Video: Vape-o-nomics: Why Everything is Addictive Now
Added 2024-01-28 20:45:48 +0000 UTCHello wonderful Patreon supporters!
I hope you've all had a fantastic weekend and have exciting weeks to come.
I'm super excited to share with you my latest video: Vape-o-nomics: Why Everything is Addictive Now.
As I've mentioned in my weekly blog, The Friday Update, this is the first in a three-part trilogy in which I use the rise of disposable vapes as a jumping-off point for exploring various trends and tensions within contemporary capitalism.
In today's video, we're looking at addiction, and how companies across our economy are tricking us into addiction-like relationships with their products.
I hope you enjoy it! Let me know what you think!
And, thanks as ever for your generous support; contributions through Patreon are key to allowing us to continue upping our game.
Speak soon!
Tom
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Comments
I think that's a fair response! I'm was quite keen to establish in the video that vaping is evidently healthier than smoking cigarettes, whilst also not being actively healthy in any way. The research on the benefits and drawbacks of vaping as a smoking cessation method is obviously quite varied. I actually found an interesting split in my reading between research produced in the UK (which tended to be more positive about e-cigarettes as a cessation tool) and that produced in the US (which tended to be more sceptical). This partly resulted from a subtle difference in focus. More positive research tended to focus on the health benefits for existing smokers, whilst more sceptical research tended to focus on wider public health considerations. We know, for example, that tobacco use was in a pretty terminal decline; however vaping has brought a lot of (particularly young) people who never would have smoked into using nicotine. It's genuinely a really complex area of public health policy with no simple solutions!
Tom Nicholas
2024-02-12 02:12:28 +0000 UTCTom, just a few thoughts after watching this for a second time. As a "vaper", I found this video a bit aggressive against vaping. Vaping as an industry has consisted of hundreds if not thousands of companies and individuals with limited revenue, compared with smoking where a handful of companies control the market and make huge revenues. It's difficult to assert that research concerning vaping has been driven by the industry - the 2013 paper by Farsalinos for example was published when the market was in its infancy. The disposable segment of vaping which has grown enormously in the last few years does present a huge challenge. It makes it easier for minors to acquire the product, is marketed as cool and hip and most importantly presents an environmental hazard because a huge amount of plastic and used batteries end up in landfills. You also presume that these devices, mass produced in China, receive some sort of testing when they enter the European markets but I can assure you that this is far from true. I've never heard of any disposable which has SDS for the liquid it contains. SDS is a document produced by an external lab that certifies that a product's constituents do not exceed maximum concentrations considered healthy by law. Disposables should and already are being addressed legislatively, as has been the case in France and the UK recently. Doesn't mean vaping as a healthier alternative to smoking should be demonized. Legislation has equated smoking and vaping, but that doesn't make them the same, lest we forget that cigarette products contain hundreds of addictive substances - some added to the tobacco blend for this very property - and are shown to be a hundred times more harmful compared to vaping which only provides nicotine. Vaping is not a drop-in replacement for cigarettes, it takes effort to make the switch (from one addiction to the another? sure), but it does make the individual healthier, as witnessed from people regaining lung strength, olfaction etc.
Alexandros Konstantinakis-Karmis
2024-02-07 07:52:31 +0000 UTCThank you Zack, I really appreciate that! I was up until 2:30am last night using every method I could to get in touch with YouTube and, once I woke up, it appeared that one of those methods has worked (I don't know which yet!). It's unlikely that it will gain the momentum it had previously though so we're likely to be down quite a bit on revenue from this video compared to where we could have been—so your support genuinely goes a really long way! Hope you've had a great weekend!
Tom Nicholas
2024-01-29 10:50:48 +0000 UTCJust heard about the demonization and decided to jump on for a month or two. I hope it gets resolved, it's definitely a topic worth talking about.
Zachary Read
2024-01-29 03:57:38 +0000 UTC
