You can email her at:
barb.mackinnon@nb.lung.ca
Here's what I sent her...
Dear Ms. MacKinnon,
I read your comments on the CBC website today with great alarm. How is it possible that in 2014 the CEO of the Lung Association could be “cautioning smokers against switching to e-cigarettes”?
Surely you can’t truly believe that smoking tobacco is safer than using e-cigarettes. If a tobacco company made the same claim, they’d be in court tomorrow.
"It is unknown what health effects these products have, or even if they do help people quit smoking, although I have heard anecdotally that some people have cut down their smoking by using these," she said.
The health effects have been studied. People are using them to quit. There have been clinical trials reported in peer-reviewed journals. Even a casual search of the internet will lead you to dozens of studies. Long term data are not available of course, but the findings to date are entirely promising.
"And I think this is the basis for the Health Canada warnings, especially those e-cigarettes that contain nicotine because the dosage varies in each of these e-cigarettes. You can have low-dose or high-dose."
If you mean that the user can decide what strength of nicotine to use, you’re right. And that’s a good thing. If you mean that the strength stated on the label may be incorrect, you’re right again. And vapers want that corrected.
But if you’re talking about the minor variations that have been reported in the literature, that’s not really a concern. We don’t demand that every cup of Tim Horton’s coffee contain an exact dose of caffeine. If your coffee is too strong, you don’t drink all of it. If it’s too weak, you drink a second cup. With nicotine, the user self-titrates—they stop puffing when they are satisfied.
If you’re trying to frighten people into thinking they could be poisoned by an e-cigarette, you are being irresponsible.
"Some of the chemicals in them are actually carcinogens." So do nicotine inhalers, gums, and patches. The key is the dose. It’s vanishingly small in e-cigs and NRT compared to tobacco cigarettes.
“She hopes research will be done. Meanwhile, she is calling on the provincial government to add e-cigarettes to the ban on smoking in public places.”
If, as the science suggests, e-cigarettes pose no danger to the user or to bystanders, why banish those trying to escape tobacco back to the smoking pit?
We know that e-cigarettes are orders of magnitude safer than smoking. I find it deeply disturbing that the New Brunswick Lung Association is using its authority to discourage smokers from switching to a better alternative.
-Chris
