This was a comment made by a representative of the American Lung Association in a recent post in Reuters and is the inspiration behind Dr. Michael Siegels recent article.
[blocktext align=”center”]When you’re going to e-cigarettes, you’re not quitting, you’re switching.[/blocktext]
As I am sitting behind my desk right now, attempting to write this piece, I want to impress upon you the fact that I am seething, not just from this asinine remark, but a great many things that have been piling up over the last week or so.
We are going to put a few things into perspective, right here, right now.
This comment is a slap in the face to several million Americans who proudly, and rightly, make the assertion on a daily basis that they are ex-smokers. For some reason the FDA, the ALA, and a group of other organizations refuse to accept the fact that vaping is 95% less harmful than smoking. I wrote a piece a couple of days ago that intimated that the FDA believes that research done outside of the United States is, for some reason, sub-par and not to be trusted. They believe that 32,000 of the world’s leading medical minds, otherwise known as the Royal College Of Physicians, are just plain wrong and Uncle Mitch (Zeller of the FDA) knows best.
According to the ALA, if you quit smoking in a way which they do not approve (ie, you are not putting money into the corporations that support their “great works” for public health), they do not believe that you have actually quit. They have even gone so far as to attempt to change the definition of “former smoker” as defined by the CDC in order to deny these vapers their rights to be deemed smoke-free.
Add to this the regulations put in place by the FDA that will basically push all of those ex-smokers back to the smoker rolls by proxy come August time, when they have to tell their doctors that they still use tobacco products (because they don’t ask you if you smoke anymore), it makes you wonder why they put down the cigarettes in the first place.
Earlier this week the internet was buzzing with the CDC’s latest report showing the greatest single year drop in the number of smokers, bringing the metric to its lowest in history. Of the number included in the study, one has to wonder, were ex-smokers due to vaping?
This time next year, will we be wondering why there has been a historic rise in the number of smokers in the United States or will it just be buried under the rug with the truth about vaping? Ignoring the facts does not change them, and each of these 3 letter organizations or government agencies will eventually be shown in a very telling light, hopefully, sooner rather than later.
We have products that are being promoted across the Atlantic as the greatest breakthrough in public health this century, demonized for the benefit of a greedy few as they hope to not only regulate, but own the majority of this industry.
Every vaper, smoker, and non-smoker needs to remember one simple thing: cigarettes contain several thousand chemicals and at least 60 known carcinogens, while vapor products do not. The ALA, the FDA et al need to focus on the benefits of moving people away from cigarettes and on to vapor products. Maybe if they used some of the energy and money they use to hurt this community to help promote it, they might actually be doing the things that they want people to believe they are doing.
Excellent post. I would also like to add that Vaping gives you the ability to step down in nicotine % over time- something you can’t do with smoking. If you buy Light cigarettes, you just end up sucking harder, and still get the same if not more NiC than regulars.
Oh, and switching nic delivery devices isn’t preventing us from solving the problem. It shouldn’t be demonized. Switching nic delivery devices is the solution. Nicotine was never the problem- the tar is. It would be like if someone got their caffeine from eating toxic waste laced with caffeine- and then one day switched to coffee. They aren’t continuing the problem by still consuming caffeine. They’ve solved their delivery system problem by nixing the toxic waste.