Don’t F*&k With Vapers

There’s something the public health crowd, tobacco control groups, and much of the Canadian media still don’t understand about why flavours haven’t been banned, it’s because of vapers. You can’t shame people who have already lived through being treated like society’s cautionary tale. Call us what you want, because we are tough, not industry shrills. The name calling tactic doesn’t work here. And more importantly, we’re not about to sit quietly while government funded NGO’s attempt to take away the one thing that keeps us smoke free.

You see, we once smoked. We stood outside in snowbanks behind restaurants. We smelled like stale cigarettes and gas station coffee. We were judged, lectured by doctors, and treated like walking cautionary tales. Then one day, a bunch of us found something that worked, something that helped us finally leave smoking behind. We found safer nicotine. To the dismay of every politician, every tobacco control member, we didn’t quietly disappear into the night, we found our collective voice and something worth fighting for:

Our smoke free future.

You may see nicotine advocates as a feral little army of former smokers with refillable devices, pouches, strong opinions, and loud, pushy voices. But we are a movement. A beautiful, loud, informed movement that refuses to back down to anyone. We are gritty. We know how to fight, and we simply don’t care what someone’s opinion of us is, because we know better and we are not giving up our option.

And frankly, why should we care if someone in an ill-fitted outfit repeatedly calls us industry shills? She is simply fighting to keep herself, and her friends relevant.

We are fighting to keep our lives free from tobacco-related disease.

That is the difference

Our movement was not built by polished consultants in blazers hosting catered stakeholder meetings with sparkling water and branded tote bags. Our movement was built in Facebook groups at 2:13 a.m. by people named “CloudDad69” explaining coil resistance to a 57-year-old grandmother from Saskatchewan who just wanted to stop smoking Belmont Mild’s. It was built in vape shops with busted couches and fluorescent lighting. It was built by people who never intended to become policy experts but did anyway because somebody had to.

We are smart, and we can learn. We know more about taxation frameworks, risk-proportionate regulation, international treaty structures, behavioural psychology, illicit market economics, youth prevalence data, nicotine pharmacology, regulation, and bylaws than the people trying to regulate us.

A lot of people in this space are blue-collar and working class. Former addicts. People with anxiety. ADHD chaos goblins. Night-shift workers. Truckers. Single moms. Seniors. We are not polished. We are not pretty. But we work.

When we build a strategy or launch a campaign to push back, save flavours, or unlock pouches, it doesn’t happen on the top floor in a corporate boardroom. We don’t have consultants or brand managers. We have Zoom meetings where you’ll find:

• twelve tabs open,

• somebody yelling in all caps,

• three people arguing over statistics,

• one person posting memes,

• and another screaming, “CALL YOUR MP RIGHT NOW.”

And somehow… it works.

Underneath the chaos is something real: people who genuinely care whether others live or die from smoking. That’s the secret nobody wants to admit. This movement survives because it is human. Messy people helping messy people.

No one gets into tobacco harm reduction because they dreamed of becoming a nicotine activist at age nine. Nobody announced at graduation that they want to lead the World Health Organization. Heck, most of didn’t even understand that THE WHO is not only a 70’s rock band.

Most of us ended up this space because we were scared. We smoked, we found something that finally helped us quit, and now we will fight like hell to make sure it’s never taken away.

It’s that simple. There is no conspiracy theory, there are no puppet masters. We have experienced a safer way to consume nicotine. Pouches, vapes or whatever options one of has chosen and no one is going to take it away from us.

And once you understand that, you understand why the movement keeps surviving every attempt to crush it. You can’t PR-spin people who learned advocacy through lived experience. You can’t intimidate people who already rebuilt their lives once before. And you can’t underestimate a community powered almost entirely by nicotine, stubbornness, and group chats.

And despite every attempt to frame us as uninformed, reckless, or manipulated, the truth is a lot simpler. This community is informed, because it had to. We learned policy because policy threatened the thing that helped save their lives. We figured out how to get our message out when no one was listening. We found experts that gave us their time and knowledge to help us learn, because we were not afraid to ask questions and for help.

We are not polished. But we know a hell of a lot and we are not giving up.

And that’s exactly why people should stop fucking with us.

Join us and help us unlockthepouch.ca