Just under 50 years ago, smoking was banned from our TV screens. The theory went that the image of smoke flowing from a sexy person’s mouth was way too glamour-ridden for public consumption, all it would do is encourage more and more people, especially young ones, to take up smoking. But tonight, someone will appear to smoke on screen during an ITV ad-break.
A woman, whose name is not known – it’s not meant to matter, she might as well just be called Anonymous Sexy Lady for the purposes of the advert she appears in – will breathe out what appears to be smoke, looking all sexy. And anonymous. It’s only after the viewer is encouraged to think, ‘Wow, that’s pretty cool, just like smoking, I want some of that!’ that the advert reveals what the woman’s really got her lips wrapped around – the end of a vape stick! It’s not the first time we’ve seen an advert for the little plastic pipes, but it’s the first time we've seen one being used in an advert, following a change in advertising restrictions brought in last night.
David Levin, who co-founded VIP, the company that makes these vape sticks or e-cigarettes, whatever you want to call, them said, ‘This will mark the first time in almost 50 years that TV audiences see someone exhale what appears to be cigarette smoke on an ad. However, it is actually vapour from an e-cigarette that they will see.’
READ MORE: Exactly How Safe Are Those E-Cigarettes You're Sucking On?
Ooooh, really sexy. Such allure! No, seriously, even if it sounds about as sexy as an old man failing to hoik his trousers when he sits down across you on the train so you have to bear witness to the way his scrotum squishes between his thigh and a pair of beige chinos, it’s worrying that these vape/e-cigarette companies are trying to be sexy. After all, they’re meant to be an alternative to smoking, like nicotine gum, or a patch.
The little pipes of vapour and chemicals that people like to wield around with them in places that you’d never normally smoke anyway (public transport, offices, cafes, shops) aren’t as bad as cigarettes – they contain no tar or actual smoke. However, the worry is that they’re not going to be used by people trying to quit smoking, but young people who are either on their way to smoking, or inevitably going to become addicted to nicotine, the long term effects of which are still unknown.
READ MORE: Unravelling The Complicated Etiquette Around Vaping
Deborah Arnott, the chief of anti-smoking charity Ash, told The Mirror, ‘Vaping is safer than smoking but it’s not harmless. Ash is concerned that VIP’s ads sexualise and glamorise e-cigarette use and don’t make clear these products are for smokers.’
On top of this, the Committee of Advertising Practice insists that adverts must not encourage e-cigarettes to non-smokers or under 18s, and the Royal Society of Health want to call them ‘nicotine sticks’ to make them less attractive.
No matter what happens tonight in the advert, e-cigarettes and vaping are big business, making £44million in 2012 and a whopping £193million in 2013.
But just because it’s big, doesn’t mean it’s sexy, right?
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.