One company alone, Philip Morris International (Rothmans, Benson & Hedges parent company in the US), spent $10.5 billion to develop smoke-free nicotine products. Most of this money was spent on e-cigarettes, devices that heat tobacco and release a vapour containing nicotine.

Nicotine exposure among young people is linked to cognitive impairment, hyperactivity, and increased risk of suicide. And young people who vape are 3.6 times more likely to become cigarette smokers than those who do not. To capture a new generation of life-long, nicotine-addicted customers, Big Tobacco puts enormous effort into staving off public health restrictions on vaping. It wants vaping to be free of the regulatory constraints imposed on smoking.

In what seems to be a common formula for corporate misinformation campaigns, pro-vaping citizens groups are funded and influencers are hired and to normalize vaping for vast audiences on social media. University professors with vaping company grants publish articles in journals and newspapers opposing government regulation and disputing the science around vaping’s harmful effects. Not surprisingly, a UN study found that articles whose authors declared they had conflicts of interest because of ties with tobacco or pharmaceutical companies were 29 times more likely to be favourable to vaping.

Pro-vaping sites can masquerade as health promotion. If you visit the website https://www.unsmoke.ca/ of Rothmans campaign to deregulate vaping, you might think you were on a Canadian Cancer Society page so strong are the messages about the need to quit smoking cigarettes – cigarettes that Rothmans itself continues to produce. Rothmans though makes itself out to be addicted smokers’ best friend, doing what it can for them by providing e-cigarettes as this wonderful, advanced method of “harm reduction”.

I personally was exposed to this far-reaching campaign for vaping deregulation when, as a member of the Canadian Association of Retired Persons (CARP), I got an email inviting me to participate in a CARP focus group on vaping. I was initially going to sign up until I read the fine print at the end of the invitation saying “The funding client for this project is Unsmoke Canada, an initiative of Rothmans, Benson & Hedges (RBH).”