Thread by @serenity_vape

It's not that the ongoing battle between #tobaccoharmreduction and #tobaccocontrol has taught me this, but it shows how easy it is to claim the moral high ground, act disingenuously, and then point fingers at the people they're stigmatizing. Hypocrisy is all too easy. /1

For sure, we should turn the mirror on ourselves as well, because, as I said, hypocrisy is easy. #thr is a balancing act between the ethical and the pragmatic. By advocating for it and selling vaping products and things like #kratom, I have to be open about risks. /2

At face value, that's not hard. Tell the truth. Embrace the consequences. But the consequences aren't just to me. I don't want to lose a sale but more importantly (for me), I don't want customers to keep choosing the devil they know (cigarettes, opioid painkillers, etc.). /3

In a way, this is the same dilemma facing the people in tobacco control. They want harsh, zero-tolerance policies that they hope will work by eliminating the option to use tobacco, or at least make it seem utterly unsafe. All banning flavored vapes does however... /4

...is *add* harms to an already harmful situation. Instead of leaving cigarettes as they are, which is to say expensive and damaging to users' physical health, they are making #harmreduction illegal. For people already between a rock and a hard place, I mean... /5

...it just narrows the space they have to move forward and make new choices. Philosophically, prohibitionists have made a false binary for themselves and are enforcing a double-bind on the people they *claim* they're trying to help. Smokers trying to quit through vaping. /6

Every time a vape ban goes into effect, people are damned if they do smoke and they're damned if they try to stop by taking a less harmful but, I think, more realistic approach to quitting smoking /7

We know vaping is more effective. (see, among others, nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NE…). I admit that I'm biased but this comes from personal experience and seeing the experiences of my customers, not the fact that I'm, you know, a vape shop owner. /8

I smoked cigarettes for about ten years. I quit by switching to #vaping. I smoked pot daily for about five years and while it helps tremendously with fibromyalgia, pot sometimes clashes with my bipolar disorder; I switched to smoking hemp flower and no longer need it daily. /9

These experiences make it easier to connect with people in similar situations. In some ways, it doesn't make me or others like me biased. It gives us expertise. Field experience. We have a much more realistic and authoritative view of harm reduction vs harm prohibition. /10

Why should this come at the cost of being stigmatized as addicts? By no means do I *feel* marginalized in any way, not until I enter a conversation about my experience with someone who thinks drugs are bad, mmkay. Still, I can tell that there's a note of care under that. /11

My concerns about personal and public health are, fundamentally, the same as, and I can't believe I'm going to say this, @TobaccoFreeKids, @ParentsvsVape, and maybe even @MikeBloomberg. Yet, our differences aren't just practical, they're ideological /12

I think #THR is more viable, humane, and pragmatic than even trying to ban #nicotine products. I think engineering economic and political landscapes to remove people's choices is fundamentally wrong. I'm not a fan of disincentives without incentivizing safer substitutes. /13

And when it comes to quitting smoking, I don't think there really were incentives to quit, not ones that worked. Being threatened isn't an incentive. Nicotine is addictive, no doubt. Stigmatizing addiction, shaming people for using substances, however, doesn't heal them. /14

So, here's my thesis, if you will, it is all too easy to stigmatize things like vaping and assume the moral high ground when trying to get people to stop being dependent on a substance or behavior and, however fundamentally humane that impulse is, it's just as wrong. /15

It will always be inhumane to tell someone that their personal choices about their health are their identity and that that identity is, through and through, despicable. You cannot misdiagnose someone with a disease, stigmatize that "disease," and then remove the easiest cure. /16

Prohibition, in this case, criminalizing the use of e-cigarettes, and then claiming to do it for the benefit of children, is inhumane. Whatever the motivations, and money is more of a motivation in #tobaccocontrol than in #THR (for another time, another voice to explain)... /17

...prohibition, stigmatizing vapers' choices and identities, forcing them to identify with a made-up stereotype (tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…), and eliminating safer options are right from the Oppresors' Handbook. As I said, I don't *feel* marginalized. However... /18

...I know when someone is trying to shove people into a box and push that box to the margins. I've seen it countless times. Racism uses these tricks. Xenophobia uses these tricks. Homophobia uses these tricks. Antisemitism uses these tricks. Tobacco control does too. /19

I have a humanities background. I've been well acquainted with identity politics for quite some time now. It's complicated. It's not what you hear that radical leftists or right-wingers think. Oppression is subtle, slow, insidious. Once you notice it, it's almost too late. /20

Yet, as a movement #tobaccoharmreduction advocates and activists did notice. Wherever we've stymied the creep of prohibition, fought to prevent our health choices from being criminalized, we are indebted to the examples set by civil rights activists. /21

We owe thanks to #LGBTQIA activists, to the Women's and Civil Rights Movement, to just about any minority that has been oppressed and said, "Hell no. Enough. I, too, am human. I matter." I am teetering at the edge of shoehorning this in, but I am grateful nonetheless. /22

In so many ways, #harmreduction is a sign that something humane is happening. It recognizes our complexity as people and the complexity of our world. Vaping is one valid answer to the complex question, "How do we help people quit smoking combustible cigarettes?" /23

I don't believe that @TobaccoFreeKids is fundamentally wrong in its aims and I ultimately want what @ParentsvsVape wants. A world without cigarette addiction and subsequent diseases is a goal worth pursuing. However, in practice, zero-tolerance policies are dangerous... /24

...for public health and put every demographic at risk. This isn't a slippery-slope argument. This is me saying that harm reduction is better than tobacco control policies that put nicotine users in the same box and throw us all off a steep cliff. /fin

@CongressmanRaja, I'd be honored if you read this :)