“E-cigarettes have taken us back 50 years,” according to the headline over a commentary that National Jewish Health, a medical centre in Denver, recently paid to place on the op-ed page of The New York Times. The essay — co-authored by David Tinkelman and Amy Lukowski, who are in charge of the hospital’s “health initiatives,” including its tobacco-cessation program — never substantiates that claim, which is typical of e-cigarette critics who see a public-health menace where they should see a way of reducing tobacco-related disease and death.
You might think people concerned about the health effects of smoking would welcome an alternative that involves neither tobacco nor combustion and is therefore much less hazardous. But with some notable exceptions, anti-smoking activists and public-health officials have been mostly hostile to electronic cigarettes, which deliver nicotine in a propylene glycol vapour. This puzzling resistance seems to be driven by emotion rather than science or logic.
Tinkelman and Lukowski concede that “e-cigarette vapor contains far fewer toxic chemicals and carcinogens than does tobacco smoke” and that “if e-cigarettes are used to wean individuals off tobacco or to significantly reduce the amount smoked per day, this is a good result.” But they worry that “if e-cigarettes used by non-smokers produce nicotine addiction and smoking habits that lead to new tobacco use, e-cigarettes are causing harm.” Judging from their headline, Tinkelman and Lukowski think that harm not only threatens to outweigh the health benefits of replacing smoking with vaping but could even reverse half a century of progress against tobacco-related disease, giving us smoking rates similar to those in the early 1960s, when most American men and a third of women smoked — compared to about 22% and 17%, respectively, today.
Despite Tinkelman and Lukowski’s over-the-top fears, there is no evidence that e-cigarettes are serving as a gateway to the real thing. They cite survey data indicating that “e-cigarette use among middle and high school students from 2011 to 2012 doubled to 1.8 million users,” adding that “nearly 160,000 of those adolescents do not use tobacco, highlighting the danger e-cigarettes present.” Another way of putting it: Just 7% of teenagers had ever tried e-cigarettes as of 2012, and 91% of them were smokers. Far from alarming, that fact suggests some young smokers may end up switching to vaping, thereby dramatically reducing the health risks they face. That would be “a good result,” as Tinkelman and Lukowski acknowledge.
Jacob Sullum on e-cigarettes: Sowing confusion among anti-smoking activists
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