What the Vaping Debate Taught Me About Power, Trust, and Truth

When I first started writing about vaping policy, I believed I was entering a debate about public health. I assumed the central questions would revolve around evidence, risk, harm reduction, smoking cessation, and the best way to improve population health. Like many people, I believed that if enough good-quality evidence was gathered and presented honestly, the strongest arguments would eventually prevail. Science, after all, is supposed to be a process of testing ideas, challenging assumptions, and refining our understanding as new evidence emerges.

What I have learned since then has been both fascinating and deeply unsettling.

The further I looked beneath the surface of the vaping debate, the more I realised that the arguments being made were often about much more than vaping itself. What appeared at first glance to be a discussion about nicotine products frequently revealed itself to be a struggle over narratives, authority, reputation, and power. The debate became a lens through which I could observe how institutions behave when confronted with evidence that challenges long-held beliefs, how public opinion can be shaped through selective communication, and how easily complex issues can be reduced to simple stories that fit neatly into pre-existing worldviews.

One of the first lessons I learned was that data does not speak for itself. Before beginning this journey, I naively believed that statistics were largely objective. Numbers seemed immune to interpretation. Surely a percentage was a percentage and a trend was a trend. Yet over time, I came to understand that data only becomes meaningful through the stories people tell about it. The same evidence can be used to support dramatically different conclusions depending on which figures are highlighted, which comparisons are made, and which pieces of information are omitted.

I saw examples of this repeatedly. Statistics showing increases in youth experimentation with vaping were often presented as evidence of a public health catastrophe, while simultaneous declines in smoking rates among the same populations received far less attention. Surveys that classified anyone who had taken a single puff within the previous thirty days as a current user were frequently reported in ways that encouraged the public to imagine large numbers of heavily dependent adolescents. Relative risks were highlighted while absolute risks were ignored. Short-term increases were emphasised while longer-term trends were downplayed. None of this necessarily required anyone to fabricate evidence. The facts themselves could remain technically accurate. What changed was the narrative built around those facts.

This taught me an important distinction between truth and storytelling. Facts matter enormously, but facts rarely arrive in isolation. They are arranged, prioritised, contextualised, and interpreted. Whoever controls that process exerts tremendous influence over public understanding. I began to realise that many public debates are won not by presenting the strongest evidence, but by presenting the most compelling story.

As I examined the institutions driving these narratives, another lesson became increasingly clear. Good intentions are not a safeguard against error. In fact, they can sometimes make errors more difficult to identify.

Most people working in public health genuinely want to reduce disease and prevent suffering. I have no reason to doubt the sincerity of many researchers, policymakers, advocates, and health professionals. However, sincerity and accuracy are not the same thing. History is filled with examples of well-intentioned people promoting policies that later proved ineffective, harmful, or based on incomplete information. The belief that one’s motives are noble can create a dangerous sense of certainty. Once people become convinced they are unquestionably acting in the public interest, criticism begins to feel less like scrutiny and more like obstruction.

Over time, I noticed that many debates surrounding vaping were framed not as disagreements between people examining evidence differently, but as conflicts between those who cared about public health and those who supposedly did not. The discussion became moralised. Individuals who raised questions about unintended consequences, harm reduction, or alternative approaches were often portrayed not simply as mistaken but as suspect. Their motives were questioned before their arguments were addressed. The possibility that reasonable people might examine the same evidence and reach different conclusions appeared increasingly difficult for some commentators to accept.

This tendency is not unique to vaping. It is a common feature of many institutional environments. When organisations become strongly invested in a particular narrative, defending that narrative can gradually become more important than evaluating whether it remains accurate. The result is often a culture where conformity is rewarded, and dissent is viewed with suspicion.

This became especially apparent when I began researching how the concept of conflict of interest is used within public health debates. Initially, I assumed conflict of interest was a straightforward principle. If someone receives funding from an organisation that may benefit from a particular outcome, that relationship should be disclosed so others can assess the information appropriately. This seemed entirely reasonable.

What surprised me was how selectively the concept often appeared to be applied.

Individuals connected to industry funding could find themselves permanently discredited in the eyes of some observers, regardless of the quality of their evidence or arguments. Meanwhile, the interests of other actors often escaped comparable scrutiny. Governments have political interests. Advocacy organisations have ideological interests. Public health agencies have institutional interests. Researchers have professional interests. Universities have financial interests tied to grants and funding streams. None of these interests automatically invalidates anyone’s work, but neither are they irrelevant.

What I increasingly observed was a tendency to treat some interests as corrupting while treating others as invisible. The issue was no longer simply transparency. It was legitimacy. Conflict of interest was becoming less about understanding potential biases and more about determining who was allowed to participate in the conversation. Once that happens, the concept loses much of its value. A principle that should encourage critical thinking instead becomes a mechanism for excluding inconvenient voices.

The more I wrote, the more I began noticing a broader pattern. Institutions often appear far more comfortable discussing the conflicts of their opponents than examining their own. Self-reflection is difficult. It requires acknowledging that even well-intentioned organisations can become influenced by incentives, assumptions, and institutional priorities. Yet without that self-reflection, accountability becomes one-sided.

Australia is not immune to this phenomenon. Over recent years, several prominent public health and advocacy organisations have found themselves increasingly criticised by people who believe they have become more focused on advocacy than impartial analysis. Organisations such as Cancer Council Australia, Public Health Association of Australia, Alcohol and Drug Foundation, VicHealth, Heart Foundation and Lung Foundation Australia frequently play influential roles in shaping public health debates and government policy.

The issue is not that these organisations lack expertise, nor is it that their goals are inherently misguided. Rather, many critics increasingly question whether the same scrutiny applied to commercial interests is applied to institutional, ideological, financial and reputational interests within the public health sector itself. When organisations are perceived as entering debates with predetermined conclusions, public confidence in their neutrality can begin to erode. Whether that perception is fair or not, the perception itself matters because trust depends not only on expertise but also on credibility.

Perhaps the most revealing lesson of all was observing how institutions respond when evidence threatens an established narrative. Publicly, most organisations emphasise the importance of evidence-based policy. They speak of following the science wherever it leads. In theory, this sounds admirable. In practice, however, institutions are made up of people, and people develop attachments to ideas.

Researchers become invested in theories they have spent years promoting. Advocacy groups become invested in campaigns that define their public identity. Politicians become invested in policies they have championed. Organisations become invested in narratives that justify their existence and reinforce their credibility. Once these investments accumulate, changing course becomes extraordinarily difficult.

Admitting uncertainty can be perceived as weakness. Revising previous statements can be seen as damaging credibility. Acknowledging unintended consequences can create political complications. As a result, evidence that reinforces existing beliefs is often welcomed, while evidence that challenges those beliefs faces much higher barriers to acceptance.

This is not necessarily a conscious conspiracy. In many cases, it may simply be human nature operating within institutional structures. Nevertheless, the effect can be profound. Public discussions become less about discovering what is true and more about defending what has already been decided.

Throughout this process, I also developed a much deeper appreciation for the importance of trust. Trust is often discussed as though it is something the public owes institutions. Increasingly, I have come to view it the opposite way. Trust is something institutions must continuously earn.

Trust is built when evidence is presented honestly, even when it complicates preferred narratives. Trust is built when uncertainty is acknowledged rather than concealed. Trust is built when critics are engaged rather than dismissed. Trust is built when standards are applied consistently, regardless of whether the findings support or challenge existing policies.

Conversely, trust is damaged whenever information is selectively communicated, whenever inconvenient evidence disappears from discussion, and whenever questioning official narratives is portrayed as illegitimate. People may not always understand the technical details of a debate, but they are often remarkably good at detecting inconsistency. When they repeatedly observe contradictions between official messaging and observable reality, confidence begins to erode.

What strikes me most when reflecting on these experiences is how little of this is actually about vaping. Vaping provided the case study through which these broader dynamics became visible. The lessons extend far beyond nicotine policy. They apply to public health, politics, media, academia, and countless other domains where institutions seek to shape public understanding.

The central issue is ultimately not whether one supports or opposes vaping. The central issue is whether evidence remains subordinate to narratives or whether narratives remain subordinate to evidence. It is whether institutions are willing to examine their own assumptions with the same intensity they apply to their critics. It is a question of whether dissent is viewed as an essential component of scientific progress or as a threat to be managed.

When I began writing, I expected to learn about vaping. Instead, I learned about the fragility of objectivity, the power of narratives, the influence of institutional incentives, and the importance of intellectual humility. I learned that evidence alone rarely determines outcomes. Evidence competes with politics, ideology, reputation, career interests, media incentives, and organisational self-preservation. Understanding any public debate requires understanding all of these forces.

Most importantly, I learned that genuine scientific inquiry depends upon a willingness to question everyone, including those we agree with. No institution, no organisation, no expert, and no narrative should ever be beyond scrutiny. The health of science depends not on protecting particular conclusions but on protecting the process through which conclusions are reached.

That may be the most valuable lesson of all. Defending science does not mean defending authority. It means defending curiosity. It means defending transparency. It means defending open inquiry. It means being willing to ask uncomfortable questions even when doing so is unpopular. And it means recognising that the search for truth is often most important precisely when it challenges the assumptions, incentives and narratives of powerful institutions.

Ironically, I started writing about vaping, believing I was examining a debate about nicotine. What I discovered instead was a lesson about human nature. Institutions, regardless of their mission, are susceptible to the same biases, incentives and blind spots as the individuals who comprise them. They can become attached to narratives, resistant to criticism, and reluctant to acknowledge uncertainty. Recognising this does not require cynicism. It simply requires realism.

The ultimate lesson from these two essays is that trust should never be automatic and scepticism should never be selective. The same critical standards should apply to everyone. Industry claims should be questioned. Government claims should be questioned. Public health claims should be questioned. Advocacy claims should be questioned. Science advances not because certain people are trusted without question, but because every claim remains open to examination.

That is the principle that originally drew me into this debate, and after everything I have learned, it is the principle I value more than ever.