Tuesdays News at a glance

CASAA launches tobacco harm reduction success stories collection. Yet Another Public Health Practitioner Publicly Claims that Smoking is No More Hazardous than Vaping. Is Vaping Worse Than Smoking? New study by Dr. Farsalinos: Dual users more worried about E-cigarette risks. American Thoracic Society Physicians Claim There is No Evidence Smoking is More Hazardous than Vaping. How e-cigarettes changed my life. Nicotine Science and Policy – Daily Digest

CASAA launches tobacco harm reduction success stories collection

Are you fed up with the claim that “there is no evidence” that e-cigarettes, snus, or other low-risk tobacco/nicotine products help people quit smoking? We are, too. It is obviously wrong, since every individual story of how e-cigarettes helped someone quit smoking (especially after many failed attempts using other methods) is such evidence! When CASAA fights against restrictions on e-cigarettes at the state and local level, we almost always win. The main reason for that is because CASAA members turn out and tell the lawmakers about how e-cigarettes were the reason they quit smoking. Most people understand evidence like that!

Yet Another Public Health Practitioner Publicly Claims that Smoking is No More Hazardous than Vaping

Siegel debunks yet another PH Professor’s woolly thinking-

In a letter to the editor published in the New York Times, Joshua Muscat – a professor of public health sciences at the Penn State College of Medicine – writes:

“The biggest concern about e-cigarettes is their potential to increase nicotine addiction among young smokers, especially children, who would not normally try tobacco. It is not likely that e-cigarettes are safer, because their use may lead to increased and not decreased tobacco smoking in young people.”

Is Vaping Worse Than Smoking?

Commonsense in abundance for once!

But this conclusion is highly misleading. People don’t vape at a high voltage because it causes a horrible taste — “a burning taste that occurs from overheating the liquid,” wrote Konstantinos Farsalinos, a Greek scientist and vaping expert, in an email to me. Farsalinos has done human studies of vaping and discovered that above a certain voltage — lower than the high voltage test on the Portland State study — people simply couldn’t inhale; the taste was unbearable….

New study by Dr. Farsalinos: Dual users more worried about E-cigarette risks

From Vaping Giraffe-

Although expected, this is a very important finding because it shows that misinformation and exaggeration about e-cigarette risks is discouraging smokers from making a complete switch. Considering that the survey was performed in dedicated users, I expect that this factor will be even more important for the general population. Moreover, I think that it is not only associated with dual use but also with failure to reduce smoking or with relapse to smoking….

American Thoracic Society Physicians Claim There is No Evidence Smoking is More Hazardous than Vaping

Michael Siegel and the rest of the story-

There is not sufficient evidence to conclude that e-cigarettes are a safer alternative to regular cigarettes or that e-cigarettes actually help smokers quit. … it is too early to suggest labeling saying ‘it is likely that e-cigarettes are much safer than smoking.’ That isn’t reassurance; it’s a marketing tactic.

How e-cigarettes changed my life

Guardian Jan 3rd

It all started quite early on. My first words, uttered with a not-so-cherubic look on my face and a strange baby puffing sound, were: “Light! Light!” It was as if I had come out of the birth canal sucking not on my thumb, but a mini-Marlboro. Much excitement and hand-flapping ensued whenever my grandfather fired up his pipe after Sunday lunch. Family legend has it that my parents wafted my dummy through clouds of smoke just to shut me up, such was my morbid nappy-stage fascination. Age was no barrier: everyone loved smoking in the 70s.

Nicotine Science and Policy – Daily Digest – Tue, 27 January 2015

New Yorkers who want to spend money on tobacco products might consider buying stocks instead of smokes….

Regardless of whether you’re a smoker, an ex-smoker, or someone who has never picked up a cigarette in your life, you’re probably well aware that smoking rates in the United States are on the decline….

California would ban the use of electronic cigarettes in public places and ramp up enforcement against selling them to minors under a bill introduced in the legislature on Monday….