To help smokers quit, make them vapers
Great little Op-ED piece from the Los Angeles Times. Thanks Leora for sending this my way.
e FDA is considering proposals to regulate e-cigarettes that would discourage their use. The Los Angeles City Council has banned them in public places, and the California Legislature may vote on an anti-“vaping” law this week.
Blanket laws discouraging the use of e-cigarettes are the wrong policy move. E-cigarettes have already shown themselves to be an appealing alternative to many smokers who are trying to quit. Because almost 500,000 Americans die annually from tobacco-related diseases, a lot is at stake.
Most smokers want to quit but typically try and fail, often repeatedly. Some successfully stop by using nicotine gum or a nicotine patch or taking drugs that make smoking unappealing. But for most smokers, these strategies have not worked.
E-cigarettes, although varied in style, all deliver nicotine to the user in a vapor, which can look like cigarette smoke. By vaping, e-cigarette users can get the level of nicotine hit that addicted smokers crave but without the dangers of burned tobacco. To be clear, nicotine is addictive, but it is not the ingredient in cigarettes that makes traditional smoking so lethal — it’s the burned tobacco that kills.
Though e-cigarettes are not harmless, existing evidence makes clear that they are staggeringly less dangerous than regular cigarettes and other burned tobacco products. The British government agency Public Health England reviewed existing studies and estimated that e-cigarettes are about 95% safer than burned tobacco products. Some users have then been able to wean themselves from nicotine altogether, as the level of nicotine in e-cigarettes can readily be controlled and therefore reduced.
By adopting three complementary policy ideas that would encourage rather than discourage e-cigarette use, government — especially the federal government — could nudge many more Americans to quit smoking and eventually save millions of lives.
Read the full article HERE at Latimes.com
http://ift.tt/1LoXzeP September 11, 2015 at 09:05PM GrimmGreen.com http://ift.tt/177rnJE http://ift.tt/1LoXBDH
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