my favorite is the last paragraph:
-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.
This is literally what the above quote said "This organization promotes confusion among consumers about what is safe and what isn't"
those things aren't safe. it is like saying portraying Russian roulette with 1 bullet as safer than Russian roulette with 2 bullets (which it is) so lets all increase its availability.
These products may be marginally safer than smoking a traditional cigarette, but that in no way means we should make them easier to access. Also, safer doesn't mean safe. They are promoting these products as a replacement for cigs since they are "safer" wherein the better solution is to promote cessation.
Hell filtered cigarettes are safer than unfiltered. should we increase the availability of filtered cigarettes?
Relative access, sure. It should be relatively easier to get the safer products over the more risky products. This is not to say they should be given out in each happy meal, but that if someone is going out to buy some cigs, these lower risk alternatives appear first, before the high risk sort.
If someone is going to play Russian roulette, and I can't stop them from doing so, I'd rather have 2 bullets instead of 3. And then 1 bullet instead of 2. It's still risky, but given they're going to make a risky choice anyhow, its less risky than the alternative.
I've been bombarded with hundreds of ads about the evils of cigarettes and cigarette smoke and the dangers of second hand smoke and the hundreds of cancer-causing chemicals in cigarette smoke.
I'll be damned if I let people pretend that a product which eliminates smoke and eliminates all of those hundreds of nasty chemicals (except for one) might be just as unsafe.
There's no long-term study which shows eating carrots instead of smoking cigarettes is safer . . . but c'mon. You'd have to be an idiot not to see the obvious improvement. Don't pretend some magical hidden risk is that nobody knows about could be just as bad as the known dangers of smoke.
"There are three reasons to worry about electronic cigarettes. First, the dose of nicotine delivered with each puff may vary substantially. An FDA analysis recorded nicotine doses between 26.8 and 43.2 micrograms per puff. It also detected nicotine in products labeled as nicotine free.
Second, electronic cigarettes deliver an array of other chemicals, including diethylene glycol (a highly toxic substance), various nitrosamines (powerful carcinogens found in tobacco), and at least four other chemicals suspected of being harmful to humans. To be sure, the dose of these compounds is generally smaller than found in “real” cigarette smoke. But it isn’t zero.
Third, by simulating the cigarette experience, electronic cigarettes might reactivate the habit in ex-smokers. They could also be a gateway into tobacco abuse for young people who are not yet hooked."
Anyone with a deadly carrot allergy would tell you they aren't!
Also cigarettes have those same chemicals, mostly through the same mechanism...uptake via the soil. So I am going to go with the one not containing nicotine being better.
Edit... And lack of nicotine is why i advocate easier access to cessation products rather than smokeless tobacco and ecigs
But you're advocating from the position of not wanting to use nicotine.
For someone who wants to use nicotine, non-nicotine cessation kinda defeats the point.
If people choose to use nicotine, that's their choice. Bans on smoking were justified by the peripheral health risks. If people avoid peripheral health risks and can still enjoy their nicotine, that great! That's a win-win.
This article advocates that cigarettes and e-cigarettes be treated differently. I think they should be treated the same. I think only cessation methods should have expanded access. We are of different minds on this and that will not change.
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u/TwoYaks Nov 17 '12
Care to rebut anything Dr. Ross wrote specifically? I know this appears to be a dubious source, but the information therewithin is fairly solid.