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A World Vape Show London audience heard an interesting theory about how to discourage young people from vaping .
Words : Patrick Griffin
Former New York major Michael Bloomberg has apparently spent upwards of one billion dollars funding anti-vaping organisations who directly feed into the World Health Organization .
The billionaire businessman is waging a war on vaping and has helped lobbyists , pressure groups , anti-vape activists and PR companies get his message across .
He is estimated to have spent $ 160m supporting flavour bans alone on the spurious grounds that flavours get young people hooked on nicotine .
In America , when youth vaping rates have been falling fast for the last two years , most parents still believe that the country is in the grip of a ‘ teen vaping epidemic .’
But if Bloomberg is really serious about making vaping less attractive to young people , is the crusader missing a trick ?
Michael Landl , director of the World Vapers ’ Alliance suggested a much simpler - and vastly less expensive - method to discourage teens from vaping .
His tongue-in-cheek suggestion at a World Vape Show London consumer advocacy debate was to use granny power instead .
He said : “ We need to encourage our grandmothers who smoke to switch to vaping , because then the kids won ’ t think it ’ s cool anymore .
“ This could help more than anything else to discourage youth vaping .”
Panel moderator Martin Cullip said : “ I work for an American think tank and when I speak to Americans they think vaping is just for kids .
“ They are absolutely astonished when I say there are hardly any kids vaping over here .
“ In the UK , kids see vaping as something old people do to quit smoking .
“ If you want to keep kids away from vaping then the best thing to do is to tell them that their parents think vaping is cool .”
Meanwhile the panel heard that the power of consumers to tell their pro-vaping stories to politicians was the key to better
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