Do vegans smoke? Vegans might have smoked before they changed their eating habits and now wonder if they need to quit smoking cold turkey. For smokers who’ve maintained the habit for a few years with several unsuccessful attempts at quitting, it can be a daunting prospect to attempt it again.
Do vegans smoke? Some still do because they either haven’t looked into whether it’s a vegan practice or they struggled to quit. Others switched to vaping as a better, but not entirely healthy, alternative.
Can vegans vape? That’s another good question. It’s certainly an alternative. We’ll look into this later in the article.
This is only an issue for those that are more than just a dietary vegan, but instead, embrace a fully vegan lifestyle.
Why Smoking Isn’t Vegan [Everything You Need To Know]
Animal Testing
Some American cigarette manufacturers still use animal testing to confirm the safety of their products.
What tobacco manufacturers are trying to determine is whether their products cause any adverse reactions or responses that fall outside of the expected parameters.
This may, like with other animal testing, try to catch unsafe products before they get released to consumers.
Some animal testing even includes cigarette smoke being spread in an enclosed area where dogs or other animals breathe it in.
This is harmful to such animals and causes them distress as it would us humans too.
Some cigarette companies are beginning to dabble in producing products without animal testing.
The market for cigarettes has largely matured in the US. This is causing companies to look at smaller niche markets, such as vegan cigarettes, along with delving into others, like e-cigarettes.
Doing so allows their corporation to maintain revenues even if the tobacco division is struggling.
Ingredients
Various ingredients in cigarettes aren’t vegan. Some of these are from animal byproducts. Here are a few of them:
Honey – The sweetness of honey is utilized in some cigarettes to create a sweeter taste for smokers. Vegans reject honey because to capture the honeycomb and nectar, it must be removed from the hive.
The removal process unfortunately sacrifices some bees even when being extremely careful not to do so. Also, honey for cigarette production often originates from captive bees that don’t live a free life.
Solids from Cow’s Milk Fat – Milk solid matter is widely used. It’s believed to help with cigarette paper, rather than tobacco.
Castoreum – If you haven’t heard of Castoreum, you’re likely not alone. Male beavers produce it as part of a pheromone.
These are sometimes included in the ingredients because it lends a more pleasant scent to the cigarette either before or while smoking.
Hemoglobin – The filters in cigarettes may contain hemoglobin. The hemoglobin originates from the blood of a pig.
Beeswax (white) – Sealing cigarette paper is tricky because no glue cannot be used. Therefore, beeswax is an alternative for it.
Beeswax is made by bees. It assists them in keeping their beehive together. Its removal, therefore, threatens their survival in the wild.
Beyond these five ingredients above, cigarettes can contain not tens but hundreds of others. For vegans, it’s pretty much impossible to investigate all of them.
These often-including chemicals you might not want to be smoking, plus some oils and other extras that might theoretically be okay for a vegan.
So, Is Vaping A Vegan Alternative To Smoking?
Vaping is better than smoking for both health reasons and from an animal standpoint too.
While nicotine vaping still has harmful and sometimes cancerous repercussions, it can be a reduced intake situation for people who cannot quit completely or is used as a stepping stone to completely quit nicotine intake.
No animal testing is performed to deliver the nicotine or make the e-liquids that are vaporized through the inhaling process.
The vaping juices are synthetic, not natural though.
E-Liquid Ingredients
The e-liquid ingredients, more specifically the colorings for the liquid, are where the water becomes muddy…
E-liquids may contain color dyes to create the appropriate color in the bottle.
The most obvious one is the red color, noted as Red Number 4, to create some red or pink-colored e-liquids.
The distinctiveness of this color is created using ground-up beetles. Other colorings may also use animal-derived products to create them.
In addition, e-liquids can contain glycerin, an animal-derived byproduct, instead of veggie glycerin or something else entirely.
Vegan Smoking / Vaping Alternatives
There are vegan cigarettes available in the US. It is a small, yet growing market because it’s a growing trend that tobacco companies wish to pursue.
Given that tobacco is a plant, it is possible to produce cigarettes from all vegan ingredients.
Vaping is another possibility. Some vegan vaping manufacturers now either have vegan-only e-cigarettes or their entire brand is built around their vaping products being vegan.
We’d suggest that a vegan-only vaping brand, such as Vampire Vape, is going to be a better bet.
