Samrat Chowdhery is Director of the Association of Vapers India (AVI)

All the anti-vaping voices in India are coming from one funding source, that itself should raise flags but somehow it doesn’t.

There are 1.1 million smokers, it’s the largest preventable cause of death, you would see a greater degree of urgency in solving a problem this size but there isn’t.

The other thing about vaping is that it’s an act very similar to smoking, which is the reason actually why it works for so many people, because it’s addressing a lot of needs, for smokers.

There is a big need to decouple nicotine from tobacco, decouple nicotine products or novel nicotine products frokm smoking and I don’t think enough of that is happening.

When it comes to consumer nicotine products, suddenly flavours become an issue.

Flavours play an important role in the entire act of giving up or quitting smoking, they’re an integral part of why we have become so successful in such a short time.