THE PUBLIC IMAGE OF VAPING HAS BEEN

Words: Jordan Millar

ou might recognise this bold quote from a story featured in a previous issue of Vapouround Magazine.

The news piece looked at a shocking report which pulled back the curtain on the multi-million-dollar effort to decimate our industry and those who were funding it.

Published and created by the American Vapor Manufacturers, the eye-opening document found the anti-vaping machine was largely being bankrolled by just three organisations.

By analysing publicly-available financial records dating back to 2017, the AVM identified this trio of mega-donors as Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Between them, these groups are said to have forked out at least $282 million in ‘ulterior funding’ to drive the anti-vaping movement and influence a network of lobbyists, front groups, reporters and researchers.

But we’re not interested in looking at where this eyewatering amount of money came from or where it ended up…at least not in this feature.

Instead, we want to find out what pressing real-world crisis it could have helped address if it weren’t used