# Are e-cigarettes a savior for smokers, a lurking global danger … or both?



## MJ INC (5/10/15)

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/09/29/voices-e-cigs-bad-for-you-not-sure/72811856/

*Voices: Are e-cigs bad for you? I'm not sure*

Are e-cigarettes a savior for smokers, a lurking global danger … or both?

You might think I’d know. After all, I’m director of the Institute for Global Tobacco Control at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. I’ve been involved in tobacco policy research for more than two decades, studying everything from what helps people quit smoking to how tobacco policy is made to how tobacco is packaged. I was recently a voting member on the Food and Drug Administration's Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee.

Yet I can’t — with any degree of certainty — say e-cigarettes are good or bad.

I have esteemed colleagues in the world of public health who will tell you, citing research, that these devices are dangerous. Equally accomplished colleagues will tell you that hundreds of thousands of lives, if not millions, could be saved if tobacco smokers would switch to vaping while turning their backs on cigarettes.

This degree of uncertainty isn’t what makes science weak. It’s what makes science strong. You see, science doesn’t happen with the flip of a switch, but rather arrives incrementally, as if by dimmer. It’s only completely illuminating when we’ve fully turned the knob. And truth be told, we’re never done turning the knob.

I understand that this doesn’t provide sharp guidance or relief in the real world, even as the FDA actively considers whether, or how, to regulate this product. Both young people and adults are using e-cigarettes, which have become a booming business in just a few years. The impact of these devices — whether good or bad — swells with each passing minute.

Though new research on e-cigarettes is now arriving with regularity, much of it is contradictory or provides only tiny pieces of an enormous public health puzzle. For instance, an exhaustive expert review of available data recently completed in the United Kingdom concluded that e-cigarettes are much less harmful than traditional tobacco cigarettes.

Yet in the United States, the FDA has voiced concern that e-cigarettes can hook young people on nicotine and might include ingredients “known to be toxic to humans.” Carcinogens and other toxic chemicals have been found in nicotine liquids and in e-cigarette aerosols. Nicotine liquids include flavors that are alluring to youth — such as banana split, grape, and bubble gum — and the advertising for these products is slick, very much like tobacco ads. Finally, production of e-cigarettes is essentially the Wild West of manufacturing.

Those of us in the research community understand that neither policymakers nor the general public have the luxury of waiting until the verdict is in. For all of these reasons, immediate regulation makes sense from a public health perspective.

The FDA could start by curbing e-cigarette advertising and promotion directed toward young people. Child-resistant caps could help prevent accidental poisoning of children, which has spiked as these devices proliferate. Standards for manufacturing would give us a clearer sense of what people are putting into their bodies.

And the bans on smoking tobacco cigarettes in certain places should be extended to e-cigarettes. Last month, the National Park Service banned e-cigarette use anywhere that traditional cigarettes are prohibited to protect "the health and safety of our visitors and employees,” as service Director Jonathan Jarvis explained. Moves like this will help ensure that Americans don’t embrace smoking again, whether it’s vaping or firing up a tobacco product.

How should the general public view this product? What I can say is this: If you’re a cigarette smoker, all available research shows that e-cigarettes are a safer alternative. If you don't smoke e-cigarettes or tobacco products, don’t start. Although e-cigarettes might ultimately prove to be the lesser of two evils, additional research could uncover dangers unknown today.

My ambiguity may not be satisfying in today’s in-the-minute, right-or-wrong, with-us-or-against-us world. But as long as science is guiding my research, my exploration and ultimately my decisions, I can live with that.

_Cohen is director of the Institute for Global Tobacco Control and a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health_

Not a bad article. There are still so many unknowns about vaping but what most reasonable people will agree with is it's a better alternative to smoking which is great.

Reactions: Thanks 1 | Informative 1


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## Andre (5/10/15)

Draadsitter!

Reactions: Like 3


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## Pixstar (5/10/15)

Thanks for sharing the article. My question is how those people who have been vaping for a couple of years feel right now as opposed to when they were smoking? There was that thread a on here recently about one the forum members posted test results of his lungs and how they had improved.


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## stompi3 (6/10/15)

i always get suspicious of this stuff. i mean how can we put people on the moon, develop nuclear reactors and supposedly blame everything for giving you cancer, but when they people say its bad but there is no proof they are just stalling time until something does happen so that they can point a fingure at something and say thats wh you should not vape. and on the other side they dont want to commit and say yes its safe, because then Tobacco companys would suffer and if something in vaping is actually bad they dont want to be sued for saying it was safe in the first place. but in the long run we will all benifit, we will make more clouds and then bring more rain so our planet can be healed...


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## argief (6/10/15)

Whilst on the topic, there are 2 burning questions I would like opinions on:

1. Way back when I started smoking, I read that nicotine paralyses hair in your lunges that prevents your lunges from coughing up the tar etc. If vaping still contains nicotine, how will these hair restore to their orginal state? 

2. How will esig smooth the transition for new tobacco smokers? I really think this opinion comes from noon smoking researchers. I would certainly not trade flavour for burnt taste in your month? I would not trade my (rejuvinating) sense of smell? I would not go back to the stink? I honestly can not see how one who had never smoked take up analogues? 

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## Andre (6/10/15)

argief said:


> Whilst on the topic, there are 2 burning questions I would like opinions on:
> 
> 1. Way back when I started smoking, I read that nicotine paralyses hair in your lunges that prevents your lunges from coughing up the tar etc. If vaping still contains nicotine, how will these hair restore to their orginal state?
> 
> ...



Nicotine gets the blame for many things, but research has shown that it is actually in the same class as caffeine. I think it is actually the tar and other stuff in cigarettes that impairs the lungs, not the nicotine. 
I agree.

Reactions: Agree 2


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## kimbo (6/10/15)

argief said:


> 1. Way back when I started smoking, I read that nicotine paralyses hair in your lunges that prevents your lunges from coughing up the tar etc. If vaping still contains nicotine, how will these hair restore to their orginal state?


They are called Cilia

http://www.livestrong.com/article/214860-smoking-the-cilia/


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