We spoke to Youtuber, Twitch streamer and overall vaping influencer GrimmGreen about the importance of well-researched voices advocating for variety within the community.
Social media star and famous face of the vaping industry, Nicholas ‘Grimm’ Green, has been fighting for the right to vape since he made the switch back in 2009.
Having been in the industry for 14 years, he has seen first-hand the power that vaping can have on people’s lives who were otherwise destined to suffer from smoking related issues.
With a Youtube Channel surpassing 404,000 subscribers, it’s evident that the creator and advocate is passionate about the harm reduction mission and keen to help others quit through vaping.
He said:
“My role for advocacy is very much ‘rallying the troops’.
“I take what I see across the internet, social media, twitter and do my best to relay these things to the general vape audience.”
With this comes a lot of responsibility and GrimmGreen often finds himself frustrated with the online backlash and ignorance that surrounds the community.
He spends vast amounts of his free time actively reading and interpreting science journals and articles to keep fellow vapers aware of what’s going on in the current climate.
GrimmGreen said:
“To watch vaping and harm reduction create the lowest levels of smoking the USA has ever seen.
“Then to watch organisations like the American Lung and American Heart Association’s stand against this new technology is what makes me passionate.
“Everyone who smokes should get the chance to quit the way I did.”
With this theory in mind, it was important for the online creator to get his younger brother to embark on his own quitting journey after smoking together ‘like crazy people’ for years on end.
The advocate said:
“He kept smoking, I kept vaping…and every week I would try to get him to switch with a new product or new liquid.
“Eventually, he found a kit he liked and ‘dual used’. It took him over a year to finally quit but he did and has been smoke free for over a decade now.
“This technology can work for almost everyone ‘if’ they are given a variety in the marketplace and are allowed to switch at their own pace.”
There are countless people’s stories GrimmGreen could share and it’s the privilege of hearing them that pushes him to fight for the right to variety…after all, it’s the spice of life!
He said:
“Everyone has a different journey and a different goal and it’s critical in my opinion to meet people where they are at.”
His own quitting story however, he admits is ‘fairly boring’, with no initial intention of quitting for good, but he always wondered, maybe there is a product like a fake cigarette?
You could argue he quite literally manifested e-cigarettes into his life when he decided to Google ‘fake cigarettes’ on a whim.
Low and behold, he found a Youtuber talking about vapes.
Green said:
“Leaford showed me the way and helped me pick my first vape out. It was a crazy expensive stick battery cartomizer kit, but it was enough.
“I had no idea what I needed in terms of liquid and chargers, and this information was nowhere to be found online at the time.”
This of course only gave him more ammunition to now provide users with vital information surrounding different devices.
But this was back in 2009 and just a year later, the state of California – where he lived – almost completely banned all vaping products.
He said:
“It got vetoed by our then Governor, but that one moment radicalised me. I knew I was going to have to defend these products and their use for possibly the rest of my life.”
And here we are, 14 years on and with a couple hundred thousand followers, Nicholas ‘Grimm’ Green continues to fight the good fight for the benefit of the entire vaping community. Twitter feuds with the FDA about vaping, on Twitter.
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