In defence of vaping: It's dismissed as grubby, revolting and 'chavvy'... but read CLARE FOGES' shocking account of how the habit changed her life - and saved her friend
'My God’, I heard one female colleague whisper loudly to another. ‘Someone in here reeks of cigarettes. Rank.’ I cowered behind my computer monitor, for I knew the source of the Benson & Hedges aroma.
Feeling like a tar-stained pariah I reached into my bag for the bottle of perfume I kept close to disguise the fumes.
This was more than 20 years ago but I still feel a shiver of shame at the memory of being branded the office Fag Ash Lil.
In the advertising agency I worked at in my early 20s, I nipped out for a quick ciggie more often than popping to the loo. In all weathers you would find me in a nearby doorway enjoying a quick burst of baccy. Together, these excursions added up to around an hour away from my desk a day, so I was not surprised to read this week that nine in ten workers now disapprove of colleagues who sneak off to smoke.
It’s understandable that people judge smoking but I’m concerned that vaping is fast gaining the same degree of disapproval. How many tut at their colleague popping out for a vape or having a suck on their ‘adult dummy’, as I’ve heard them called?
We seem to have forgotten that vaping has helped countless smokers quit a far more dangerous habit – and I fear we may deter others from doing the same.
I say this as someone who knows how effective vaping can be. Not only did it help me quit my own cigarette addiction (up to 20 a day), it weaned my brother off his 40-a-day habit, too.
I took up smoking at 14 when I was initiated into the sisterhood of rebel girls who had a drag behind the sports hall. Through my 20s, I was an unrepentant social smoker, along with all of my friends. We persisted, because smoking was not only relaxing but image-defining.
It meant being on the side of the cool, the interesting, the bohemian. Oh, the fun we had in smoking areas, zones of camaraderie. There will be many people alive today who only exist because a girl asked a guy for a lighter.
Meanwhile the warnings about lung cancer and heart attacks were wafted away as easily as smoke: we would give up one day.
We seem to have forgotten that vaping has helped countless smokers quit a far more dangerous habit
I took up smoking at 14 when I was initiated into the sisterhood of rebel girls who had a drag behind the sports hall, writes Clare Foges
As the years passed, though, a sense of shame crept in. After heavy nights out I was embarrassed to find the tops of my index and middle fingers had turned mustard yellow. However wide I flung the windows of my flat, it still retained the scent of the Dog And Duck.
The numbers in the smoking areas dwindled as wing-mates wised up to the health warnings, fell pregnant or simply decided it was a gross habit and gave up.
Then, a decade ago, came the cigarette that broke the addiction’s back. I was meeting up with an old friend I hadn’t seen for a few years (someone who later became my husband). In our years of youthful carousing, we had smoked like troopers, each armed with a fresh 20-deck of Marlboro Lights.
But, as I lit up my first cigarette, my old pal pulled out what looked like a fountain pen. Seeing him vaping instead of smoking was like finding Keith Richards swigging camomile tea. It was a shock, a betrayal. Why had he left the fag-lovers fellowship?
He, then a trainee cancer surgeon, had seen firsthand how tobacco could ravage the body and so had switched to vapes.
Tentatively I tried a drag. It was a revelation to discover that a few strawberry-flavoured blasts were the equivalent to the hit of a cigarette. The Marlboro Lights were binned that very night.
I became a vaper, my signature flavour being ‘coffee creme’, containing 3mg of nicotine – as opposed to 10 to 12mg in the average cig. For a year or so my handbag always held a vape, for all those moments when I might have succumbed to a cigarette: a work deadline, a wait for a bus, an ice-cold G&T on a summer’s day.
It would have been very difficult to quit smoking without it – so I spread the word. The summer I took up vaping, my siblings and I went on holiday to France where I was concerned to see my brother filling up ashtrays to the brim. Insouciantly blowing coffee creme his way, I suggested he try it.
Back home I sent him a vape in the post. After years of trying patches, gum and cold turkey quitting, it was only the vapes that broke his decades-long habit – and perhaps saved his life.
I gave up vaping for good when I decided to start having children nine years ago. Back then, I didn’t feel there was a stigma attached. In recent years, though, vapers have become an easy target.
A straw poll of friends reveals what they think of the habit: ‘revolting’, ‘grubby’, ‘chavvy’.
Understandable concerns – such as the marketing of colourful vapes to children – have obscured the fact that these ‘adult dummies’ are unbeatable at helping people stop smoking, which is still the leading cause of preventable death in the UK.
It’s true that the toxic chemicals and nicotine in vapes can cause serious health problems, from lung damage to heart disease. But smoking is so much worse, with its cocktail of tar, carbon monoxide and other potentially deadly chemicals.
Anything that helps people quit is good but the more vaping is demonised, the less likely smokers are to give it a try. Those who have quit smoking for vapes deserve applause – not scorn.
Katy Perry's won battle of the exes
Some have suggested that Orlando Bloom, 49, stepping out with a 28-year-old Swiss model means he’s upgraded from Katy Perry. Hang on a minute.
Actor Orlando Bloom and singer Katy Perry confirmed they were ending their engagement in July last year
Orlando has been seen with Swiss model Luisa Laemmel
One has bagged a very attractive former world leader (ex-Canadian PM Justin Trudeau). The other has – totally predictably – gone for a model who was in newborn nappies when he celebrated his 21st birthday.
I’d say it’s Perry who’s winning this battle of the exes.
Dame Jenni's act of kindness
Many years ago I was (laughably) named on the Woman’s Hour Power List of 100 influential women, which also included JK Rowling, Adele and HM The Queen. Attending the drinks reception at BBC HQ, I found myself in a sea of Dames whose achievements were infinitely greater than mine, feeling rather stupid as a result.
One Dame caught my eye: Jenni Murray. Gulp. I wibbled with nerves as the broadcasting legend came over to speak to me. I can’t recall what she said but I do remember that she put me completely at ease, as though I deserved to be there too. A class act – may she rest in peace.
At 44, I'm so over partying
A survey says the group that most likes going out over a night on the sofa is not Gen Z but pensioners. Are they mad? At the age of 44 I don’t care if I never go on a night out again.
Wendy Cope’s brilliant poem Being Boring springs to mind: ‘I don’t go to parties. Well what are they for, if you don’t need to find a new lover? You drink and you listen and drink a bit more, and you take the next day to recover.’
Argos is selling a £15 influencer kit for toddlers, with toy camera phone and ring light. Yes, let’s teach tiny children that the best they can aspire to be is a Kylie Jenner wannabe. Coming soon: stick-on trout pouts for two-year-olds.
