When it comes to the vaping industry , every new month seems to bring yet another challenge to overcome and another battle to win . Smoking claims more than eight million lives every year , so when vaping emerged as a far less harmful alternative , it should have gained universal support .
It ’ s difficult to understand why there is so much hatred towards a product with the potential to save lives ... but we ’ ve been down this road before .
Here we look at some other everyday items which were once as demonised as vaping is today …
In Victorian England , doctors blamed cycling on illnesses ranging from appendicitis and general inflammation to swelling of the throat and infertility .
There were reports of bike riders of mowing down pedestrians and ‘ leaving them for dead ’ on the roadside .
And an 1894 New York Times article said : “ There is not the slightest doubt that bicycle riding , if persisted in , leads to weakness of mind , general lunacy and homicidal mania .”
TALKIES
COFFEE
Coffee has been around since the late 15th Century but was met with resistance and widespread fear as it made its way around the world .
Religious leaders in Mecca , concerned about its stimulating effects , banned it in 1511 – a blanket restriction which was to take 13 years to overturn .
As it spread around Africa and Europe there were scare stories that it would ‘ dry your kidneys ’ but modern medical research has suggested that coffee could prolong the lives of people with kidney disease .
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There is not
“ the slightest doubt that bicycle riding leads to weakness of mind , general lunacy and homicidal mania .
Two of the biggest attractions of the modern cinema experience are the giant screens and the high-quality surround sound .
Early movies were all silent until ‘ The Jazz Singer ’ added sound in 1927 and the era of the ‘ talkies ’ was born .
Silent movie star Mary Astor dismissed ‘ The Jazz Singer ’ as a ‘ box-office freak ’ and predicted that the noise from talkies would ‘ drive audiences from movie theatres .’ However , just as smokers the world over have taken to vaping , the movie audiences quickly warmed to the talkies and Hollywood learned to embrace the addition of dialogue .
In 1672 King Charles II was so paranoid about people talking politics in London coffee houses that he shut them all down . However , there was such public opposition to the closures that the move was overturned after just 11 days .
BICYCLES
These days local authorities ( in the UK at least ) are falling over themselves to build more bicycle lanes , but this form of transport was almost written off from the start .
In the 1890s , The Washington Post dismissed bicycles as “ a hot fad for fancy ladies ,” but as more people took up cycling a moral panic developed around the craze .
And finally , here is one invention that everyone initially loved …
SMOKING
Between the 1930s to 1950s tobacco companies would push the health benefits of smoking in their advertising . Phrases such as ‘ doctors recommend ’ were commonplace and one famous 1946 advert boasted : “ More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette .” It was also common for hospital patients to be encouraged to smoke as they recovered from surgery . At least this no longer happens , but it is astonishing that so many health professionals continue to support policies which will force vapers to switch back so smoking .
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