Cigarettes are worse, and that's what makes them so much better

By: Jay Lee-Guard 

I moved into my flat (okay) alongside my roommates (wonderful) at the end of last year, just after final exams. At the start of summer, I was neither a smoker nor a vaper, despite the fact that all my flatmates vape, and almost all of them smoke. Now, I am at least one of those things. I personally have no interest in vaping (in high school, my friends and I made fun of the way vapes looked and smelled a little like juice boxes), but as I write this, a pack of cigarettes is nestled inside my jersey drawer, and a red lighter sits on my bedside table. It started out as more of a social thing—getting to spend time with my flatmates on our balcony, or with my friends on someone else’s balcony, or a chance to escape and get some fresh air at a party, a fact which is somewhat ironic. At first, I couldn’t find words as to why I preferred cigarettes, beyond my old high school mentality that vapes were a little silly. But with more people switching from vape pods to cigarettes, it feels necessary to think about why these changes are happening.

For a very long time, cigarettes have been a societal evil of a kind, a position reinforced by things like strict no smoking policies, former world-class anti smoking laws, very effective propaganda about the impacts of smoking on your health, paper upon paper linking smoking to all kinds of conditions, etc etc. And for good reason! It is severely damaging to your health, as I feel obligated to point out. But pictures of damaged lungs on cigarette packaging haven’t  seemed to stop many people (that I know) from smoking (a friend actually has taken it upon themselves to make a collage using dozens of them). If anything, using cigarettes as a cut and dry example of ‘something bad’ makes them seem edgier and more enticing to some.They’re technically legal, and “technically” seems to be many people’s favourite word. 

In enshrining cigarettes as a dangerous thing, we continue to carve out a place in our culture for them. Especially in university, there is such a stereotype of the alternative artsy smoker student, which it feels like half of Kelburn Campus is trying to fulfill. For lack of a better term, making them restricted has made them edgy, and therefore cool. We don’t really have this kind of cultural place for vaping, yet. Any stereotypes about vaping I see seem to be mostly related to teenagers and bathrooms, despite the fact that vape stores are 18+ by law, and it is likely that more vapes are consumed by adults. This is likely due to the marketing of vapes, which, famously, caught a lot of flack for having flavours seemingly designed to appeal to children. Whether this was the case or not, it is not hard to draw a comparison between the candy-esque flavours of vapes (tropical punch, cotton candy, lemon lime, strawberry) and the less palatable flavour of cigarettes. To put it bluntly, cigarettes do not taste like something meant for kids, but vapes do. Regardless of whether they were actually trying to market to kids, this clear difference between the two altered people’s perceptions of vaping, changing the original conception of the target audience of vapes and e-cigarettes away from people who were trying to quit smoking.

I touched on this briefly before, but social smoking is also much more of a thing than vaping, for better or worse. It can be really nice to be able to step away from a larger thing and spend a moment with a friend before going back in, for whatever reason—and for some, smoking provides a  good excuse to do so. And at some house parties I’ve been to, it’s treated as just another activity to do over the course of a night, with maybe too many of us climbing out windows onto rickety wooden structures. I see my friends sharing vapes all the time, but I never see them ask each other if they want to go and vape together (and I can’t really picture anyone asking that, to be honest). The fact that it can be such a social thing might lend to some pressure on people to participate, but also means that smoking provides an opportunity for connection that is absent with vaping. There’s a reason dating apps have the option to list yourself as a social smoker, but not a social vaper—don’t ask how I know that. 

Anyone who knows me knows that I will always  talk about how our brains are wired to sense and appreciate the physical side of the stuff we’re doing. And smoking ticks a lot of boxes in this regard, which can make it feel more real, in a sense, than vaping. You get a lighter to fidget with, the experience of lighting the cigarette in the first place (which is also an excellent excuse to flirt with someone: when was the last time you ever flirted with someone via vape? Hopefully never), managing the ash, extinguishing it, etc etc. The tactile nature of cigarettes, especially when compared to vapes, can make them seem more appealing, and I would argue that this kind of tactile sensation is also a huge part of what makes smoking cigarettes a better option, in my opinion, when it comes to controlling your nicotine intake. With a vape, you can puff until the battery runs out. Pods still say how much nicotine they have in them, of course, but there is nothing stopping you from taking another hit again and again and again. With a cigarette, however, you have to make the conscious decision to light and start smoking another. This is perhaps not much of a barrier, but it invites a pause to consider if you want to keep smoking. It is also a lot easier to tell how many cigarettes you have left compared to how much juice is in a pod: you can literally count them! Using cigarettes to quit vaping makes sense, and seems to be a popular method: all of my flatmates have, at one time or another, used cigarettes as a method of trying to quit vaping. I can think of some other friends who use them to be more mindful of their nicotine intake; Will (of Salient Editor fame) mentioned that he does the same as well!

Despite the fact that both vaping and smoking have their draws, neither product is great. Obviously addictive substances are dangerous because of how they influence us, and anything with as many clear links to health issues as smoking can never be good, but I trust that you don’t need me to tell you this - I’m not your parent! And if you’ve read all the way to the end of this article, you’re probably well-informed enough to know what’s right for you.