Introduction
E-cigarettes are handheld electronic devices that vaporise a flavoured liquid, which the users inhale (WHO 2014). E-cigarettes were initially developed as a less health-damaging practice to cope with nicotine addiction (Hajek et al. 2014). However, vaping soon moved beyond a cessation-only practice (Weier 2018), and started to serve social, recreational, and sensory expectancies (Pokhrel et al. 2015) and to provide new rituals and social practices (Keane et al. 2017). The e-cigarettes market has at the same time evolved from early brands highlighting advantages over traditional cigarettes to present products with multiple flavours and product versatility (Zhu et al. 2014). E-cigarettes come in a range of models, along with As cigarette smoking has moved to the socioeconomic margins of society, its stigma has increased (Graham 2012). In Norway and many other countries, there has been a dramatic decline in smoking over recent decades.
Simultaneously, a policy of denormalisation of smoking has been favoured by health authorities, redefining tobacco use as socially unacceptable (Peretti-Watel et al. 2014, Saebo 2016). Current smoker identities reflect such redefinitions (Bell et al. 2010). In Scheffels’ (2009) study of young Norwegian smokers, discourses of smoking as stigmatised and immoral dominated, despite some stories reflecting classical positive meanings of smoking as a symbol of freedom. Evans-Polce et al. (2015) identified the process from external stigmatisation to self-stigma with consequences such as guilt, loss of
self-esteem and defensiveness.