The Secret Backer of 'Anti-Smoking' Vape Group? Big Tobacco

[Nevilledog]

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Roger Sollenberger found true love, suckers
@SollenbergerRC
EXCLUSIVE: According to internal documents & sources, the world’s largest tobacco company is secretly running a global “grassroots” pro-vaping lobbying group. And they teamed up with right-wing dark money to do it. Me & @WillBredderman @thedailybeast

The Secret Backer of ‘Anti-Smoking’ Vape Group? Big Tobacco
The World Vapers’ Alliance has been promoting the health benefits of switching from cigarettes to vaping. Emails show the world’s largest tobacco company is behind the effort.
thedailybeast.com
9:53 AM · Jan 9, 2022

https://www.thedailybeast.com/world-vapers-alliance-slams-cigarettes-big-british-american-tobacco-is-secretly-behind-it

A pro-vaping group says it wants to save your life. Cigarettes, they remind us, can kill you. But smokers may be surprised who’s behind that message.

“The World Vapers’ Alliance amplifies the voice of passionate vapers around the world and empowers them to make a difference for their communities,” reads the homepage for the WVA, whose logo is revolutionary pastiche—a left fist clenching a vape pen. “Back vaping. Beat smoking,” the page urges.

As for the people who want you to make the switch, the site says that its alliance “includes groups representing vapers—our partners—as well as individual vapers from around the world.”

And while the WVA provides a list of those partners, one key name is missing: the world’s largest tobacco company.

According to sources and internal documents, British American Tobacco has played a central and hands-on role in orchestrating, directing, and funding the World Vapers’ Alliance—a seemingly grassroots lobbying group designed to recruit pro-vaping advocates around the world under an anti-smoking guise.

*snip*

[brewens]

1. It keeps them in business if they can keep selling some addictive product. I also think the

vaping gets some percentage to start at least smoking cigarettes occasionally. I worked with a girl that said that. She smoked when she drank and told us that started one night when her vape ran out. She was drunk and someone gave her a cigarette and she liked it. She smokes once a week or so and there's a customer they never would have had if they hadn't been pushing the vapes.

[hunter]

2. Vaping is an actual "gateway drug" to cigarettes.

Big tobacco knows it.