# 20 E-Cigarette Quotes From Real Experts



## Alex (13/5/15)

*20 E-Cigarette Quotes From Real Experts*





08 May
Categories: media, tobacco harm reduction
by: James Dunworth




If you know anything about e-cigarettes, you probably find it absolutely astounding how much rubbish is written about them by people who DON’T know anything about them.

A typical example is a recent Metro article by Rob Waugh, who screamed aloud:

Passive smoking warning as e-cigarettes are found to harm bystanders

Read the article, though, and there’s nothing of the sort – all it said was that e-cig vapour contains nicotine (which as regular readers will know, is not particularly harmful, and is found at levels 10 times lower in passive exposure to e-cigs than from tobacco cigarettes).

Dr. Farsalinos has since asked the authors of the study from which this article cited, to retract their false statements on nicotine from their report.

Given both the gormless idiots writing about e-cigs and the huge money being poured into their destruction by competing interests, it’s astonishing that e-cigs have lasted as long as they have.

What has been an absolute life saver for the industry is the real scientists and experts who have spoken out in their defence, often putting their careers at risk in the process (a scientist I spoke to at last years E-Cigarette Summit told me that scientists who support e-cigs face a risk of having their future research budgets cut!). Not only do these scientists carry out research, you’ll also see them all over the net, taking time out of research to put the facts straight.

So next time you see a thoughtless, scaremongering, life-endangering article, consider using some of the quotes our from experts and heroes!




*1. Professor Peter Hajek*
Prof. Hajek is a Professor at the Queen Mary University of London. He is also a clinical psychologist and a director of the Wolfson Institute of Preventative Medicine Tobacco Research Unit. Peter is known for his research into smoking cessation as well as into electronic cigarettes.


There are currently two products competing for smokers’ custom. One, the conventional cigarette, endangers users and bystanders and recruits new customers from among non-smoking children who try it. The other, e-cigarette, is orders of magnitude safer, poses no risk to bystanders, and generates negligible rates of regular use among non-smoking children who try it.Professor Peter Hajek

Since e-cigarettes are a recreational consumer product that are competing with much more dangerous cigarettes, which are not regulated as medicines, mandatory medicinal regulation is not required for public safety and can harm public health by restricting the ability of e-cigarettes to compete with cigarettes in the marketplace.

Excessive regulation of e-cigarettes would protect the market monopoly of cigarettes and have the potential consequences of disease in and death of millions of smokers who were prevented from moving on to the next generation of e-cigarettes.Professor Peter Hajek




*2. Professor Linda Bauld*
Prof. Bauld is a Professor of Public Health and Dean of Research at the University of Stirling. She is also Deputy Director of the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies, playing a significant role in studies conducted on smoking cessation and tobacco control.


E-cigarettes are currently unlicensed, but both the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence and the Medicines Healthcare Regulatory Association acknowledge that their use is safer than continued smoking. This is not simply an opinion, it is an evidence-based statement, and one that is supported by tobacco control organisations in the UK. To imply otherwise is incorrect. This does not mean e-cigarettes are risk free, but few things are. What it does mean is that their use is safer than continued smoking.Professor Linda Bauld




*3. Professor Ann McNeill*
A Professor of Tobacco Addiction in the National Addiction Centre, and Deputy Director of the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies. Her research focuses on prevention, cessation, harm reduction and local, national and international policy.


E-cigarettes are new and we certainly don’t yet have all the answers as to their long-term health impact, but what we do know is that they are much safer than cigarettes, which kill over 6 million people a year worldwide.Professor Ann McNeill




*4. Professor Robert West*
Professor of Health Psychology and Director of Tobacco Studies. He has previously been Advisor to the Department of Health Tobacco Policy Team and the English NHS Stop-Smoking Services.


We have such a massive opportunity here. It would be a shame to let it slip away by being overly cautious. E-cigarettes are about as safe as you can get. We know about the health risks of nicotine from studies in Sweden into the use of “Snus”, a smokeless tobacco. Nicotine is not what kills you when you smoke tobacco. E-cigarettes are probably about as safe as drinking coffee. All they contain is water vapour, nicotine and propylene glycol [which is used to help vaporise the liquid nicotine].”Professor Robert West




*5. Professor Lynn Kozlowski*
Prof. Kozlowski was a Senior Scientist for 10 years at the Addiction Research Foundation in Toronto. From 2008 to 2014 he was Dean of the School of Public Health and Health Professions.


Smokers should try e-cigs to completely replace cigarettes. Given the variety of e-cigs, one should ask around and explore Web forums and videos for advice on brands. The goal is to stop smoking forever and use e-cigs as long as needed.

E-cigs are much safer than cigarettes. We don’t need clinical trials to know that a large rock falling on a person is much more dangerous than a small rock falling on someone. Compared to cigarettes, reduced risks of e-cigs are obvious. The number and level of toxins are much lower in e-cigs. It is easy to be less dangerous than fire-causing, carcinogenic, smoke-generating cigarettes.Professor Lynn Kozlowski




*6. Professor John Britton*
Prof. Britton is Professor of Epidemiology at the university of Nottingham. Specialising in smoking, nicotine addiction, health effects, promoting cessation and preventing uptake of smoking.


If all the smokers in Britain stopped smoking cigarettes and started smoking e-cigarettes we would save 5 million deaths in people who are alive today. It’s a massive potential public health prize.Professor John Britton




*7. Dr Michael Siegel*
Dr Michael Siegel’s primary research interest is the area of tobacco control, focussing on second hand smoke health effects, exposure and policies, cigarette advertising and their effects on youths.


Electronic cigarettes are a potential lifeboat. No, they have not been tested and approved by the FDA. But if you were in a sinking ship, would you remain in the ship because the lifeboats had not been FDA-tested and approved?Dr Michael Siegal

See our interview with Dr. Siegel here!




*8. Dr Murray Laugesen, Health New Zealand*
Dr Murray Laugesen is a respected researcher at Health New Zealand, and is one of the few researchers to have carries out an in depth analysis of the contents of the electronic cigarette.


They are not going to die from an e-cigarette – but they could die tomorrow from a heart attack due to their smoking” The carcinogens that we have found are in very, very small quantities, just above the level of detection.”

*Source*: Health New Zealand

See our interview with Dr. Laugesen here!




*9. Dr Riccardo Polosa*
Professor Riccardo Polosa is Director of the institute for internal and emergency medicine of the University of Catania in Italy, he is also in charge of the University’s tobacco research.


…vapers should be more concerned of the air they breathe in polluted cities rather than their vaping!Dr Riccardo Polosa




*10. Dr Konstantinos Farsalinos*
Dr Konstantinos Farsalinos has been performing research on electronic cigarettes since 2011. He was the first person to study the immediate effects of electronic cigarettes on cardiac function.


The most important toxins in cigarette smoke are missing – those that remain are orders of magnitude lower.Dr Konstantinos Farsalinos




*11. Dr Jean-François Etter*
Jean Francois Etter is the Professor of Public Health for the University of Geneva.He is internationally recognised as an authority on electronic cigarettes.


Even if there are long-term vapers, this is not a problem, as long as they quit smoking. The problem is combusted tobacco, not nicotine. At the dosage used by vapers or users of nicotine gums or patches, nicotine is not toxic. Long term vaping is not a public health problem; not any more than long term use of nicotine gums.Dr Jean-François Etter




*12. Dr Joel Nitzkin*
Dr Joel Nitzkin is Chair of the Tobacco Control Task Force for the Ameircan association of Public Health Physicians.


So if we can figure that the nicotine in the e-cigarettes is basically a generic version of the same nicotine that is in prescription products, we have every reason to believe that the hazard posed by e-cigarettes would be much lower than one percent, probably lower than one tenth of one percent of the hazard posed by regular cigarettes.

If we get all tobacco smokers to switch from regular cigarettes to electronic cigarettes, we would eventually reduce the US death toll from more than 400,000 a year to less than 4,000, maybe as low as 400.Dr Joel Nitzkin




*13. Prof. Carl Phillips*
Prof. Carl Phillips is currently an epidemiology and economics consultant, and Chief Scientific Officer of CASSA. He has spent the majority of his career as a professor of public health, with most of his research focusing on tobacco harm reduction.

Three months of additional smoking poses a greater risk to someone’s health, on average, than a lifetime of using a low-risk alternative.”Dr Carl Phillips




*14. Prof Brad Rodu*
Brad Rodu is a Professor Of Medicine at the University of Louiseville, Kentucky. He has a background in dentistry and oral pathology and his research focusses on tobacco harm reduction which he promotes on his blog, Rodu’s Tobacco Truth Blog


E-cigs might be the most promising product for tobacco harm reduction to date, because, besides delivering nicotine vapour without the combustion products that are responsible for nearly all of smoking’s damaging effect, they also replace some of the rituals associated with smoking behaviour.”Professor Brad Rodu




*15. Clive Bates*
Clive Bates is the author at the Counterfactual Blog, and former director of Action On Smoking and Health. He is an experienced campaigner in the field of tobacco harm reduction.


E-cigarettes are at least 99% safer than cigarettes. People smoke mostly for the nicotine, which is a widely used recreational drug usually taken by smoking tobacco. But it is not nicotine that does the damage in smoking, it is particles of burnt tobacco (tar) and hot gases that cause the cancer, emphysema and heart disease. E-cigarettes have none of these hazardous emissions.Clive Bates




*16. Professor David Sweanor*
Professor David Sweanor was a Professor for the Faculty of Law in the University of Otawa. He is also a special lecturer for the Division of Epidemiology and Public Health.


Everything has risks, so simply pointing out that something is ‘not safe’ shows a person to be either ignorant or disingenuous. The key issue in looking at safety is that it is a relative concept; we need to look at safety of any activity compared to some alternative. Rather than the unattainable standard of ‘safe’ we should be thinking in terms of ‘safer’. Despite the risks associated with soccer, I would, for instance, prefer my children play soccer rather than play with live hand grenades.Professor David Sweanor




*17. Dr Gilbert Ross, American Council of Science and Health*
Gilbert Ross is the Executive Director and Medical Director on the American council on Science and Health (ACSH), a consumer education public health organisation.


Prohibiting the safest form of nicotine delivery will increase, not stem, cigarette-related deaths. Truly informing smokers about reduced-risk nicotine products, such as e-cigarettes and smokeless tobacco, and increasing access to these products is a good way to save millions of lives.Dr Gilbert Ross




*18. Dr Adrian Payne*
Dr Adrian Payne is the Managing Director of Tobacco Horizons, a tobacco harm reduction consultation agency. He has worked with both tobacco and pharmaceutical companies, often in the field of tobacco harm reduction.


The end result of tobacco combustion and nicotine vaporisation is basically the same, i.e. generation of a nicotine-containing aerosol that can then be inhaled by the user. Both processes involve heat, but they are otherwise very different in that the aerosol generated by the E-cigarette does not contain within it the thousands of other chemicals, many of which are thought to be extremely harmful, that result from the combustion of tobacco.Dr Adrian Payne




*19. Prof Peter Killeen*
Professor Peter Killeen is the Emeritus Professor of Pshychology at Arizona Sate University and specialises in behavioural neuroscience.


If you could switch from cigarettes to vaping, there’s no evidence in the world right now that say’s this wouldn’t be better for your health, there’s an awful lot of evidence that suggests it would be better for your health.

The good that can be done from using e-cigarettes as opposed to real cigarettes is huge.Professor Peter Killeen

Source

*20. Over 50 Independent Top Scientists & Medical Experts*

Last year an independent group of over 50 scientists and medical experts wrote an open letter to Dr Margaret Chan, director of the WHO, urging the WHO and FCTC to resist controlling and suppressing e-cigarettes and other alternatives to smoking as tobacco products and instead encourage regulation that supports the potential harm reduction value of these products.

…these products could be among the most significant health innovations of the 21st Century – perhaps saving hundreds of millions of lives.50 Independent Scientists

Am I missing anyone? Let me know in the comments.

Image Credits

Lynn Kozlowski http://sphhp.buffalo.edu/community-...ty-and-staff/faculty-directory/lk22.html.html

Laugesen http://cigarette-electronique-reche...-sante/attachment/murray_laugesen_4fe6fc05e9/

John Britton http://www.news-medical.net/news/20...an-interview-with-Professor-John-Britton.aspx

Reactions: Like 3 | Winner 8 | Informative 1


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## Silver (13/5/15)

Awesome post @Alex
Thanks for sharing with us

Reactions: Like 1


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## BumbleBee (13/5/15)

Alex said:


> *20 E-Cigarette Quotes From Real Experts*
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Brilliant! Super find @Alex, I especially liked this bit:

Everything has risks, so simply pointing out that something is ‘not safe’ shows a person to be either ignorant or disingenuous. The key issue in looking at safety is that it is a relative concept; we need to look at safety of any activity compared to some alternative. Rather than the unattainable standard of ‘safe’ we should be thinking in terms of ‘safer’. Despite the risks associated with soccer, I would, for instance, prefer my children play soccer rather than play with live hand grenades.Professor David Sweanor

Reactions: Like 2 | Agree 1


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## DoubleD (13/5/15)

Great post, thank you @Alex

Reactions: Like 1


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## Andre (13/5/15)

Thanks @Alex. Emailed to a few sceptics.

Reactions: Like 2


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## Willyza (14/5/15)

Not being rude or anything, BUT do we really care ?


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## Alex (14/5/15)

Willyza said:


> Not being rude or anything, BUT do we really care ?



Many people that are considering moving away from cigarettes to vaping, may not be sure that's it's actually safer than smoking. Because according to the mainstream media lies, they contain hundreds of unknown "chemicals" that are even more harmful than smoking.

Reactions: Agree 2


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