Great points in this article by Chelsea Boyd over at R Street:
"For any problem, eventually a tipping point is reached where the preponderance of the evidence points to a conclusion."
“The questions then become, what evidence is sufficient to convince health organizations of e-cigarettes’ harm reduction potential, how does science produce evidence that confirms or rejects this potential, and how long are we willing to operate under the status quo while waiting for conclusive evidence?”
“About 480,000 Americans die each year from smoking-related illnesses. And although the majority of people who smoke want to quit, fewer than one in 10 succeed each year. Precaution with new tobacco products is wise; however, existing cessation methods are failing most people trying to quit.”
“We are facing the inevitable crossroads of perfect versus good enough—if appropriately regulated e-cigarettes can help some people now, isn’t that better than helping nobody while waiting indefinitely for research that proves e-cigarettes present little to no health risks, presuming that is the desired finding?”
“The absolute risk of combustible cigarettes, and thus their harm to public health, is so high that exercising extreme caution with e-cigarettes may be inadvertently harming people who smoke. To benefit public health, perhaps it is time for organizations to begin specifying what evidence they need to exonerate e-cigarettes. It would be a sad day for science if the answer is that no evidence is convincing enough.”
E-cigarettes have a PR problem. From concern about young people illegally obtaining and using them to being wrongly implicated in the outbreak of EVALI (i.e., e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injuries), e-cigarettes get a lot of bad press. This has translated to misperceptions...
www.rstreet.org
