AT THEIR NECKS

Dr. Konstantinos Farsalinos MD, researcher at the Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center in Athens and long time advocate for open system vapor products, has just released a scathing post on the state of the e-liquid market and the questionable marketing from these companies. For those who don't know the work Farsalinos has conducted in the past, he released many studies on vaping which you can find here, and has been the main driver of the Diacetyl discussion in eliquid. Long story short, he's one of the leading doctors people point to when bringing up vaping and health. 

Well, Doc isn't too happy. This new post is a passive aggressive attempt at telling the eliquid industry to "grow up."  Marketing in vapor products has always been a long time hot topic in the industry. Many will claim the marketing itself is one of the main reasons for the extremely strict restrictions the FDA imposed on the industry. Whether you agree with this or not, the fact remains that marketing in vapor products, and mainly in E-liquid, is often misconstrued by those ignorant of the technology. And most of the attacks on vaping is directly related to the flavors and packaging of eliquids such as this bottle of "Juicymon".

"One would expect a “clever” industry to take measures to minimize the negative publicity, produce best quality possible products, minimize appeal to youth, strictly follow a “no sales to youth” policy and take every necessary measure to create an image of a responsible and serious industry with consumer responsibility." states Farsalino. I, as well as many other vapers and industry members agree with this sentiment 100%. DIYorDIE has been a long time critic of questionable marketing in the past, even basing entire podcasts around the subject.  The article then goes on to further dissuade the market from continuing down this path. Farsalinos finishes with "All these senseless marketing tactics will hurt not only the healthy part of the industry (which is not my job to support or care for) but, most importantly, smokers and vapers, because this situation will definitely result in a restriction of flavors availability."

It's a shame this sort of conversation still needs to be had in 2017. The industry has been around for almost 10 years now, and has faced this battle literally from its beginnings. Yet, companies are still producing extremely low quality products with damaging marketing. Except now a days, the industry is under threat of almost a complete shut down. Instead of banding together to fight the FDA, Big Pharma and Big Tobacco, instead of pooling together resources for the long litigation ahead, instead of forming a strong attack front of state advocacy groups and lobbyists; what we see is more damaging and immature marketing, more infighting and bickering, with more and more shops closing down, advocacy groups dismantling, and companies pulling off "exit scams". We're in dire times, and desperate measures are needed. But all I see are companies desperate for money and attention.