While the ban on e-liquid flavors is spreading, politicians are also making moves to assert that vaping and smoking are both harmful to health. They are also trying to deceive people by saying that vaping is a gateway to smoking, especially for children and adolescents. This ridiculous lie has been rebutted by the CDC itself in its annual report. The report “Tobacco Use Among Middle and High School Students, US 2011 - 2017”(1) also shows that the rate of underage vaping is decreasing instead of increasing.
Politicians and anti-tobacco activist groups regularly and deliberately spread misinformation about the benefits of e-cigarettes to the public, saying they are more harmful than cigarettes.
In 2015, PHE UK published a study that found e-cigarettes to be 95% safer than smoking cigarettes(2). Now, a new study conducted by US scientists from the Cancer Research Center in Buffalo, New York, has shown that vape smoke does not contain the same carcinogens as cigarette smoke.
Overview of vape research
Led by Dr. Maciej Goniewicz, the researchers began the study with twenty volunteers who were regular smokers. Participants were asked to switch to vaping for up to 14 days. Those who used both were excluded. By the end, only 45% of the group completed the switch. That may sound low, but it’s much higher than Big Pharma’s other NRTs.
During the study, Dr. Goniewicz and his team collected biomarkers from participants’ blood and urine and measured levels of 17 carcinogens commonly found in cigarette smoke. They also monitored 13 specific tobacco-related carcinogens, eight volatile organic compounds, four odorous hydrocarbons, and seven metabolites. They found that all of these levels dropped significantly in those who successfully switched to vaping within the first week.
In short, the Roswell team found that smokers who switched to vaping without using it reduced their exposure to most of the carcinogens found in cigarettes by 57% in the first seven days. After two weeks, that number increased to 64% or more. The study, titled “Effects of Nicotine and Other Tobacco Contaminants on Switchers to Electronic Cigarettes,” was published online by Oxford Academic (3).
CDC report link: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/67/wr/mm6722a3.htm?s_cid=mm6722a3_w
-
Original PHE research: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/e-cigarettes-around-95-less-harmful-than-tobacco-estimates-landmark-review
Roswell team research: https://academic.oup.com/ntr/article-abstract/19/2/160/2631650
