In addition to some of the Black Friday Deals still going on, there are some great CYber Monday deals on electronic cigarettes as well…

Volcano – Sales up to 60% off.  No coupon needed.

Smoktek – Sales from 15% to 40% off when sales, discounts and bonus points are combined.

Viper Vape – All orders over $50 get $10 in Viper Cash and orders over $100 get $20 in Viper Cash.  That’s up to 20% cash back.

V2 – 25% off storewide savings.

Just sharing a couple of Black Friday specials on electronic cigarettes…

Madvapes – 15% of everything in the store with the coupon code blackfriday2013 at checkout. Plus they are having daily and hourly specials for even bigger savings. The coupon code can’t be used on already reduced items, though.

My Freedom Smokes – 17% off and free shipping with the coupon code BLACKFRIDAY at checkout.

It was announced late last week that Charles Connor is joining the Electronic Cigarette Industry Group (ECIG). Connor was president and CEO of the American Lung Association (ALA) from 2008 to 2012, meaning he was at the helm for much of the ALA’s ongoing campaign against electronic cigarettes. E-cig supporters have never quite been able to understand why a group supposedly in favor of reducing the harm done by smoking remains adamantly opposed to what appears to be the best harm reduction option to date. The American Lung Association wants people to quit smoking, but opposes the use of electronic cigarettes, the single best way of quitting tobacco to date.

Apparently Charles Connor felt the same way, or at least does now. The former president and CEO of the ALA has just joined the Electronic Cigarette Industry Group (ECIG). In a recent article in U.S. News & World Report he is quoted as saying “the breakthrough product that gives the smoker an alternative.”

It is refreshing to see another leader in the medical community on our side. Connor is exactly the type of expert that the e-cig industry needs, particularly given his past leadership of the ALA.

The expertise that he brings to ECIG is also important. We all speculate on what drives groups like the ALA and the American Cancer Society in their continuing opposition to electronic cigarettes. “It looks like smoke” and “they’re a gateway to smoking” just don’t seem like valid reasons coming from these organizations. Is big pharma setting the agenda? Are these groups so afraid of losing their bureaucratic foothold that they would make up an adversary? Are they just not that smart? Connor should be able to give ECIG some insight into the mind of the antis, and I hope we get to see some of it.

Connor will be a great liaison between electronic cigarette proponents and their detractors. He can put his substantial experience, leadership and political skills to good use in helping the anti-smoking crusaders to see the light. Surely that is what ECIG hopes to gain from bringing him on board, and we certainly hope it works out.

“H.L. Mencken famously defined puritanism as ‘the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” He might have been describing contemporary anti-smoking activists.'”  This is the opening line of a Nick Guillespie article in Reason entitled The Clueless Crusade to Ban E-Cigarettes.

Guillespie does a great job of exposing the illogical thinking spewing forth from organizations that are struggling to remain relevant.  Electronic cigarettes should be embraced as the single best alternative to smoking that has ever come along.  Instead, the organizations that seek to curb tobacco use continue to try to eliminate the technology, apparently just because it looks like smoke.

As he puts it “And now, the prohibitionists are taking on e-cigarettes because… because… because… smoking tobacco is bad for you. And they don’t think you should decide how to live your life.”  At best the anti-smoking rejection of ecigs is misguided, at worst it hypocritical.  In the end, it’s just another attempt at keeping us from being happy.

Let me start off by saying that I am in no way in favor of teen smoking.  If I could prevent any teen from making the same habit forming mistake that I made at that age, I would.  But there comes a point where teens will be teens and there is only so much we can do to protect them from themselves.  Giving them a safer choice is sometimes the best alternative.

A recent article on NPR entitled Kids’ Use of Electronic Cigarettes Doubles takes a negative stance in citing the increased use of ecigs among 6-12 grader students in 2011 and 2012.  And of course the author mentions the electronic cigarettes come in flavors, so they must be marketed to kids fallacy.  All of this leads to the other typical argument that ecigs are a first step to tobacco use.

The funny thing is that statistics for actual tobacco use among teens is conspicuously absent from the article.  I did a little (very little) searching and found a University of Michigan article that cites a recent study on just that.  Smoking among teens actually declined in 2011 and 2012 after leveling off in the years prior.

Taken together, the two statistics mentioned above show that teen tobacco use has begun to decline again with the introduction of ecigs to the market.  Now there are a lot of other factors to be sure, but the same correlation has been noted in the wider market.  Overall tobacco use in the U.S. has seen the first decline in years, and there is ample evidence that electronic cigarettes are the reason.

The efforts of the anti tobacco movement have largely failed in recent years to promote further declines in tobacco use.  It appears that a percentage of the population is going to continue to want their nicotine, no matter the cost, and that includes teens.  Why not promote ecigs as the healthier way to get it?  They seem to be working, whether the riteous anti-smokers like it or not.