Illogical Ecig Approaches
Evidence-based advice is being ignored or twisted to suit.
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by Dave Cross
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Some in America leapt upon work by researchers at Glasgow’s Public Health Sciences Unit. “A new study,” writes Healthcanal.com, “investigated the views of under-18s to e-cigarettes for the first time and found they support strict regulation.” Pretty cut and dry.
The trouble is that Shona Hilton and Heide Weishaar’s “‘Maybe they should regulate them quite strictly until they know the true dangers’: A focus group study exploring UK adolescents’ views on e-cigarette regulation” only covers the thoughts of 83 teenagers. Also, Hilton and Weishaar aren’t scientists specializing in this field, they’re public health people.
The study purports to have given these teens “existing evidence and competing interests in regulatory debates” to consider – but then, what is the point of this? The teens are even less qualified to comment on the evidence than Hilton and Weishaar. It is wholly unsurprising that they would be won over by the fear-driven nonsense spewing from the pharma-sponsored experts in California.
As a result, Healthcanal proudly claim: “young people overwhelmingly support strong e-cigarette regulation. This includes restrictions on sales to minors, marketing and the use of e-cigarettes in public places.” But this means nothing and adds little worth to the canon of knowledge surrounding electronic cigarettes – holding onto the ridiculous and baseless ‘precautionary approach’ concept spouted by Martin McKee and Mark Drakeford.
It is things like this that drive Tim Worstall of the Adam Smith Institute to ponder “Why are people so illogical about vaping?” In it, he puts over the simple fact that “the basic point is really easy enough for anyone to understand: human beings rather like the effects of nicotine and vaping is about 5% as dangerous or less as a manner of ingesting nicotine as the other popular method, smoking tobacco. Being able to abolish 95% of the damage done to health by a product seems like a pretty good idea.”
He highlights that this precautionary approach advocated by so-called expert public health experts has a disastrous effect on smoking rates in youth – leading to a deleterious effect on health! A Yale study has demonstrated a rise in teen smoking in American states taking a tough (precautionary) regulatory line on vaping.
The trouble is, as vapers we are motivated to read up on the current findings and keep abreast of developments. Not even doctors can keep pace with advances in research findings, let alone children and public health lecturers. A survey of medical practitioners by Saint Louis University School of Medicine discovered that although 50% saw a role for vaping as part of a harm reduction strategy, 43% of respondents didn’t even know what the word “vaping” meant. Consequently, only 15% said that they would “advise e-cigarettes as nicotine-replacement therapy” and 66% worry about a perceived lack of evidence.
The study’s author, Venkatkiran Kanchustambham, said: “There is an apparent knowledge gap among physicians and an urgent need for evidence based guidelines to aid with advising smokers enquiring about e-cigarettes.” We are fortunate that we now have very clear evidence-based guidelines in the UK. It remains a shame that this isn’t being given enough heft (or referred to at all) by Glasgow researchers seeking to cement an idea that precaution outweighs evidence. At some point, those advocating a precautionary approach need to begin factoring in harm reduction to their thought processes and comprehending the impact of their actions on public health.
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.
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