“Anti-tobacco campaigners try ever so hard to be hip. No one tries harder than the Truth Initiative. They employ outdated internet memes, puppets mimicking the Breakfast Club, and zombies harassing innocent store clerks. Their actors can be awkward and theatrical, their messages ham-handed and overwrought. Badly designed ads can indeed have such a rebound effect. Manufacturing a cool image to stop teens from smoking is one thing; broadcasting half-truths to stop them vaping is another. Sadly, the teen vaping rate is rising. But the teen smoking rate is still falling—faster than ever, in fact—and it’s a good, even if not ideal, thing if teens switch from the one vice to the other. “No one knows the long-term effects of Juuling,” warns one ad. True enough, but those long-term effects, whatever they are, will almost certainly be better than the long-term effects of smoking. The Royal College of Physicians has found, for instance, that “the hazard to health arising from long-term vapour inhalation from e‑cigarettes” is “unlikely to exceed 5% of the harm from smoking tobacco.”
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Teen Vaping Is Bad. So Are Many Ad Campaigns Against Teen Vaping.
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