Good.
The UN agency, which is currently assessing its position on the matter, has previously indicated it would favor applying similar restrictions to all nicotine-containing products.
In an open letter to WHO Director General Margaret Chan, the scientists from Europe, North America, Asia and Australia argued that low-risk products like e-cigarettes were “part of the solution” in the fight against smoking, not part of the problem.
“These products could be among the most significant health innovations of the 21st century – perhaps saving hundreds of millions of lives. The urge to control and suppress them as tobacco products should be resisted,” the experts wrote.
Hope someone tells the Los Angeles City Council and Chris Christie and the New York Times and all the other yutzes out there working in knee-jerk ignorance to make it harder for people to quit smoking, rather than much easier — and endangering the lives of millions in the bargain.
UPDATE 5/30/2014: Here’s the complete open letter to WHO [PDF]. In fact, the details are rather remarkable, as they speak to almost every single piece of dangerous anti-vaping propaganda I’ve heard since I began researching this issue.
Here’s a few more key snippets from the group of scientists, speaking to those very issues, pretty much smacking down every bit of that irresponsible, unscientific propaganda that has been used by governmental bodies to date to make quitting smoking with the use of vaping technology much more difficult…
[Emphasis in the original document]…
…
Tobacco harm reduction policies should be evidence-based and proportionate to risk, and give due weight to the significant reductions in risk that are achieved when a smoker switches to a low risk nicotine product.
…
On a precautionary basis, regulators should avoid support for measures that could have the perverse effect of prolonging cigarette consumption. Policies that are excessively restrictive or burdensome on lower risk products can have the unintended consequence of protecting cigarettes from competition from less hazardous alternatives, and cause harm as a result.
Targets and indicators for reduction of tobacco consumption should be aligned with the ultimate goal of reducing disease and premature death, not nicotine use per se, and therefore focus primarily on reducing smoking. … it would be counterproductive and potentially harmful to include reduction of low-risk nicotine products, such as eÂ-cigarettes, within these targets: instead these products should have an important role in meeting the targets.
Tobacco harm reduction is strongly consistent with good public health policy and practice and it would be unethical and harmful to inhibit the option to switch to tobacco harm reduction products. … Tobacco harm reduction allows people to control the risk associated with taking nicotine and to reduce it down to very low or negligible levels.
In addition to the above, some of these points seem to speak directly to folks like the L.A. City Council and others like them who are dangerously banning the use of vaping products as if they were the same thing as cigarettes:
And this one, for folks like NJ Gov. Chris Christie, whose administration has irresponsibly called for extreme excise taxes on e-cigs:
Finally, for disreputable “experts” like Professor Stanton Glantz of University of California, San Francisco, whose extraordinarily bad “scientific” reports and personal testimony seem to pop up in virtually every anti-vaping legislative body or lousy mainstream media article on e-cigs:
And yet, when I’ve asked legislators why they are dangerously banning e-cigs, they invariably point to the junk-science reports and testimony by Glantz and friends, who cite “scientific” reports that simply do not support the “gateway effect” argument — or any other — they are (successfully) hoping to fool the public with.
Indeed.
Such an important issue as cigarette addiction needs very careful consideration.
Hundreds of millions of lives … huge issue.
This disinformation campaign has got to have secret big tobacco money behind it. There is no other reason for such a disinformation campaign than the industry sees this as an effective way to allow millions of smokers to quit poisoning themselves – and they are scared to death for their profits.
American Cancer Society is against e cigs.
http://www.cancer.org/myacs/eastern/areahighlights/cancernynj-news-ny-ecig-health-vote
Uhuh –
The American Cancer Society (at least that page you linked to) is 100% wrong, is citing long ago debunked “studies” and is otherwise doing a grave disservice to the cause they claim to be representing.
Contrast your link to this one from the former President and CEO of the American Lung Association who describes the L.A. City Council’s legislation to ban e-cigs this way:
As a former president of the American Lung Association, I have seen how e-cigarettes have become the subject of much confusion and misinformation, which has led to a classic case of guilt by association.
E-cigarettes may deliver nicotine and look like cigarettes. But there the similarities end.
…
Including e-cigarettes in the city’s smoking ban would be a step in the wrong direction. It would send the unintended message to smokers that electronic cigarettes are as dangerous as traditional cigarettes, locking many smokers into traditional cigarette use. This is a public health outcome we do not want.
…
E-cigarettes are a fundamentally different product from combustible tobacco cigarettes and should not fall under the same rules and restrictions. Rather, we should encourage current smokers to move down the ladder of risk by implementing regulations that recognize these differences.
As a society, we should continue our laser focus on eliminating tobacco use. But a premature “regulate first, ask questions later” approach that equates e-cigarettes to combustible tobacco cigarettes only serves as an obstacle to that goal. The Los Angeles City Council should pause its campaign against electronic cigarettes until the FDA experts offer guidance on how the product should be regulated. To do otherwise is to ignore an opportunity to save millions of smokers from a lot of harm.
If you have any questions about why the ACA’s statement is largely comprised of long-ago debunked horseshit, please feel free to let me know. I’ve read the actual “studies” they are citing in support of their propaganda and, in fact, they either don’t say what they are claiming they say, or the studies themselves are old, out of date, and of tiny samples of foreign made crap.
The letter to WHO from the scientists, as quoted above, speaks to all of that evidence. Frankly, I’m somewhat surprised the ACA hasn’t taken down that terribly disinformative page by now.
E-Cigs contain NICOTINE the addictive POISON that has killed millions. Hell yes it should be classified as a tobacco product.
I quit smoking without nicotine vapors…. and I was a chain smoking pig for decades.
It took the same recovery program as I used to stop drugs and alcohol.
I could NOT switch from whiskey to beer to stop alcohol. Nor could I use the gum or the patch to quit tobacco. I would have just used both.
Excuse me.
Why does the Tobacco Industry have to put NICOTINE into this product?
Because it is just another way to package their poison. Like pipe tobacco and cigars and chew.
It’s a shiny new addiction and could be the most profitable yet, since all their other products are so heavily prohibited in society and the law.
You dont need vapes to quit smoking any more than you need Cocaine to quit Heroin.
A drug is a drug and the delivery system is moot.
DanG –
Wow. Quite a bit of misinformation there. Let me try to help unconfuse you…
While nicotine is highly addictive and, like absolutely everything (including water, for example), poisonous if taken in too high a dose, your assertion that it has “killed millions” is absolutely, completely, entirely inaccurate.
It’s not the nicotine in cigarettes that kills anybody. It’s the tar, carbon monoxide, and thousands of chemicals that are inhaled when tobacco is combusted.
Nicotine is about as dangerous as caffeine, according to science. In other words, those who have heart or blood pressure issues should probably avoid too much of either. Beyond that, there is no evidence that I’m aware of that nicotine in appropriate amounts is deadly and, in fact, there is evidence that it actually has some health benefits (in regard to Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, for example.)
So, you’re just completely wrong on your central point there.
Glad to hear that you quit.
Correct. Because there is alcohol in both. And if alcohol was endangering your health, moving from whiskey to beer wouldn’t have helped to avoid the substance that was endangering you — unlike moving from cigarettes to vaping, since it’s not the nicotine that kills smokers.
That’s incorrect. You may have been able to. Had you moved to the gum or the patch, you might have been able to quit tobacco, though evidence is showing that vaping is much more effective (60% more effective, according to this new study, for example) than either of those two methods for trying to quit smoking.
“The Tobacco Industry” doesn’t put nicotine into the product, per se. Those of us who choose to vape and choose to use the type of e-juice that contains nicotine do so. The Tobacco Industry, at least in my case, has absolutely nothing to do with it since, I’m happy to say, my vaping products aren’t sold by them. “The Tobacco Industry” has only recently been getting into the 10-year old e-cig business, largely after seeing the writing on the wall, that they will soon be out of business entirely, as vaping takes hold as a much much much safer alternative to deadly smoking.
Nonetheless, unlike smokers, vapers may actually choose the level of nicotine they want to use — anywhere, from 0mg up to 36mg or so (at the very high end.)
First, since you say you’ve gone through a drug and alcohol recovery program, it’s surprising to hear you telling others what they do or don’t need to do to stop smoking. Most folks who have gone through recovery would likely know better than to decide what others need or needn’t do to quit a deadly habit.
That said, I’m glad you were able to stop smoking via another method (and happy you were able to afford whatever the costs were of the counseling you mentioned – I know many people cannot). Many of us, however, are delighted to have the miracle that is vaping which the esteemed scientists mentioned in the article above, regard as “among the most significant health innovations of the 21st century – perhaps saving hundreds of millions of lives.”
Why you’d be so, seemingly, angry about that is somewhat surprising and odd, frankly. I hope it’s only because you’ve been so desperately misinformed, as your comments seem to suggest, and that you are less misinformed now that I’ve responded to your many misapprehensions about vaping and nicotine, etc.
Feel free to let me know if you have any others.
DanG –
P.S. As per our long-standing commenting rules here, please use only one name for commenting. You’ve been posting for years here as “gr8fuldaniel”, so I’d request you stick with that one. I’ve edited the comment name on your three comments above in this thread to reflect that. Thanks!
As a former smoker with a spouse who has gone from “analogue” cigarettes to vaping, let me chime in. Remember those congressional hearings when the tobacco executives denied the addictive and harmful aspects of smoking? That was when we learned tobacco companies saturate natural tobacco leaves in a cocktail of chemicals to boost the nicotine levels and otherwise increase the addictiveness of their product. As Brad points out, it is the toxic smoke of all those chemicals combined with the nicotine in tobacco that is detrimental to health. Vaping products have comparatively few chemicals and a nicotine level (including none) chosen by the consumer. Vapor is not smoke and since nicotine and the few chemicals in e-juice are not actually ignited, vaping is sure to be a much safer nicotine delivery system.
Although it’s off topic, in response to Dang’s comment: You dont need vapes to quit smoking any more than you need Cocaine to quit Heroin. You’d be surprised to learn that some doctors find that heroin by itself, while addictive, is not especially harmful until it is cut with unknown substances and delivered with dirty needles. Our pharmaceutical drug dealers know that Oxycontin is highly addictive and many newer drug abusers switched to heroin when they couldn’t get acces to Oxy. Jerry Garcia did not die from his lifetime heroin addiction; he died in detox. (The heroin to cocaine analogy is silly, as that is the recipe for a speedball.)
If’s funny. Because e-cigs don’t have any second hand smoke, the opponents are falling back on the old prohibitionist arguments that it is sinful to use something like nicotine. I’ve never smoked myself but I’m with the Lung Association on this one.
The stupidity over e-cigs is amazing.
It’s like for 200 years, we’ve been taking in caffeine via eating radioactive dirt, with millions and millions of people dying of cancer, not just the people eating the dirt, but people shipping it, handling it, being near it, etc. It’s a real public health crisis, and we regulate it and regulate it, although for some reason we can never seem completely to ban it.
And then someone invents coffee, letting us get caffeine without all that.
And complete idiots think that should be regulated too. Just as harshly. Because those idiots have gotten it into their head that the caffeine is the problem.
Look, nicotine, like caffeine, is an addictive drug. It’s one that is not particularly good for people (Barring a few actual medical uses.), and we should probably keep it away from children. (And we need to create safer ways to handle it…some ecig users have managed to give themselves nicotine poisoning by spilling a bottle of the liquid concentrate on themselves.) We’d probably be better off if no one used nicotine. But it really is right next to caffeine in the danger level.
But, uh, the actual problem with cigarettes was that they killed people, both the users, and sometimes people nearby. They killed people with smoke, not with nicotine.
What’s more, ecigs give us the perfect opportunity to actually erase cigarettes. With ecigs as a option, cigarette smokers will taper off, which means, at some point, we can ban cigarettes. Which means no kids will start smoking. (Maybe there’s some hypothetical where kids start esmoking, but why would they start using nicotine instead of just esmoking the non-nicotine stuff? It looks exactly the same.)