From Frank

Just looking at the finale of the Smoker´s Show and it´s brilliant as always. What you do is really fantastic and you never give up despite what happen´s. I follow the development in U.S. with interest, maybe now more with horror. How money rules, how money is of only importance.

I live in a country, doing what most western countries do. Living between the scare of who is going to react the most, the stock exchange or the voters. In the end it´s all about money. Be it healthcare, schools or caring for the elderly. Or the smokers… Sorry about the rant.

I just thought you maybe want to know where vaping is in Sweden right now. The difference with Sweden, maybe also Finland, is that we have been vaping for more than 300 years. It is called Snus, in the 18th century called ”Snuff”. Governments, and Kings, through out the centuries always knew that taxing tobacco was a great idea in whatever form. In later years our scientists realized that it wasn´t the nicotine that killed people, it was the tar an the burning of tobacco leafs that caused lung cancer. So, enter Snus. It was the most effective way of getting people of cigarettes and it was easy. We have been “snusing” for centuries and it is also about taxation. Raise the the tax of cigarettes and keep the tax of snus. We now have at least 30 different brands of snus with all sorts of different flavours. Not the peach/melon but give us time…

So, we try to inform of the dangers of smoking, inform of the less harmful alternatives in a objective way and try convincing our next generation that neither smoking, vaping or “snusing” is cool. In Sweden we have decreased tobacco smoking since the 80s and from 2006-2018 smoking we went down to 7%. Today, 2020, we are nearly reaching 5%. And Sweden now have the least number of people dying of lung cancer in Europe. Of course I realize that snus has been a part of us for a very long time and cannot be a solution for other countries but Vaping can! We have to keep struggling because vaping is the answer. There is no other.

As a side note, in the 1994 Swedish European Union membership referendum Sweden had one demand that was really crucial and it was the exception of the ban on snus that the EU implemented. The Swedish government knew this and so did the EU. A demand to ban snus in Sweden, as it is in the rest of EU, would had endend in a no vote! Period. We are a proud nation of the European Union but without our Snus? No way!”

Kind Regards
Frank