Bottom-up meets top-down: exploring vapers’ accounts of risk in a context of e-cigarette controversies

Framed both as a solution to and as an additional part of the tobacco problem, e-cigarettes have been the subject of risk controversies since they were launched in 2006, followed by massive divergence in media, public health approaches and regulations across the world. This study explores vapers’ risk perceptions and accounts of the public risk communication and regulation of e-cigarettes in a Norwegian context were nicotine-containing e-liquids are prohibited from being sold by domestic retailers. Based on analyses of semi-structured qualitative interviews (n = 30, 17 males) with adult vapers, I find that the participants emphasised three important dimensions related to risk. First, they perceived vaping as harm reduction by substituting for smoking. Second, they devalued much of the risk communication about e-cigarettes from Norwegian health authorities and media. Interlinked with their harm-reduction approach, they perceived the present regulation of nicotine e-liquid and vaporisers as increasing risk by decreasing their availability to smokers. Third, in general they preferred the lay expertise available online to the health authorities’ information on e-cigarettes. The analysis displays a lack of trust among the participants in what can be labelled as top-down information. Based on these dimensions, I conclude that the dissonance between vapers risk perceptions and the regulation and mixed messages in risk communication of e-cigarettes has contributed to their preference for bottom-up expertise. From the vapers’ point of view, e-cigarettes represent harm reduction, and the vaper community symbolises a bottom-up health movement where peer assistance compensates for a perceived lack of assistance from health authorities.