As someone who grew up in the decades when first kisses invariably tasted like you were licking out an ashtray, I feel like I’m looking back in time whenever an e-cigarette advert comes on TV.

And I don’t mean that in a good way.

It’s only been a few weeks since e-cig adverts have been allowed back on our screens, but most of the ones currently gracing the ad breaks in classy shows like Celebrity Big Brother practically make you barf.


Do we really need people exhaling vast lungfuls of nicotine vapour in a sultry fashion directly at the screen?



These are fag adverts, basically, however much you dress them up.

Why are they even on, when the government is pushing ahead with plans to bring in plain cigarette packets?

Having given up smoking with revolting, bitter-tasting lumps of nicotine gum myself, e-cigarettes don’t seem to have the same, faintly medical air. They’re certainly not sold that way.

They seem quite fun – and that’s dangerous. The fact that they seem fun in the adverts is downright irresponsible.

Most people smoking them look like they’re taking a nice, big hit on a crack pipe, and loving it.

MORE: E-cigarettes can contain 10 times more carcinogens than tobacco

MORE: E-cigarettes must be banned indoors or smoking could become ‘renormalised’, warns WHO

Frankly, none of the ads are doing anything to dispel this idea, either.

The one take-home fact in most of them is that e-cigarettes are refreshing, delicious, and – goddammit – frankly sexy.

I’m sure the e-cigarette companies are toeing the line when it comes to ‘not showing tobacco in a positive light’, but frankly the ones on TV at the moment seem to be following a fairly classic formula established by well-loved ads such as this beauty (below).

Smoking used to be really, really sexy (Picture: Stanford University)

The current TV one where a diminutive, podgy man seems to be hassling an elusive e-cigarette smoker (blonde, of course, and winsome), seems to be selling one, simple thing – and it isn’t nicotine replacement therapy.

Three of the ads have already been booted out by the Advertising Standards Agency.

That’s a good start. Please, ASA, can someone get rid of the rest?