(bold me)
Can you imagine if they had done the RIGHT thing and actually said what an amazing benefit for public health vaping is...how many more people would quit smoking cigarettes !!
Now we have people that believe it's worse than smoking cigarettes...this is tragic !!!!
The thing is, until the last year or so, there wasn't a lot of decent published work to establish either safety or efficacy for smoking cessation. There is still far from a ton out there, although we are seeing more coming to light. Even the RCP report in the UK did not come out until almost exactly one year ago.
We already see more and more health professionals viewing vaping in a more positive light for their patients who smoke. We have multiple pieces of legislation introduced to lessen the impact of strict regulation ( Cole Bishop, and now the Hunter legislation). We have a new FDA Commissioner who recognizes the benefits of harm reduction in evaluating products.
Is everything rainbows and unicorns? No. But things are looking less bleak than when the deeming regulations were first released, we're still buying new vape gear, and we've all had additional time to prepare in case the vapocalypse cannot be avoided. That new education and outreach to the nonsmoking public, and even many smokers out there, has to be done. But lets face it, until these data came along, there wasn't a ton of info out there about the utility and safety of vaping for either the scientific or lay communities to rely on. And just because Dr. F was out in front, you need more than one researcher if credible, reproducible data is to be obtained.
There are now NIH grants, Federal money, going to support vaping research. There are major cancer centers (such as Moffitt) conducting multiyear studies on vaping patterns. That, IMHO, is what's required to make vaping a viable solution to reduce the use of combustible tobacco, and even to maintain the "hobby" aspect of it. It is also my opinion that the more positive results published, the better I feel about vaping, and the easier it is to feel advising smokers of vaping as an alternative than just being able to offer "Hey, this stuff is really cool. Hopefully it won't kill us in some other way".