Vaping takes us back to the bad old days of smoking

Before scientists discovered that smoking cigarettes causes cancer, advertising included a baby telling its mother to “calm down and have a Marlboro”, and doctors recommending certain brands as the most wholesome.

Even after it became illegal to punt smoking as healthy and doctors began telling their patients to cease and desist, the habit was still widely advertised as “cool”. 

Actors smoked in movies; beautiful people smoked on yachts and ski slopes; he-men smoked on horseback.

Then the health authorities clamped down, banning advertising and the sponsorship of sporting and other events by cigarette brands. Smoking anywhere within the vicinity of other people became verboten and cigarette packs carry dire warnings of death and illness.

A century later, we seem to have gone back to the beginning with vaping, using smoking mechanisms that contain either oil or pods with a combination of nicotine and who knows what else. Warnings are not mandatory and the promotion of vaping as a harmless activity is not yet forbidden.

Tobacco is still bad for you, but at least the cigarette industry now regulates the chemicals added to the filters and tobacco mix.

The same is not true of the vaping industry. Studies have detected toxic metals and other harmful substances that cause serious body and brain damage being sucked into the lungs of minors. Minors, because while cigarette smoking has become mostly uncool, vaping is seen by the youth as "dope" (dope is the new cool).

It is illegal to sell vaping equipment to anyone under 18, but that law is equally as effective as the one forbidding cigarette sales to minors, which is to say not at all.

Scientists have been faster off the mark than they were with tobacco and are vociferously pointing out the health dangers of vaping. Legislation is in the works, but in the meantime perhaps parents should teach their children about vapes and stop buying them for their birthdays.