By: Jordan Bondrowski
Vaping is one of the most popular “past-times”, if you could call it that, of teens and young-adults. With it’s growing popularity there has been more and more studies coming out about the effects of it and to try to wane younger people off of it as to try to protect their future health. Now true to the typical rebellious teen, the medical professionals do not do much to actually have people stop vaping.
The most obvious of Martin’s concepts when it comes to vaping would be the use of authority. In the article I used, they mentioned multiple times that this was written and studied by Harvard medical school experts. They also mention that “federal and state authorities recommend avoiding all vaping until more is known”. The author of this article chose to use these words because it convinces those reading it that people who are older, have more experience and are important in the community would tell you to not do it.
Authority is a tricky concept though because similar to the term religion, anyone can define it how they want to. Anyone can have authority if they decide to assert that they have authority. Relating this back to vaping, you could use the federal authority and say that it is actually illegal to purchase this under the age of 21 in the United States. Since it is illegal they have the authority to get you in trouble if you get caught, which obviously cannot make you stop but it may induce fear and therefore result in you quitting. However, if we wanted to think of it in a different way relating more to this class, we could use religion. This could be done by highlighting the fact that most people under the age of 21 do use this product and that is a sin, in Christianity, as you would be lying. The authority of God is one that was mentioned a lot in class and in Martin’s reading because God is an absent figure. Someone may use God’s authority to get you to stop vaping because “their words can be made to carry a great deal of authority if they can successfully put their words into the mouth of an absent authority figure”(Martin 123). Both of these are ways to use authority over someone to convince them to stop doing whatever it is they are doing, in this case vaping. This article chose more of a present authority social position of Harvard medical professionals and the federal and state authorities. Their societal position gives them the authority to tell you what you should and should not do, and your response to that depends more on their authenticity.
Now authenticity can also be something that has a loose definition, as we have seen a lot of in this class. Authenticity is basically determining what is “real”. This article does not touch on the authenticity of their writers or who they are using to convince people to stop vaping, but more-so uses the authenticity of vapes in their counterargument. They mention how this can be used as an authentic method to wane people off smoking cigarettes because it has been shown to have that benefit for some people. It’s “authentic” claim comes from how it provides them with a similar feeling to a lesser extent because of the products inside. But in reality, how authentic of a method is this because then instead of being addicted to cigarettes, they are now addicted to vaping.
They did mention if you were to use them to check their authenticity because they can very easily be tampered with and have substances added to them. So they recommended to use authentic name brand vapes. Relating this back to Martin’s text, in class we talked about people who claim to be authentic are really pushing themselves away from who is believed to be the “bad apple”. Are these vapes that are not authentic labeled and inauthentic because they have caused issues that other vape companies do not want to be associated with? All vapes are essentially providing similar if not the same results for people, but if a certain vape is the one that is causing these heart or lung issues, it may be labeled as inauthentic to save the industry. Because although we applied this concept to human beings, I feel that it is a similar idea to say that this person did this bad thing and should no longer be in our group.
To mention the final concept Martin points on, legitimation. I feel like this is the hardest concept for me to apply to this specific example because it is hidden in many ways and does not necessarily apply to every person that vapes. As they had mentioned in the article, most users are teenagers or young adults. During this time there is a lot of pressure to do what your friends are recommending you to do or even influence you to do it. The article did not speak on this, but I feel the legitimation in this is the social, popularity rankings related to vaping. In high school, at least where I am from, if you do not vape, you are “weird”. This therefore creates the different popularity classes. Some people do have a strong enough will power to deny this fear of “weirdness”, but most at that age unfortunately do not. As they move on to college they are already addicted to vaping and is very difficult to escape it after that long. Now this, as I had mentioned was the hardest for me to grasp because I feel like it is in a very disguised manner and I also am not sure if this can be applied everywhere, but this was the common theme where I am from.
Now is vaping a religious problem? Not exactly. But Martin’s concepts can be expanded so far beyond religion because, going back to week 1, religion can be anything. I also applied the three different concepts to three different factors of vaping, some explicitly mentioned in the article and some I used from my own experience. All three of these concepts are hidden in our every day lives and we use and apply them unconsciously, but it is important to try to set these things to the side and analyze them for what they are.
Source Link:https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/can-vaping-damage-your-lungs-what-we-do-and-dont-know-2019090417734
Religion 105 
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