REPORTAGE
The "Summit of the Vape" which brings together the vaping professionals opens Monday in Paris. But this third edition is held in a context of crisis for shops that suffer from some disaffection for several months. Indeed, French consumers - almost 2 million in the country - are worried about the events in June in the United States and the deaths of 29 people who used electronic cigarettes.
"We did a survey with the institute BVA (commissioned in June, carried out in September, ed ), and what we notice is that three French in five think today that vaping is at least as dangerous smoking ", Nathalie Dunand, president of the SoVape association and organizer of the" Summit of the Vape "2019 in Europe. In the shops, fear has also set in many consumers. "There is an average drop of 30% of new entrants," she says.
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"I had my vape in my hand and a lady in the street rushed to me saying that it was extremely dangerous, that I did not know what I was doing, that there were people who came to die ... It made me a little scared ... ", reports Bernadette, user for a year. This Lyonnaise immediately rushed into her shop, La Boîte à Vape, in the district of Croix-Rousse in Lyon. "There are people who are sick in the United States, but it is due to a diversion of the use of the device.This problem is related to oils that have been put in products bought on the street", explains Vladimir, the manager. Nevertheless, the worry persists: this trader has observed, in two months, a decline of 20% of its customers.
Regulated use
"A liquid can not have been put up for sale in Europe and France without having been notified to the competent authorities six months before its commercialization.This means that in France, the ANSES (the National Health Agency, Ed. ) knows the composition of the products, their toxicological emissions, six months before they arrive in the shops ", explains Nathalie Dunand. "In the United States, they noted that the liquids used are liquids with THT (the active ingredient of cannabis, ed ) bought on the black market, and which contain dangerous products for inhalation such as oil and fungicides. This is not the case of traditional vaping, which is regulated and regulated in France, "she says.
The first tool to help stop smoking
The Minister of Health herself recalled on September 22, on RTL, that the situation in France was not the same as in the United States, and that no particular health alert was found in the territory national. In France, the electronic cigarette is the first tool to help stop smoking in front of nicotine substitutes, since 27% of those who try to quit use it. "The risk is that young former smokers fall back into tobacco because they are starting to wean and they are afraid of the new tool they use and abandon it," said Nathalie Dunand. "There is also the case of people who will not start and stay in smoking longer". Since 2013, some 700,000 ex-smokers have stopped smoking with the electronic cigarette.