One of the most persistent memes in the vaping advocacy echo chamber is that anyone working in public health and tobacco control who has even a flicker of an amber or red light on their policy dashboard about any platform of vaping regulation, is helping Big Tobacco. In fact, we are probably being paid by them.
Here’s how their argument runs
- Vaping is a massive threat to the tobacco industry’s tobacco sales
- Any policy or statement that slows or stops smokers switching to e-cigs keeps or returns smokers to smoking benefits the tobacco industry
From this it follows that
- Any caution or hesitancy about allowing unrestrained vaping in any location, using any ingredients in any vaping equipment helps Big Tobacco
- Any attention drawn to the growing evidence that vaping potentially has serious health concerns like this, this or this, and does not match the hype about e-cigs being exceptionally effective ways of quitting smoking also helps Big Tobacco.
Across 40 years in tobacco control I’ve never encountered a greater piece of weapons-grade confused stupidity than this truly bizarre claim. Let’s take a look at the gaping holes in what they say.
Tobacco control has blown every cherished Big Tobacco policy out of the water
First, there’s the teensy little problemette of how tobacco control has fought and won protracted battles against the tobacco industry’s efforts to retain tobacco-friendly policies over 50 years. Those working in tobacco control in Australia from the late 1960s have won every major policy battle they ever fought. Here are some highlights:
- Four generations of pack health warnings starting in 1973, all resisted tooth and nail by the industry
- Complete indoor workplace smoking bans, including on all public transport, and in all restaurants, clubs, bars and pubs. Workplace bans reduce number of cigarettes smoked over 24 hours and were responsible for about 22% of the total decline in tobacco consumption in Australia between 1988-1995 when they were being introduced
- Total advertising and sponsorship bans
- Unique among all general retail products, retail display bans (all stock kept out-of-sight)
- Introduction of world-leading mass reach public education programs
- Globally unique plain tobacco packaging commenced in Australian in 2012, starting a global domino effect that now sees 17 nations having implemented or legislated for their introduction, with more on the way. The industry invested many millions to stop this, but always lost
- end of all tobacco growing in Australia (this let the air out of the industry’s tyres to lobby via growers in the few electorates where tobacco was once grown)
- end of all tobacco manufacturing (BAT and Philip Morris products are all now imported). This benefits tobacco control because there’s now negligible local industry employment and all profits are repatriated, a disbenefit to the balance of trade and therefore an incentive for governments to reduce smoking further)
- world’s highest retail price of tobacco led by tax policy and the industry using tax rises as air cover to raise their own margins
- ban on personal importation of cigarettes by mail
- Import duty free limit of 25 cigarettes in an open pack
- The Liberal, Labor and Greens parties all refuse tobacco industry donations, unique among all industries
- No university allows staff to accept tobacco industry grants or students to take scholarships
- Only far right fringe of politics would ever be seen in a photo opportunity with tobacco or vaping interests.
- Big Tobacco ranks (way) last as the industry with the lowest reputation (see chart below)
- Widespread denormalization of smoking
- The industry understands that all the above make it an unattractive employment choice which creates staff quality problems
All this has seen a nearly constant decline in smoking prevalence in adults and teenagers, in the average number of cigarettes smoked per day by continuing smokers and rises in the proportion of people who have never smoked and in public support for tobacco control measures. Only 11% of Australian adults smoked daily in 2019, the lowest figure ever recorded and representing some 100,000 fewer daily smokers in the last three years. The proportion of young adults aged 18–24 never smoking more than 100 cigarettes in their life has increased from 58% to 80% between 2001 and 2019. These are disastrous numbers for Big Tobacco.
So yes, it’s easy to see that Australia’s tobacco control workers have done everything they can to help Big Tobacco over many years. We are just loved by them. They send us Christmas presents and display our photos in their foyers as platinum in-kind supporters.
If we were helping them, we were very, very bad at it.
And of course, how very stupid of us all to be working for decades to reduce smoking when it’s going to put us all on the dole, as this observer notes.
But what about vaping? Is this so-called disruptor really changing the dance card and seeing Big Tobacco secretly applauding tobacco control because they are now grateful that fewer are smoking? All major tobacco companies are heavily invested in e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products. The industry business model is not e-cigarettes instead of cigarettes. It is e-cigarettes as well as cigarettes with all the companies doing all they can to maximise sales for both. And as we’ll see below, vaping is holding far more smokers in smoking than it is tipping out of it.
Big Tobacco is in total lockstep with vaping advocates’ goals
When extreme libertarian, former Liberal Democrat Senator David Leyonhjelm indulged himself by holding a Senate inquiry into “measures introduced to restrict personal choice ‘for the individual’s own good’, vaping was one of the big agenda items. Few public health agencies bothered to waste time by sending submissions to it, but four tobacco companies ( Philip Morris Limited, BAT Australia, Imperial Tobacco, Japan Tobacco International ) did, along with vaping advocates – you know, the ones who like to say that tobacco control “helps” Big Tobacco. Leyonhjelm’s party was funded by Philip Morris.
If you read through the linked tobacco company submissions to the inquiry alongside the policy goals of vaping advocates, their hopes are often interchangeable: minimum controls on e-cigs and vaping. Public health agencies want serious controls, and are supporting health minister Greg Hunt’s plan to make nicotine juice available only via special prescription.
Vaping advocates like to present themselves as champions of cottage industry vaping companies, often talking as though these were the equivalent of folksy craft beer companies bravely taking on the majors, chanting anti big business, people-power slogans to make vapers feel all warm inside at their revolutionary zeal.
But many of these warriors are ignorant or naïve about the history of the tobacco industry’s mergers and acquisitions with vaping companies that they see as additions (not substitutes) to their cigarette mainstays.(see chart below). Just as successful independent micro-brewers like Little Creatures get swallowed up by global companies, the tobacco industry has swallowed up many government tobacco monopolies over the years, to either get rid of the competition or piggyback on local reputations. Altria in the USA invested $US12.8 billion in Juul, the e-cigarette brand favoured by teenagers in 2018, although this may be going pear-shaped for the company. The bottom line is that Big Tobacco can, has and will eat any minnow vaping company for breakfast anytime it chooses to.
No tobacco company has taken its foot off the floor of marketing and promoting cigarettes where and whenever it can. And all continue to lobby to erode effective tobacco control policies, as I argued here, here and here. Vaping advocates are the ones who are helping big tobacco, while tobacco control is working to stop making all the mistakes with vaping regulation that were made with tobacco by letting the industry do what it liked for much of the twentieth century.
In the 1970s, the Australian tobacco companies quietly groomed an eccentric Bondi GP, William Whitby who wrote two self-published books about how smoking was good for you. They even provided him with media training. Today we have a small handful of doctors in Australia who are doubtless being similarly deeply appreciated by the local transnational tobacco company representatives for all the work they are doing to promote vaping and to attack organisations and individuals working to reduce smoking.
In a recent longitudinal study of US vapers, 88.5% of those who were dual using cigarettes and e-cigarettes at baseline, were still smoking a year later. The industry is well aware of such data and sees vaping as a terrific way of holding smokers in smoking far more than it tips the out of it, while also serving to distract attention from further evidence-based measures to reduce smoking. The table below shows that for every smoker who had a positive outcome after 1 year using e-cigarettes, there were 4.6 who had a negative outcome (relapse back to smoking, took up smoking instead, progressed to dual use) or stayed the same (smoking and vaping, or continuing to vape).
It is vaping advocates who are helping this process, not tobacco control people.
Other blogs in this series:
Vaping theology: 1 The Cancer Council Australia takes huge donations from
cigarette retailers. WordPress 30 Jul, 2020
Vaping theology: 2 Tobacco control advocates help Big Tobacco. WordPress 12 Aug, 2020
Vaping theology: 3 Australia’s prescribed vaping model “privileges” Big Tobacco WordPress Feb 15, 2020
Vaping theology: 4 Many in tobacco control do not support open access to vapes because they are just protecting their jobs. WordPress 27 Feb 2021
Vaping theology: 5 I take money from China and Bloomberg to conduct bogus studies. WordPress 6 Mar, 2021
Vaping theology: 6 There’s nicotine in potatoes and tomatoes so should we restrict or ban them too? WordPress 9 Mar, 2021
Vaping theology: 7 Vaping prohibitionists have been punished, hurt, suffered and damaged by Big Tobacco WordPress 2 Jun, 2021
Vaping theology: 8 I hide behind troll account. WordPress 29 Jun, 2021
Vaping theology: 9 “Won’t somebody please think of the children”. WordPress 6 Sep, 2021
Vaping theology: 10: Almost all young people who vape regularly are already smokers before they tried vaping. WordPress 10 Sep, 2021
Vaping theology: 11 The sky is about to fall in as nicotine vaping starts to require a prescription in Australia. WordPress 28 Sep, 2021
Vaping theology: 12 Nicotine is not very addictive WordPress 3 Jan 2022
Vaping theology 13: Kids who try vaping and then start smoking,would have started smoking regardless. WordPress 20 Jan, 2023
Vaping theology 14: Policies that strictly regulate vaping will drive huge
numbers of vapers back to smoking, causing many deaths. WordPress 13 Feb, 2023
Vaping theology 15: The government’s prescription vape access scheme has failed, so let’s regulate and reward illegal sellers for what they’ve been doing. WordPress 27 Mar 2023
Vaping theology 16: “Humans are not rats, so everybody calm down about nicotine being harmful to teenage brains”. WordPress 13 Jul, 2023
Vaping theology 17: “Vaping advocates need to be civil, polite and respectful” … oh wait. WordPress 3 Oct, 2023
Vaping theology 18: Vaping is a fatally disruptive “Kodak moment” for smoking. WordPress Oct 30, 2023
Simon Chapman AO 
Wonderful as always Simon.
I think the next one needs to be about flavours â getting a lot of trolls telling me that flavours target adults not kids! It is about making them move away from the nasty taste of tobacco to the lovely flavours of e-cigs and that kids can get their flavours legally via NRT in flavours. What is the difference.
S
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Another excellent piece with plenty of opportunities to post key tables and charts. Thanks for making our advocacy work easier Simon!
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Simon Chapman wrote:
“Vaping is a massive threat to the tobacco industry’s tobacco sales”
The type of vaping devices that big tobacco companies are NOT selling are a threat to tobacco sales. Big Tobacco’s vape products, from their “vype”, to their former IP licensees “njoy” prior to their bankruptcy, and now their latest soon-to-fail product “Juul”, are designed to keep people either dual-using, or turn people off of vaping altogether.
Devices that can hold enough battery charge, and enough liquid to last all day so the user doesn’t require any other nicotine source, and which allows the user to customize their preferred power output, will always be a major threat to the tobacco sales. They represent 85% of the e-cigarette market, but are comprised of hundreds of small to medium sized companies. The often touted headline that Juul is the front runner of the market is false. Juul are merely the front runner of their small share of the market.
Simon Chapman wrote:
“Any caution or hesitancy about allowing unrestrained vaping in any location, using any ingredients in any vaping equipment helps Big Tobacco.”
No reasonable vaping advocate is arguing for “unrestrained” legalisation. Most vaping advocates are arguing for strictly enforced age restricted sales, child-proof packaging, accurate labeling and warnings, and nicotine level limits on flavored ejuices. Some like myself, advocate for strict marketing regulations.
Your idea of vaping restrictions are tantamount to a full blown ban on vaping, something that you have consistently said you were against since at least 2011 as far as I can recall. Ive been following you for almost a decade, and while I am certain you are not connected to Big Tobacco or Big Pharma, your ideas certainly promote their interests in the keeping the status quo of smokers having limited options to quit smoking.
Simon Chapman wrote:
“But many of these warriors are ignorant or naïve about the history of the tobacco industry’s mergers and acquisitions with vaping companies that they see as additions (not substitutes) to their cigarette mainstays.”
You appear to be naïve to what big companies value the most, which is intellectual property. The reason why the bulk of the e-cigarette market is taken up by small to medium businesses is because it is very difficult to capture the market. Anyone with engineering skills can design their own device, and put it out there on the market. There’s very little IP to gain and monopolize on in the market of the most effective devices, and so anyone can join, and big tobacco don’t want it.
Big tobacco originally acquired Ruyan because of their IP on auto activation (i.e suck to activate switch). RJR’s Blu and Njoy were major licensees of that IP. Big tobacco acquired Juul because they had IP surrounding their use of nicotine salts and the device to vaporise nicotine salts. This technology is not even needed. Most vapers do not use nicotine salts, in fact most don’t like it due the taste. Furthermore, if you remember back to the European Tobacco Directive, Big Tobacco companies, represented by trade association TVECA, secretly tried to get refillable devices banned, and have their own ineffective cigalikes the only types of devices legalised.
If you understanding the two different submarkets within the vaping industry, you would understand that the legalisation of non-big tobacco vaping devices are no threat to the tobacco control efforts, and are clearly a major threat to tobacco sales. Afterall, wasn’t it you who coined the scream test; that “If the tobacco industry complains loudly and long and lobbies all the politicians it can find then you know that you are winning”?
Simon Chapman wrote:
“In a recent longitudinal study of US vapers, 88.5% of those who were dual using cigarettes and e-cigarettes at baseline, were still smoking a year later.”
This is data collected from users of both Big Tobacco’s vaping devices, and Non-Big tobacco vaping devices. Unless a study has clearly separated the two different types of devices, then it is invalid to use such a statistic to substantiate your claim. We wouldn’t combine data of people vaping and chewing gum. We shouldn’t be combining data of people who use Big Tobacco’s vape devices, and Open-System vape devices.
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Are you suggesting that Big Tobacco companies would be somehow unable to buy up any open system manufacturer which they chose to? They would not be interested in those with trivial market share, but any product that was profitable would be of interest. You note (without any referencing) that 85% of the vaping market is open systems.If that is correct then any cohort study of vapers looking at transitions, persistence of dual use etc which was properly conducted would have ~85% of open system users in its participants. You can’t walk on both sides of the street with that argument.
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Simon Chapman wrote:
“Big Tobacco companies would be somehow unable to buy up any open system manufacturer which they chose to?”
It’s not a matter of their ability to purchase, but their ability to hold onto. Even if a non-tobacco manufacturer were to take a significant chunk of the market with their latest product, if that product is not patentable, then anyone can simply copy their design and compete. We see this every year. When a manufacturer comes out with a product that vapers find effective, all other small-medium manufacturers follow suit and make a similar product.
The tobacco industry would not bother acquiring these products because they would have to continuously buy all companies producing similar models. It would be far more cheaper and easier to lobby for bans on such devices, as they attempted to do during the 2014 Euro TPD.
Here is an example. Each product, at least after 2016, represents at least dozens of different models produced by dozens of different manufacturers:
Simon Chapman wrote:
“any cohort study of vapers looking at transitions, persistence of dual use etc which was properly conducted would have ~85% of open system users in its participants”
and previously wrote:
“In a recent longitudinal study of US vapers, 88.5% of those who were dual using cigarettes and e-cigarettes at baseline, were still smoking a year later.”
Firstly, the study you referenced (which is by no means “recent” in terms of the evolving vape product development) was a cohort dating back to 2013. Often it’s said that vape products appeared on the market since 2007. The non-tobacco devices were still developing in 2013, as you can see in the above diagram. The market has evolved rapidly and its landscape is vastly different to what it was in 2013. There were still very effective devices in 2013 as there are now, but the amount of manufacturers were far fewer, and the first-time purchase price of those effective devices were far costly than they are today. The cohort in that study from 2013 most likely involved subjects who used cigalike or low powered pen-vape devices.
Secondly, studies need to make a clear distinction between “ever time” users and “regular” users. Future studies need to focus on people who spend on average at least $10/week after their first time purchase, to make sure an accurate conclusion on dual-use is made. Vaping should cost a non-hobbyist individual between 400 and 600 dollars a year (after initial purchase) to maintain depending on the cost of their ejuice. A person who spends well below this amount should never be considered a “dual-user”. They are most certainly almost never using their vape device.
You can find links to market share information on this reddit post: https://redd.it/a1jgse
At the time of posting, Juul’s market share was in reality, most likely 20%, but it should have certainly declined since then.
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You seem to think that the vape sector is somehow unique in having wannabe competitors adopting features of existing products or near-as-to features. This of course happens with many commodities & services, with some succeeding but many failing. Think of food, hotel booking services, gig economy delivery and ride services etc. The sheer size of the tobacco majors means they have huge competitive advantage over new entrants in distribution, marketing, ability to discount. You write that “The tobacco industry would not bother acquiring these products because they would have to continuously buy all companies producing similar models.” Which industry ever does that? We see takeovers only of highly profitable competitors or those which a larger company wants to own.
But this is all beside the point of my blog which is whether the net effect of tobacco control (including advocacy for strong regulation of vapable products) benefits big tobacco more than the actions of vaping advocates benefits them. Tobacco control has immeasurably caused massive downturns in smoking over 40 years. The Coleman et al PATH data suggest that there are far fewer vapers who benefit than there are those who relapse or keep dual using (the relevant data for the question of whether vaping holds lots of smokers in smoking).
You dismiss data gathered in 2013-15 as being out-of-date (it was published this and last year), speculating that all would be very different today because of the rise of mods & tank systems. But you offer no later data from community transition cohorts, so you really are just hypothesising.
You speculate that regular vapers are the ones most likely to benefit but this PATH study https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30978519/ showed that regular e-cig users had the highest quit rate but also the highest rate of relapse (“In long-term quitters (n = 3210), follow-up smoking relapse was 1.8%, 10.4%, 9.6%, and 15.0% among never (N = 2479), prior (N = 588), current occasional (N = 45), and current regular (N = 98) baseline e-cigarette users, respectively. Both prior use (AOR = 2.00, CI [1.25–3.20]) and current regular use of e-cigarettes (AOR = 3.77, CI [1.48–9.65]) had higher odds of subsequent smoking relapse as compared to never e-cigarette users after covariate adjustment”
But I’m sure you’ll offer the same conjectural dismissal of that too.
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