According to statistics, only 6% of the Swedish population smokes, give or take a little depending on education and place of residence. Whichever way you look at it, this is many times lower than in the rest of the EU. Nevertheless, nicotine use is as widespread here as in other countries. Why is this the case and what kind of nicotine products do Swedes actually use? This is the first part of a series of portraits of Swedes who no longer smoke.
First up is Björn Åslander, 59 years old vejpare from Hallsberg.
- Un the spring of 2023, the Vejpkollen with Convenience Stores Sweden News to depict Swedish nicotine use, bortom statistics. This is a slightly modified version of the original report that was published in CSS News. —
The first time we met, he was angry as a bee. I was working behind the cash register in a vejpshop in Gothenburg and Björn Åslander almost fell through the door, fleeing from an unusually angry rain. He had been vejping for almost a year at that point. It was no walk in the park. The coil was burning all the time, the tank was leaking and didn't the e-juice taste a bit different all of a sudden?
"They haven't gone and changed the recipe, have they? It doesn't taste like it should. It just pisses me off! Why do they have to do this?" Björn muttered as he stood at the checkout counter.
That's how it went. After that we met once a month or so. Built a relationship that revolved around vejpning, problem solving, not smoking, different flavors. And a lot of politics.
This is his story. 8 years later.
Forest, house and shepherd
When we first met, on that rainy day in 2016, he was working at a printing company in Gothenburg. Today, Björn Åslander is a trained bus driver and has moved to Hallsberg in central Sweden. There is still a bit of winter in the air when we meet in the small red cabin that Björn rents with his partner Therese, a few miles south of Hallsberg. He has just turned 59 when we get out of the car, in the middle of the forest where the couple's German shepherd runs around collecting sticks.
"She's crazy about sticks, completely manic," says Björn, puffing on his relatively large e-cigarette on the veranda. A cloud sneaks in between the bushes.
My father smoked cigars
He started smoking cigarettes early. It was in the 1970s. Dad smoked cigars, mom didn't smoke at all. A fairly ordinary Swedish home, but far from a smoking family," says Björn.
"My dad smoked cigars a few times a month, but no more. I had started sneaking a little bit and he caught me, I think it was the neighbor gossiping. Then he forced me to smoke a whole cigar in the toilet. Damn, I coughed and vomited. He really didn't want me to start smoking"
I ask if it worked. Bear laughs.
"No, it really didn't. I don't remember exactly, but I smoked regularly already in 7th grade. Bought those little packs, Glen, wasn't it called back then? It was me and a few friends who did it. Some of us also smoked snuff. I remember a guy, Jan Johansson, who stole a can at ICA and got caught. He was that cool guy on the moped, without a helmet and a cigarette in his mouth"
"Part of the good things in life"
Björn describes smoking as an important part of socializing. His friends smoked in the smoking area at school. Later in life, they would get together and have a cigarette during breaks at work.
"I was never a barfly, but I used to meet friends at a café after work. Then you chilled out. And had a cigarette of course. It was one of the good things in life, at that time"
Painters, printers, smokers
At the time of the interview, he has just finished training as a bus driver and has recently moved to Hallsberg, where his partner Therese has her roots. But he was born in Stockholm 59 years ago and moved to Gothenburg in the mid-1980s. Smoking has followed him and he has worked in many professions, from printer to painter with his own company.
"When it comes to smoking, I think a lot about what I experienced as a painter. I had to clean up many apartments where someone had smoked cigarettes for decades. The smoke particles settle deep into the walls. The stains are tricky to cover, not to mention the smell, which is very difficult to remove. Good work for a painter, though, especially if you get paid by the hour, he jokes.
But then it gets a bit serious again.
"I can't believe you've been putting that in your lungs for so many years"
No thought of quitting
He had no intention of giving up smoking, he says. The fact that he did was mostly a coincidence. He smoked more than a pack a day, basically every day since the age of 15.
"A woman who trained at the print shop where I was employed showed up one day with an e-cig. It turned out that neither she nor her husband, whom I knew a little, had smoked for a few months. They had each bought an e-cig instead. She stopped by our house later. Me and Therese, who also smoked (her partner, editor's note) became curious and started looking into what it was. Then I was sold" he laughs.
A lot of experimentation
At that time, in 2015, few e-cigarettes were available outside specialized shops. It was only when the disposable models became popular that e-cigarettes appeared in every second convenience store.
"It was a bit tricky to understand how it worked with e-liquid and different devices. But I stuck with it. It's important to get good help. In some shops, they tried to push anything on you, either something unnecessarily expensive or e-liquid with too high or too low nicotine strength. It took some experimentation in the beginning before I found the right one"
"New models all the time"
He has a whole box of different vejpdon in a cupboard in the kitchen. Some new, some old. Even an Iqos - a variant of an e-cig that vaporizes tobacco instead of e-liquid. He picks up some old tanks. Favorites that can't be used anymore - not because they're worn out - but because spare parts are not available.
"The hard thing about e-cigs is that new models come out all the time. Parts that you need to change, like coils and glass for the tanks, stop being produced and then you are left standing there. For me, it can take time to find something new that suits my way of vejpa" says Björn Åslander.
"Very picky about taste"
Today he uses several models in parallel. A high-power device that produces large clouds, during the day. A small version, a so-called pod system, at home in the evenings.
"If I vejpar with the big machine under a smoke alarm, and yes, it has happened, then the alarm goes off. Not good" he laughs. "However, it doesn't happen when I use the small pod system. It's more like smoking a cigarette in feel, more nicotine but less vapor"
Alongside the device itself, the taste of the e-liquid is "extremely important", he notes.
"Yes, my God. I'm very picky. There has to be a lot of flavor. And I want it to remind me of smoke too. At least a little bit"
The same e-juice for many years
E-juice, whether it comes in a large vejp or disposable model, is made up of the same ingredients. Glycerine and propylene glycol. And flavorings and nicotine, of course. Tobacco flavors are actually the collective name for a range of different flavors. Some are more like chocolate or vanilla, while others have profiles like licorice or crackers. Once Björn found a flavor, from a local producer in Uddevalla, he has stuck with it. For many, many years.
"I've tried other flavors too, but it doesn't work. Disposable ones are everywhere these days and of course I've tried some. My problem with it is that they are so very sweet. And that many taste like candy. It might work for a day. But then I get tired of it," he says, admitting that he recently found a sweet fruit flavor that he likes better in the little pod system he uses in the evenings.
"But it turns out that that particular e-juice was hard to get in Sweden, typical, somehow" he laughs.
The debate on nicotine
Ever since e-cigarettes appeared on the market almost 20 years ago, the technology has caused debate. After all, it's all about nicotine - an addictive substance inextricably linked to smoking. Smoking a pack a day for 40 years increases the risk of a range of life-threatening diseases. Burning tobacco and smoking it means inhaling thousands of dangerous substances, in particular soot particles and carbon monoxide. At the same time, cigarettes are one of the world's best-selling products.
A fraction of the toxicity
The modern e-cigarette was created by a smoker, a Chinese pharmacist who wanted to find a way to inhale nicotine without burning tobacco. He solved it by heating glycerine and propylene glycol with added nicotine. The nicotine was the same as in proven nicotine medicines - he was in the pharmaceutical business, after all - and the result was a battery-powered vaporizer, a 'vejp', which heats an e-liquid to around 250 degrees. The vapour was found to contain a fraction of the toxic substances found in cigarette smoke, and no trace of either carbon monoxide (which causes cardiovascular disease) or soot particles (which cause cancer and COPD). Smokers also seemed to enjoy using the technology.
Difficulty with information
Smoking problem solved, right? No, not really.
Despite the fact that the technology is considered a much safer way to use nicotine than smoking, the debate between researchers, interest groups and the established tobacco control apparatus has raged for almost 20 years. As a result, the most basic information about the risks of e-cigarettes versus cigarettes is difficult to access today, to say the least.
This is particularly true for smokers.
Discussions in the smoke box
Björn often encounters irritation and borderline aggressive comments, he says. Not infrequently in the smoking areas. From smokers.
"Well, there you are, breathing in chemicals. It's deadly, I've heard it's worse than cigarettes...". I hear that a lot. And those who say that SMOKE like brush cutters. It drives me crazy. You have to explain what vejpning is and what the difference is. But it's not easy when you're standing there in a wild discussion and have five minutes to spare," says Björn Åslander.
Reducing risks - but few know it
According to studies in the UK and the US (and to some extent in Sweden), knowledge about e-cigarettes is rarely based on the evidence that actually exists. According to the British health authorities, which have summarized the research on e-cigarettes since 2015, vejpning, whether disposable or larger devices, reduces the risks of nicotine addiction by almost 95%. However, in statistical surveys, many, almost 50%, of smokers today believe that the use of e-cigarettes is as, or more, harmful than smoking cigarettes.
"Could breathe normally again"
E-cigarettes and vejpning simply evoke emotions. Björn Åslander thinks the whole discussion on e-cigarettes has been distorted.
"It gets frustrating to hear all this nonsense all the time. When some organization spreads scaremongering that there are risks and that we "don't know" enough. I know how my health changed from the moment I swapped my cigarette for my vejp. I could breathe normally again. My doctors noticed it too, when we compared my spirometry readings between years. Huge difference. So it doesn't matter what others say, or try to "prove", says Björn.
"Will not smoke again"
After all, he believes that e-cigarettes will replace cigarettes even in tobacco shops. At least in the not too distant future.
"Hardly anyone smokes anymore. People like me, who maybe didn't care so much about their health, find other ways to get the nicotine. Young people on mopeds too. I don't smell smoke anymore, don't bother anyone else - it makes it more acceptable. Strangely enough, I still think the smoke from a cigarette can smell good and I usually take a puff now and then. But that's the thing here, it doesn't give me anything anymore, no flavors, nothing. I won't smoke again, I know that." says Björn Åslander, blowing a small cloud that mixes with the barley-like rain in the forests south of Hallsberg.
