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Excerpts from the article:
"There's evidence here that Tennessee smokers are using e-cigarettes as an aid to quit smoking," said investigator Ransom Wyse, MPH, an epidemiologist with the Tennessee Department of Health in Nashville.
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More than 16% of smokers in the study said they also smoked e-cigarettes, and 60% of all cigarette smokers reported they'd attempted to quit in the prior 12 months. Among e-cigarette users, however, the proportion of attempted efforts to stop smoking rose to more than 83% in the same time frame.
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He added that he hopes a "strong public health message" can be crafted that describes the risks of e-cigarette use and that the FDA will decide whether or not to back e-cigarettes as a useful stop-smoking aid.
"If the FDA truly believes this is a not-so-harmful alternative, it would be very effective if they could say you should use e-cigarettes as a cessation aid," he said.
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Being a lifelong resident of Tennessee, my hope is:
1. that Ransom Wyse, MPH doesn't get fired from his job with the TN Dept of Health for telling the truth.
2. that Mr. Wyse can sway the powers above and around him to stop cherry-picking outdated or poorly done studies to make some very poorly informed decisions. Like the kind of ridiculous "Public Health Advisory" (trashing e-cigs) the department came out with earlier this year (2017.)
https://tn.gov/assets/entities/health/attachments/Health_Advisory_-_Electronic_Cigarettes_1-17.pdf
One of the pet references (#2) in that ill conceived Tennessee advisory was to Kalkhoran and Glantz's widely criticized "meta analysis" which convolutedly concluded that using e-cigs makes people LESS likely to quit smoking. Hey, it fooled The Lancet, too...so... LOL!!
Yes, Ransom Wyse is headed on the right track. Let's hope he can influence others at the TN Dept. of Health to think more intelligently and scientifically about e-cigs than they were back in January.
"There's evidence here that Tennessee smokers are using e-cigarettes as an aid to quit smoking," said investigator Ransom Wyse, MPH, an epidemiologist with the Tennessee Department of Health in Nashville.
-----
More than 16% of smokers in the study said they also smoked e-cigarettes, and 60% of all cigarette smokers reported they'd attempted to quit in the prior 12 months. Among e-cigarette users, however, the proportion of attempted efforts to stop smoking rose to more than 83% in the same time frame.
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He added that he hopes a "strong public health message" can be crafted that describes the risks of e-cigarette use and that the FDA will decide whether or not to back e-cigarettes as a useful stop-smoking aid.
"If the FDA truly believes this is a not-so-harmful alternative, it would be very effective if they could say you should use e-cigarettes as a cessation aid," he said.
-----
Being a lifelong resident of Tennessee, my hope is:
1. that Ransom Wyse, MPH doesn't get fired from his job with the TN Dept of Health for telling the truth.
2. that Mr. Wyse can sway the powers above and around him to stop cherry-picking outdated or poorly done studies to make some very poorly informed decisions. Like the kind of ridiculous "Public Health Advisory" (trashing e-cigs) the department came out with earlier this year (2017.)
https://tn.gov/assets/entities/health/attachments/Health_Advisory_-_Electronic_Cigarettes_1-17.pdf
One of the pet references (#2) in that ill conceived Tennessee advisory was to Kalkhoran and Glantz's widely criticized "meta analysis" which convolutedly concluded that using e-cigs makes people LESS likely to quit smoking. Hey, it fooled The Lancet, too...so... LOL!!
Yes, Ransom Wyse is headed on the right track. Let's hope he can influence others at the TN Dept. of Health to think more intelligently and scientifically about e-cigs than they were back in January.
My post was getting a bit long, so I'll finish my thoughts here. 
As PJReid said about the article, Smokers Turn to e-Cigarettes in Attempt to Quit - "It isn't perfect, but they are on the right track."
Ransom Wyse's desire to see the FDA support e-cigs as a cessation aid is understandable, coming as it does from someone involved in the public health field. I'd go a lot farther (and down a different track altogether) and say that the FDA should just GET THE ____ OUT OF THE WAY. Rescind the "deeming" rule. Let e-cigs continue developing the way other consumer products develop. In other words, the way they were already going (and improving) before the FDA stuck its snoot in and decided to "deem" them to be "tobacco products."
I had no intention of ever quitting smoking. I didn't start using e-cigs "to quit" smoking. But that's what happened anyway... to me. I was just curious what they were like. Very soon I found that I prefer the taste and other benefits of vaping more than I enjoyed smoking regular cigarettes. I became an accidental quitter.
If others switch to vaping specifically in an attempt to stop smoking, that's their choice. That's fine with me.
As is the choice to smoke...that's fine with me, too. I, personally, will always keep vaping instead of smoking simply because I get more pleasure from vaping. And, I'll always keep using nicotine because nicotine is beneficial to my health.
As PJReid said about the article, Smokers Turn to e-Cigarettes in Attempt to Quit - "It isn't perfect, but they are on the right track."
Ransom Wyse's desire to see the FDA support e-cigs as a cessation aid is understandable, coming as it does from someone involved in the public health field. I'd go a lot farther (and down a different track altogether) and say that the FDA should just GET THE ____ OUT OF THE WAY. Rescind the "deeming" rule. Let e-cigs continue developing the way other consumer products develop. In other words, the way they were already going (and improving) before the FDA stuck its snoot in and decided to "deem" them to be "tobacco products."
I had no intention of ever quitting smoking. I didn't start using e-cigs "to quit" smoking. But that's what happened anyway... to me. I was just curious what they were like. Very soon I found that I prefer the taste and other benefits of vaping more than I enjoyed smoking regular cigarettes. I became an accidental quitter.
If others switch to vaping specifically in an attempt to stop smoking, that's their choice. That's fine with me.
As is the choice to smoke...that's fine with me, too. I, personally, will always keep vaping instead of smoking simply because I get more pleasure from vaping. And, I'll always keep using nicotine because nicotine is beneficial to my health.
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