Top management tip: don’t call your customers idiots

A health expert has taken issue with a cartoon in Tobacco Control Journal that depicts vapers as idiots.

In his blog, The Rest of the Story, Dr. Michael Siegel, a Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences, Boston University School of Public Health, asks: ‘Why is Tobacco Control making fun of vapers and calling them idiots?’.

And he wonders what would be the reaction if the same journal ran a cartoon depicting a nicotine patch user as an idiot. ‘I think most readers could appreciate that a cartoon which makes fun of smokers who are using a nicotine patch to try to quit smoking, improve their health, and save their lives so that they are around longer to enjoy life and time with their families would be quite insensitive and inappropriate, especially coming from a journal that is supposed to be promoting health,’ he said. ‘But there is no qualitative difference between such an NRT cartoon and the e-cigarette cartoon that is featured in the July issue of Tobacco Control.’

Siegel ends his piece with this observation: ‘It continues to baffle me why the tobacco control movement views vaping and vapers with such venomous disdain. If we had the same disdain for smokers who slop on patches or use nicotine inhalers or chewing gum, we would be writing ourselves out of the public health field. I’m afraid that’s exactly what we’re doing with our attitude about e-cigarettes and the people who are using these devices to try to improve their health and save their lives.’

The Rest of the Story is at: http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/tobacco-control-journal-makes-fun-of.html.