Cultural Taboos Start to Fall as More Thai Women Vape

It started with Spy wine cooler.  Founded in 1986 in the lush northern valleys of Thailand, the Siam Winery had trouble finding a market for wine products in Thailand, where traditionally only men drink alcoholic beverages and they pretty much stick to beer and rice whiskey.  The marketing department at Siam Winery decided on a massive media ad campaign that would target women, and that they would roll out a wine cooler with a modest alcohol content as the first product that Thai women might try.  Their campaign worked - television ads showing sophisticated Thai ladies demurely sipping a Spy wine cooler at dinner soon had Thai women by the thousands emulating the ads, with no social backlash.  Today, while a woman drinking beer or whiskey in Thailand is still frowned on in polite circles, it is perfectly acceptable for even the most conservative dowager to have a glass of Spy with her green curry.

Smoking has also long been a 'men only' habit in Thailand.  While some Thai women indulged in the nicotine habit, it was always done in the deep and shrouded privacy of their own home, never in public.  A Thai woman who smoked in public was seen as nothing but an immoral 'bar girl', unfit for regular employment or marriage.  Plus the cigarettes on sale in Thailand, for the most part, are made with Philippine tobacco - one of the coarsest grades on the world market; Thai men are not boasting when they say it takes a real he-man to smoke a pack of cigarettes in a day - the tobacco is strong and reminiscent of a smoldering tire fire.  Thai women universally consider cigarette smoke one of the worst smells around.

But all that is changing rapidly with the introduction of the e-cigarette to Thailand.  In 2012 the Eco Cig Thailand Company began offering their e-cigarette kit online, with prices starting at a whopping 2800 baht (which is approximately 80 dollars US).  This was WITHOUT the nicotine liquid, a small canister of which costs 99 baht (about 3 dollars US).  The flavors being offered for the e-cigarette are decidedly feminine; Vanilla Mint, Triple Menthol, Bubblegum and Jasmine.  E-cigarette ads are banned on television and on radio in Thailand, but not in popular magazines.  Not surprisingly, once again advertisers are touting the e-cigarette as a woman's right and privilege at the end of a long, busy day; the ads show glamorous Thai models sitting back in their stylish living rooms, luxuriously exhaling a cloud of sweet-scented vapor that is nothing like the fumes from a nasty burning tobacco cigarette.  Women focus groups are regularly held in Bangkok at posh places like Siam Square, where the ladies are invited to puff on different flavors and give their frank opinions. 

Today, more and more respectable Thai women are trying e-cigarettes.  It's an expensive habit to pick up in Thailand, where a pack of regular smokes costs just under a dollar, and so the e-cigarette is catching on because of snob appeal with women.  The more trendy restaurants and bars now allow women to 'vape' while the men stick to their stinky Wonder brand tobacco cigarettes. 

E-cigarettes are readily available at 7-11 outlets and other convenience stores in Thailand, although you may not be able to get the nicotine canister at the same store; sometimes you have to hit several different convenience stores before finding one that has the flavored nicotine canisters.  There's been talk of regulating and taxing e-cigarettes the same way that tobacco is regulated and taxed, but what with the current political turmoil in Bangkok, e-cigarettes, for good or bad, are currently a mushrooming social phenomena that the Thai sisterhood is seriously embracing.