The Bite of a Cigarette Bud or The Nature of a Bubblegum Gun — Cigarette vs Vapes?
style or taste
The flashy conduct of a cigarette has always allured to me. The way stars like Janis Joplin, Amy Winehouse, and Lana Del Rey cusp the tip of a cigarette, within the means of their tightly hung lips— only to steam smoke and smirk the ash with the bottom of their heel. That vision has always held me captive to the beauty and style of a cigarette, the elegance, the maturity, the adultery… until I tried a Geek bar.
To use the facts, as traditional and decorated as they are— cigarettes are less healthy of the two. Cigarettes contain carbon monoxide, while vapes only mainly contain nicotine and less of the same factors and chemicals as cigarettes.
Throughout the 1950s, advertising and marketing companies played a key role in the absence of knowledge of cigarettes within their mixture of aesthetics. (as seen in Mad Men) And you can see history repeating itself with the marketing of e-cigarettes, more commonly known as vapes. Mango, Watermelon, Bubblegum, Mint, etc. Are what is plastered on walls with the small print “made with nicotine” pinpointed at the very bottom.
The marketing difference between cigarettes and vapes — is that both are sensually attractive, but only one is targeted at children. With the multitude of flavors, that remanence of childhood desert and lingering honeycomb. The creative use of pastime flavors attracts a younger audience — to the e-cigarette world. While also, Instead of using traditional marketing tactics… e-cigarette companies have moved to online formats such as social media. Which is mainly occupied by the eyes of unsupervised children and teenagers.
There’s this image we all hold dear since childhood… the way we would pout with the inevitable peace sign stitched to our peach-brown lips, how we would pretend to blow smoke in the courtyard as if we were Christina Ricci in the Prozac Nation. “Gradually, then suddenly." That's how depression hits. You wake up one morning, afraid that you're going to live.” (Prozac Nation, 2001) We’d quote as we rustle with our bangles.
Cigarettes have been in here for our entire lives… a sense of relief, a sense of turmoil, a sense of rebellion, and a sense of “coolness.”
The difference between vapes and cigarettes is that you know all the health defects caused by a cigarette. Vapes are still too advanced for modern medicine. What would you rather smoke— a favored unknown death device or an understood death device?