Morning Ed: Vaping {2016.08.21.Su}

“High prevalence of cough/phlegm (43.1%) and shortness of breath (34.8%) was reported at baseline with substantial reduction in their frequency at subsequent follow-up visits. These symptoms virtually disappeared very quickly in both quitters and reducers. Smokers invited to switch to electronic cigarettes who completely abstained from smoking showed steady progressive improvements in their FEF25-75% Normalization of peripheral airways function was associated with improvement in respiratory symptoms, adding to the notion that abstaining from smoking can reverse tobacco harm in the lung.”

Whenever I find myself thinking “They can’t keep up this misinformation campaign forever,” I think of smokeless tobacco and remember that they can. Welp, if worse comes to worse maybe I’ll be able to just get my nicotine from China. That’s less bad than some alternatives, though the government itself has kind of determined that it doesn’t really matter anyway.

It’s gotten to the point that I become actually floored when an article explores the health implications of vaping in a relatively fair and two-sided manner.

At Cancer Research UK, Nikki Smith took the media to task for its misleading reportage on ecigarettes, and Prof Lynn T Kozlowski tells parents whether they should worry about their vaping teenagers.

Andrew Stuttaford argues that with regard to Snus, anti-tobacco advocates are putting purity and dogma before safety and science. What’s particularly frustrating about some of these prohibitions is that they prevent companies from advertising their product for what we want people to use it for: smoking cessation.

Michael Siegel points to an encouraging study on ecigarettes. So far the data has been surprising (to me) less encouraging than I had hoped, leaving me a bit dumbfounded. It worked for me and I want it to work for everyone. The public health community is doing what it can to make sure that it will help as few people as possible.

Halo, a producer of ecigarettes, has a pretty great piece on vaping etiquette. The vaping community needs more of this.

Julia Belluz looks at the evidence we do and do not have surrounding ecigarettes, and the different approaches between the US and UK.

With nicotine and even tobacco as with sex, preaching abstinence may not always be the best policy.

{Ed Note: Because my interest in these issues far outweigh most of the readership’s, links to articles on vaping can sit in the queue for a while. So some of these are… not new, even by ITW standards.}