As a consumer advocacy group founded in 2017, we have been proud to lend our voice to different issue areas that impact ordinary people each and every day. Whether standing up for ride-sharing, smart cannabis regulation, Internet freedom, data privacy, and more, our guiding focus has been on elevating consumer choice wherever it is threatened.
To that end, we write articles in popular media, conduct research on the matters at hand, provide testimony to governmental bodies, conduct social media campaigns online, engage with issue experts and legislators, and help propel ordinary consumer advocates to defend their freedom to choose.
One crucial area of importance is that of tobacco harm reduction: ensuring that close to one billion lives can be saved thanks to harm-reducing alternative nicotine technologies and products. Many countries have vibrant and competitive markets that give smokers an opportunity to switch to less harmful products as a gateway away from smoking. Others, however, do not. And increasingly, with tobacco control advocates guiding the conversation and policy on how to address the needs of smokers by promoting prohibitions and restrictions, that means that fewer people will have access to these life-saving alternatives.
And because promoting harm reduction is a key goal of our organization, and would help save the lives of so many more around the world, we saw it fit to launch our own single-issue initiative that would cater to vapers who care about this issue and want to see it continue.
That’s why in 2020, we launched the World Vapers’ Alliance. We want to connect passionate vapers around the world and empower them to make a difference for their communities. The goal of the World Vapers’ Alliance is to defend vaping by providing a unified platform that makes vapers’ voices heard by those in the corridors of power.
The vaper community is both diverse and heterogeneous. There are some who prefer open tank systems that allow them to mix their flavors and levels of nicotine with more power. There are those who prefer flavored pod systems available at corner stores.
Every person who decides to start vaping and stop smoking should be seen as an overall victory for public health. But those who want to see more laws, regulations, and restrictions — buoyed by multi-million dollar campaigns and international public health bureaucrats — don’t see it that way.
That’s why we need a global movement to represent the voice of vapers. These are the individuals who made a conscious decision to improve their own health, but now see this technology becoming more arbitrarily restricted every day by those who pretend to speak for them.
We need a citizen movement. A global movement. That’s why we created the World Vapers’ Alliance, and why we will continue to fight on behalf of vapers, no matter which country they live in.
UPDATE: The World Vapers’ Alliance is now an independently operating non-profit organization.
