OPINION: The Case for Vaping

Vaping could be the next vaccine, a miracle of modern science that saves nine million lives each year — if only we would let it. I think more people should vape. 

I love a hot take, and this is one of my favorite stock ones, along with banning credit cards and speed limits. It never fails to get a rise out of people, but that’s not why I go for it. Like the other hot takes, I really do believe that it’s true, no matter how counterintuitive it might seem. But how could I say that? Am I really that hooked, or have the heavy metals seeped into my brain? 

You’ve seen the image before. The pile of tropical colored doodads, dumped behind a headboard, hiding in a sock drawer, or maybe proudly displayed, lining a wall, covering a desk, an altar to hedonism. A double graveyard for e-waste and youth. We used to be a proper country.

Vaping isn’t pretty. In fact, it’s widely regarded as kind of lame. Most people I talk to about their vaping habit are bashful. They can quit whenever they want, they’ve been doing it since high school, they only do it at parties, it’s their friend’s, it’s their last one, etc.  

Not many want to be associated with vapes nowadays, and that makes sense. They’re the physical embodiment of our psychological weaknesses — vice manifest. Geek Bar, Elf Bar, Flum, Vuse, Squid Bar. And that’s not mentioning the ones that look like baby bottles. What’s wrong with you people?

It’s easy to think they have always been thought of as lame. In our short lives, we have had top box seats to three devastating acts of the tragic arc of the vape. Act One: Ten years ago, bearded dorks donning Raiders or Trail Blazers trucker hats and flannels with box mods blew phat clouds outside of axe-throwing places; the beginning of a doomed and disparaged budding love affair. Act Three: Now, middle schoolers turn to their dagger: neon Geek bars displaying Mantuan poison on their little screens. Two points on the continuum of perpetual uber-lameness plot a line, Q.E.D… but it seems as though everyone forgot about Act Two.

Vapes are lame now, through no fault of their own and in keeping with no permanent historical trend. Overzealous regulation and alarmism about vaping created the modern disposable vape climate, and the stuff before was just hipsters being gross. They probably still blow clouds — they’re hipsters! At the same time, when we examine the continuum a bit more, we find that between the vaping dark days, the rocky times of the hipster and the box mod, and the harsh, jutting, new age middle schooler vaping era, lay Act Two: Capulet’s Orchard, the halcyon valley of the Juul. 

For a brief moment around 2018, Juul was synonymous with vaping as a whole. In a now seemingly deleted blog post, Juul claimed that their popularity stemmed from their disruption of a seemingly archaic industry. Disruption it certainly was: Juul seemed to be years ahead of its competition, as evidenced by its market share. However, much of this success was quickly attributed to the most notorious part of the company’s history: Youth vaping. 

I remember it as well as you might. Seemingly overnight, not just vapes, but Juuls appeared around every corner. I was 13 when they got big, and although COVID-19 severed my ties to the school bathroom, Juul nevertheless left a strong impression. Vaping entered popular consciousness, becoming a fixture in mainstream culture. Celebrities vaped, you vaped, we all vaped.

Crucially, it’s fair to claim that Juul, probably on purpose, created a generation addicted to vaping. The harder they come, the harder they fall. The first wave of, dare I say, justified alarm resulted in a barrage of litigation, eventual legislation and massive settlements. For never was a story of more woe, than this of Juul and its way to go. Yet the nail in the company’s coffin was the EVALI (e-cigarette- or vaping-use-associated lung injury) media circus. All of a sudden, people were getting sick, and in some cases even dying, and this was “linked” to vaping, and vaping was synonymous with Juul. Media poisoners descend, whirlwind ensues … classic. 

NBC reported on the outbreak, talked to cops and cautioned masses of concerned parents and vapers about the danger and addictive nature of youth vaping. Another lost generation, our poor youth. Surprisingly, vape sales plummeted. Heroic journalists’ calls to action saved the day. It was another slam dunk for Fauci and the woke mind virus. With all eyes turned to vapes, Juul’s FDA fiasco followed: a flavor ban in 2020 and a marketing ban in 2022 capped off a litigious history. With the bad guy seemingly got, we should sound the victory bells. Right? 

The thing is, it was never the Juul pods that caused “vape lung.” Even the original studies — cited by so many media outlets that focused mainly on the addictive nature of vapes —  showed that more than 80 percent of people who got sick were using THC cartridges, not nicotine vapes, most of them originating from extremely non-FDA-approved sources. But the damage was done. 

After flavored refillable vapes were banned, largely stemming from Juul’s controversy, many turned to the completely unregulated market of disposables. Products labeled as reputable brands, Puff Bar the most infamous, were up to 95 percent counterfeit. 

This new littered, counterfeit, neon era of vapes beat competition on flavors but are almost certainly riskier than the previous generation of established, regulated, reusable brands — but this doesn’t matter, because vapes are uncool again anyway. We smoke cigarettes now. 

Nowadays, the discourse — especially in Claremont — is sheer misinformed idiocracy. Buoyed by repeat fear-mongering news cycles about vaping, cigarettes are increasing in cultural cachet by the minute. I’m a cigfluencer —“Ooooooooh, let the light iiiiiiiin”— I only roll my own, with American Spirit tobacco … I totally quit vaping by smoking. I only smoke a few a day, and I used to hit my vape allllll the timmeeeeeeeee … I feel so much bettterrrrrrrr. USB stick. Cigs just have natural vibesssss; they come from plantsssss. Vapes look stupid. It’s just a drunk ciggggg …. it doesn’t count.

How did we get here, and when does the bad news end? 

The fact is that vapes and cigarettes are substitutes. When one decreases in popularity, the other increases. This is a good thing, but only if we let the pendulum swing one way: towards vapes. Cigarettes, unfortunately, are really, really bad for you, but they are also really, really cool. Cigarettes: the 90s, 80s, 70s, 60s, youth, rebellion, cowboys, sex, drugs, rock and roll, the World Wars, race car liveries, Ke$ha, nostalgia, freedom, cowboys again, pirates, Kurt Cobain, Charlie Sheen and a swath of other hyper-cultural items. Vapes? Middle schoolers and our own weakness. Scholars report vaping is the “jacking off” of nicotine! Don’t ask for a link to the paper.

Step back though. Cigarettes are linked to more than nine million deaths every year. Vapes, more specifically EVALI, have been linked to 68 deaths ever, all within a few months, and 80% of those EVALI cases linked to fake THC cartridges. Not to say that this is conclusive, or that vapes are safe. They are not. Full stop. You shouldn’t feel good about vaping, but think about it this way: There is no proven link between vaping and cancer. Cigarettes enjoy no such accolade. So maybe it’s okay to feel a little better about it.

Although it’s true that vaping is in some ways too new to know the magnitude of its risk, it’s beyond a shadow of a doubt clear that it is far, far safer than tobacco. Yet it seems like no one notices, let alone cares. Yes, vaping can make you sick, pump you full of chemicals and heavy metals, but all this, in one way or another, stems from the wild west climate of disposable vapes and fake carts. This won’t stop till we abandon the popular alarmist and prohibitionist ideas and policies that create the noxious vaping environment of today, and regulate it. Unregulated disposables, increased smoking and EVALI are all symptoms of this kind of thinking. 

Broad generalizations about safety lead to broad regulation, broad regulation leads to wide loopholes, and these cycles of misinformation lead to you having no idea if vaping — or the particular vape you’re using — is safe. No, I don’t think that every 12-year-old in the Tri-State needs an Elf Bar, but it would be great if everyone who currently smokes cigarettes had an easy, safer alternative. However, thanks to the demonization of vapes, many think they don’t.

It’s clear that vapes are here to stay, and that’s good news: they have the potential to substitute tobacco. However, potential needs realization, and vapes need PR. Enter local hero, TSL writer … Tobacco has hundreds of years and trillions of dollars in advertising from Big Tobacco. Because of that, some nine million people are going to die this year because of smoking. Fighting tobacco is an uphill battle, but vaping is a strong contender, and has potential to mitigate the harm of nicotine addiction, and prevent millions of deaths every year.

Vaping will never be cooler than smoking, but it is safer. If vaping could shed its stigma and gain credibility, we can regulate them properly and use them without shame. Smoking could be seen squarely as the worse option, not a debatable substitute. 

We could develop better ways for smokers to transition, and better ways for those who vape to quit altogether, but this only happens if people choose to believe in it. 

If we can stop smoking cigarettes by using FDA approved vapes, not disposables, maybe we won’t have to feel as lame, juvenile, or embarrassed as our vaping predecessors about it. And we certainly won’t smoke cigarettes at the same time. Why do you people always do that? Jesus.

Parker DeVore PZ ’27 is from Seattle, and wants you to know that he doesn’t even freaking vape, MOM!