns and exclusions because I don’t want to turn into a pariah again.

[boytyperanma]

My theory for people being against vaping is some of the advocates for vaping are so obnoxious the general public simply want e-cigs banned out of spite.

After the recent barrage of pro vaping people on the dope I’m tempted to vote in favor of banning e-cigs completely just to prevent vaping advocates from having any form of victory.

[Hilarity_N.Suze]

People are greedy. They want everything to work in a way that makes sense to them. They want the reality of the world to reflect the way they think it should be. The anti-vapers associate with cigarette smoking, and see it as some kind of clever workaround for smokers, therefore it’s bad.

Now, I can smell a cigarette from across the park. I can smell someone toking up from about the same distance. I have stood right next to people smoking e-cigarettes and honestly thought they were just chewing on their pen. You know you can set those things so there is no vapor? (I don’t know if you get any in your lungs, in which case you might see it when they exhale.)

So: greedy people who think they should not have to accept anything they don’t want, whether they have a reason or not. case in point:

@boytyperanma

My theory for people being against vaping is some of the advocates for vaping are so obnoxious the general public simply want e-cigs banned out of spite.

After the recent barrage of pro vaping people on the dope I’m tempted to vote in favor of banning e-cigs completely just to prevent vaping advocates from having any form of victory.

[bolding mine]

[RivkahChaya]

@boytyperanma

My theory for people being against vaping is some of the advocates for vaping are so obnoxious the general public simply want e-cigs banned out of spite.

I kinda felt that way after that one commercial where that guy talked about freedom, and his rights, while he vaped away, and squinted a lot. Man, was he obnoxious. I wanted to ban every nicotine delivery system in existence, including the patch, just to piss him, specifically, off.

ETA: Jenny McCarthy had a short-lived career as a eCig spokesperson. I wonder if someone figured out that someone who, on one had screams about “fucking” vaccines being full of “chemicals,” so we shouldn’t give them to children, because they are dangerous, isn’t the best person to ballyhoo a chemical inhalant.

[Helena330]

@Hilarity_N.Suze

People are greedy. **They want everything to work in a way that makes sense to them. They want the reality of the world to reflect the way they think it should be. **The anti-vapers associate with cigarette smoking, and see it as some kind of clever workaround for smokers, therefore it’s bad.

Now, I can smell a cigarette from across the park. I can smell someone toking up from about the same distance. I have stood right next to people smoking e-cigarettes and honestly thought they were just chewing on their pen. You know you can set those things so there is no vapor? (I don’t know if you get any in your lungs, in which case you might see it when they exhale.)

So: greedy people who think they should not have to accept anything they don’t want, whether they have a reason or not. case in point:

[bolding mine]

The bolded also explains why so many vapers insist it’s safe, with pretty much no scientific evidence to support that.

That’s my whole thing. We don’t know anything about how safe it is, for either vapers or people inhaling secondhand vape. All we have is marketing hype.

[LSLGuy]

@Helena330

… All we have is marketing hype.

For high mark-up unlabeled chemicals made in China & bought by addicts.

Nothing could possibly go wrong with that scenario.

[Yookeroo]

@Hilarity_N.Suze

People are greedy. They want everything to work in a way that makes sense to them. They want the reality of the world to reflect the way they think it should be. The anti-vapers associate with cigarette smoking, and see it as some kind of clever workaround for smokers, therefore it’s bad.

Or if they’re like me, they approved of vaping until having to spend time with one who vapes. The smell isn’t quite as bad as cigarettes, but still pretty annoying.

Now, I don’t disapprove of vaping as a means to break the smoking habit. But don’t make me breathe it in please.

@Hilarity_N.Suze

You know you can set those things so there is no vapor?

OK. But how many do that? If someone is vaping and I can’t smell it, I have no problem with it. Once I have to start breathing in a cloud of smelly vapor, then, yeah, I may protest.

[GrumpyBunny]

@kayT

I see that last cite is from the CDC. These are the folks who said we could protect ourselves from Ebola with paper masks and suits, right?

Cite, please?

[kayaker]

I’m not a tobacco user, but the technology behind the various vaping devices is pretty cool. I don’t like nicotine’s effects (damn Europeans and their habit of rolling spiffs with tobacco mixed in) but if anyone ever offered me a hit off their vape I’d accept.

[hogarth]

I sympathise with smokers trying to quit by using nicotine gum, for instance. But as soon as I have to worry about “second-hand gum”, I start to lose my sympathy.