When the chairman of Forbes magazine defends vaping

Steve Forbes is the successor of Bertie Charles Forbes, who founded Forbes Magazine in 1917, and of Malcolm Forbes. The famous magazine has passed from father to son for three generations. The current chairman’s latest remarks on vaping have made their mark. Here is the background.

An unusual career

Steve Forbes has been chairman of Forbes Magazine since 1980. After studying at Brooks School and then at Princeton University, he took a degree in history. Like his father and his grandfather, he made a passion for writing pay by founding a student magazine, Business Today. It is currently the largest student-focused magazine in the world.

Like his father, he takes an interest in politics. Steve tried his hand in that world, but met with less success than his predecessor. He nevertheless managed to become one of Donald Trump’s financial advisers from 2016.

What is the connection between Steve Forbes and the electronic cigarette?

Steve Forbes appears to be a staunch defender of the electronic cigarette and a keen user of the e-cigarette glossary. Having remained very discreet on the subject, he spoke publicly about vaping for the first time in August 2020, during the celebrated no-holds-barred conversations of the podcast What’s Ahead. On that programme, leading figures from the media, from politics and from the world of economics are invited to question received wisdom and break with certain conventions. The subject of that podcast was “Vaping versus Tobacco: the truth you need to know”.

Invited back to the same programme a second time, Steve Forbes this time regretted the fact that flavourings had been banned in e-liquids. He also said he feared seeing the “anti-vape” camp return to the charge once the health situation in the country had eased. He drew on precise figures to support his case, claiming that vaping is 95% less harmful than smoking, and that young people were turning away from tobacco, with an addiction rate falling from 16% to 10% today.