Go Tell Your Meddling City Council: ‘Vape’ Is Word of the Year

Oxford Dictionary has declared “vape”—the verb used to describe
smoking electronic cigarettes—as
its word of the year. It added the word to its dictionary in
August and charted a spike in the use of the term over the spring
as it became a hot-button issue in cities:

Usage of vape
peaked in April 2014 – as the graph below indicates – around the
time that the UK’s first ‘vape café’ (The Vape Lab in Shoreditch,
London) opened its doors, and protests were held in response to New
York City banning indoor vaping. In the same month, the issue of
vaping was debated by The Washington Post, the BBC, and the British newspaper The Telegraph, amongst others.

The word beat out “normcore” and “slacktivism,” so we should all
be grateful at the dodged bullts there. Reason should get part of
the credit, yes? Reason writers have been beating the drum
throughout 2014 (and earlier) about how local governments are
overreacting to the rise of e-cigarettes, attempting to treat them
exactly the same as traditional cigarettes even though the harms
(especially to bystanders) are not the same and that it could serve
as a useful tool to help people quit smoking traditional tobacco.
Reason hosted one of those aforementioned protest events in New
York City. Here’s some recent Reason pieces:

“Smoking by Teenagers Continues to Fall As Vaping Continues to
Rise”

“If It Tastes Good to Kids, Ban It”

“Study: E-Cigarettes Offer Far More Benefits Than Harms to Smokers
and Bystanders”

“Jay Rockefeller’s Vaping Vapors”

And many more pieces here.

And below from Reason TV, New Yorkers fight the city’s ban on
e-cigarettes in public places and bars: