Clockwork Orange-like images show a sweating, terrified young man in a dark laboratory with a black metal contraption on his head that locks his mouth open. We see his clenched white teeth and red gums. A black gloved hand tries over and over to insert a nicotine pouch between his lip and gum.
A young woman is strapped down in a black reclining chair, her mouth covered by an oxygen mask with a vape attached to it. It forces her to inhale vapor continuously. X-rays of the brain and lungs hang on the wall. Meanwhile rats investigate vapes, and nicotine pouches are strewn all around them. It’s macabre.
“When you use nicotine pouches or vapes, your body is part of Big Nicotine’s experiment …” the text reads. “You’re not just their customer, you’re their lab rat.”
It’s all part of yet another fear-based campaign designed to demonize the use of safer nicotine products: “UNDO: End Tobacco Damage Now,” is currently being promoted by the California Department of Public Health.
It is hard to imagine any other public health campaign around drug use referring to people as rats.
It brazenly insults people who use safer nicotine products. “Are you one of Big Nicotine’s lab rats?” the campaign asks. It is hard to imagine any other public health campaign around drug use—alcohol, say, or even something as stigmatized as fentanyl—referring to people as rats. The hatred and discrimination that’s long existed against people who use combustible tobacco has been transferred to those who want to quit cigarettes through harm reduction.
Crusades against nicotine are usually framed in terms of villains and victims, and both keep changing. The original villain, “Big Tobacco” became “Big Vape,” and now, “Big Nicotine.” The victims used to be people who smoked cigarettes. Now it is those making the healthy decision to switch to a safer nicotine delivery device.
As is always the case in these zealous anti-tobacco harm reduction campaigns, the lies are staggering. Even the campaign’s name—“End Tobacco Damage”—is a lie, when the focus is on products that contain no tobacco and that reduce damage to public health.
“You are part of “Big Nicotine’s experiment,” UNDO states. “Each use makes you part of an experiment with your health at stake.” Nicotine is an “addictive poison.”
Nicotine is not a poison; it is a mild stimulant drug that billions of people have consumed safely over thousands of years. It is used ceremonially, medicinally and recreationally. Moreover, no one who ingests it is being experimented on, because the effects of nicotine have been exhaustively studied.
Note that people who use nicotine patches and gums are exempt from the label “lab rats,” are not part of an experiment, and aren’t seeing their products targeted for prohibition. Of course, “Big Pharma” sells these over-the-counter “poisons,” better known as nicotine replacement therapies.
The campaign section titled “What this poison can do to you” is so full of demonstrably false assertions that you might spontaneously combust!
Lighting tobacco on fire to get nicotine is the problem. With the invention of vapes, nicotine pouches, snus and heated tobacco products, there are many ways to use the drug that eliminate combustion and work as alternatives that people who smoke actually want to use. This is something to be celebrated, not vilified.
The campaign section titled “What this poison can do to you” is so full of demonstrably false assertions that you might spontaneously combust! Nicotine blocks the brain’s ability to pay attention, it claims. But it’s the opposite; nicotine increases attention and focus. Up next; “Nicotine can deepen depression and amplify anxiety.” It’s the opposite; nicotine has been shown to decrease symptoms of depression and anxiety.
Then UNDO offers this whopper: Nicotine poisons the body; it makes you “nic-sick.” It does not. If it did, no one would use it!
There is a strong whiff of desperation in these ads and videos attacking the use of safer nicotine products. That’s because over a decade of science irrefutably shows they are safer to use by orders of magnitude compared to cigarettes, and are more effective for quitting smoking than patches or gums. But with smoking on the decline, public health groups seek to justify their existence by presenting harm reduction tools as the enemy. Moral panic and funding are easier to generate for the innocent “victims” of youth vaping than for the people who genuinely face severe health risks: the predominantly marginalized populations that still smoke.
Happily, millions of people around the world have ignored offensive disinformation campaigns like this one and made the switch. That makes the forces opposed to tobacco harm reduction angry. Moreover, they hate that people who vape nicotine actually enjoy it. Over time, their drug-panic propaganda has become less effective, so they’ve doubled down on the shock tactics and deception.
Then there is the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has authorized vapes, flavored nicotine pouches and snus as “appropriate for the protection of public health.” This fact is conveniently omitted in attack campaigns like UNDO because it undermines all their bald-faced lies.
With the widespread use of snus, which the Swedish government promotes, Sweden has become the world’s first “smoke-free” country. This remarkable human achievement is also ignored.
Because the goal of “Big Tobacco Control” agencies like the California Department of Public Health is the opposite. They want to deny access to safer nicotine products that can save the lives of people who smoke. Who are the real rats?
Screenshot showing detail of UNDO video via YouTube
