The Truth Is, There Is Pride In Quitting Smoking With Vapes, Snus & Pouches!

23 May 2025

by Pippa Starr

The Truth Initiative has recently began a campaign that focuses on targeting tobacco use in the LGBTQ+ community, but the Truth Initiative has, perhaps unwittingly, managed to alienate a large portion of the very public they hope to influence.

Their approach exemplifies what happens when well-meaning intentions collide with ideological overreach:

“It's just another case of bandwagon riding and virtue signalling mumpsimus's who just happen to benefit from a history of funding from deaths of smokers via the MSA.”

The result?

A tone-deaf, counterproductive campaign that fails both science and public health.

Let’s start with the core concern: the messaging. The Truth Initiative’s page on LGBTQ+ tobacco use features a sprawling narrative, overflowing with infographics and social justice signaling, seemingly aimed more at impressing their progressive followers than offering actionable, evidence-based solutions to smoking in this high-risk group. While they correctly identify that LGBTQ+ individuals smoke at disproportionately higher rates, their answer veers sharply away from the proven tools of tobacco harm reduction, namely vaping and products like snus.

This matters because these products work. The NHS, Cancer Research UK, the Royal College of Physicians, all clearly state that vaping is substantially less harmful than smoking and is one of the most effective tools to help smokers quit. These tools are not just popular, they are lifesaving, especially for marginalized populations who often face greater barriers to quitting through conventional means.

Instead of embracing harm reduction, the Truth Initiative doubles down on abstinence-only rhetoric. This alienates not just public health centrists like myself but also “Trumpian” anti-woke far-right groups who become increasingly hostile when public health campaigns are coated in ideologically charged language.

“This is a masterclass on how to get on the bad side of 'Trumpian' anti-woke far-right extremists who get agitated and challenged by such rhetoric. That's the majority of Americans! So, this is an ‘own-goal’ / ‘fail campaign’ by the Truth Initiative!”

Such rhetoric, intended to inspire, instead ends up politicizing what should be a universal public health concern. Vaping and snus, when regulated and promoted responsibly, are tools that save lives. Their strategic deployment in communities with high smoking rates, including LGBTQ+ populations, is not a moral compromise. It’s science-based policy.

“For the record, as a centrist and a passionate harm reduction advocate, I find this sort of campaign abhorrent.”

Why? Because it fails to prioritize evidence-based outcomes. It neglects the real-world success of harm reduction in favor of ideological purity and over-engineered messaging designed to “over-convince” an audience already on their side.

There’s a better path forward, one grounded in evidence, not posturing. The UK and New Zealand have shown that integrating vaping into a broader tobacco harm reduction strategy reduces smoking rates, saves money, and, most importantly, saves lives.

If the Truth Initiative wants to truly serve vulnerable communities, it must be brave enough to abandon performative politics and embrace pragmatic, compassionate, and evidence-based public health messaging.

Until then, their campaigns, however well-funded, will continue to fail the very people they claim to help.