FEATURE
THE THIN
GREY LINE
VAPOUROUND COLUMNIST VICTOR MULLIN, ‘VAPING WITH VIC,’
WRITES ‘A HANDFUL’ OF E-LIQUID COMPANIES MUST BE HELD
ACCOUNTABLE FOR ‘APPEALING TO KIDS’ AND HOW SOCIAL
MEDIA IS THE ‘SELF-POLICING ARM’ OF THE INDUSTRY.
Since the rise of anti-e-cigarette lobbying in the US,
and to a smaller extent in the UK and the EU, the
one line that has been rolled out time and time again
is “appealing to children.” It has become the go-to
phrase for tighter and tighter regulation of the industry
when it comes to the one thing we all use – e-liquids.
The targeting of the e-liquid industry has been utterly
relentless, especially over the past two years. Is it
warranted?
In most cases, it isn’t. It is true that a handful (and it
is literally a handful) of companies do go down the
road of labelling and packaging that can be looked at
as appealing to kids. The argument of having cartoon
styled labels on a bottle of pink lemonade liquid is
something which a lot of people have questioned,
including myself.
However, the truth of the matter is something far,
far different from the reality that the anti-e-cigarette
establishment wants to see. There are thousands of
brand name liquids across the planet, most of the
well-known ones being based in the EU/UK and the
US. Except for just that handful, the vast bulk of those
companies are responsible when it comes to how
they package those liquids. It always comes back to
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that handful of companies who don’t, and there is the
problem.
It would be a perfect world to have e-liquid companies
have to go through some sort of peer review of the
labelling and marketing of their company’s liquids. The
fact is though, that doesn’t happen on a industry level,
but it does happen in the one place that these companies
don’t have full control – social media.
It’s on Instagram, Twitter and to a lesser extent, Facebook
that the anti-e-cigarette establishment get these images
from. Parading in front of their local group meetings,
political meetings or committees with stacks and stacks
of liquids that have labelling and marketing that would
make any long-time vaper facepalm like those classic
Jean Luc Picard memes. However, that style of social
media marketing can work in the industry’s favour.
Social media itself, when it comes to these juice
companies, also has hundreds of comments on posts
with an e-liquid label that is questionable with the
community pointing out that the labels are just wrong.
If brick and mortar and online shops decide not to stock
these liquids because of the labelling, what would
happen?
That juice company would have to either change their
label or close down. Social media is the self-policing
arm of the vaping industry, especially Instagram.