{"id":3923,"date":"2016-07-31T02:13:08","date_gmt":"2016-07-31T02:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/?p=3923"},"modified":"2016-07-31T02:13:08","modified_gmt":"2016-07-31T02:13:08","slug":"samantha-bee-big-tobacco-and-little-vape-and-a-criticism-of-full-frontal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/?p=3923","title":{"rendered":"Samantha Bee: Big Tobacco and Little Vape — and a criticism of “Full Frontal”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Full
Full Frontal with Samantha Bee<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This is a really funny and fairly sympathetic piece done by Samantha Bee’s “Full Frontal” about the new Food and Drug Administration regulations and its effect on the vaping industry. The piece did miss one big point about the vaping industry, however.<\/p>\n

The proposed regs, while missing a lot of important proposals anti-tobacco advocates wanted, like curbs on marketing and Internet sales, would require all vaping products to individually go through a lengthy approval process. Vaping advocates say this would cripple if not completely wipe out the vaping industry because the costs to go through this process would be so onerous. The FDA\u00a0itself estimates\u00a0that between 30 percent to 70 percent<\/a> of e-cig businesses may be forced to go out of business due to the new regulations.<\/p>\n

Full Frontal visited a vaping conference and did have a good time poking fun at vapers. For instance, Samantha Bee sends a correspondent to the conference rather than go herself because she doesn’t want to be around vapers, then the correspondent immediately runs out the door as soon as she encounters e-cigarette steam blown in her face. However, the show was fair to e-cigs and did acknowledge that some studies have shown that vaping is far less dangerous than smoking.<\/p>\n

\"full<\/p>\n

One thing I honestly learned\u00a0from the segment\u00a0is that there is a pretty distinct actual honest-to-goodness “vaping culture,” that at least according to the show, has a counter-culture edge. Sort of like cigar culture only with lots of piercings, I suppose. I never realized this culture existed, though, as I thought about it, some of the e-cig proponents I’ve dealt with online are almost messianic in their defence of e-cigarettes.<\/p>\n

One thing the Full Frontal segment did get wrong, however, (and they got this like … really<\/strong> <\/em>wrong), was that suggesting that Big Tobacco has “struggled to compete” in the e-cigarette market. That’s really not true. Vuse E-Cigs<\/a> (35 percent market share, Blu E-Cigs (23 percent) and MarkTen (16 percent), the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 e-cig brands on the market, are actually wholly-owned subsidiaries of RJ Reynolds, Imperial Tobacco Group and Altria (Philip Morris). In fact, these three brands represent a combined 74 percent<\/em> <\/strong>of the e-cig market. Seventy-four percent is hardly “struggling to compete.”<\/p>\n