OK, I tried to mask my angst as much as possible.
My letter to my local TV station -- toned-down (hopefully enough), edited, added suggestions and links:
Final draft, already sent:
Mr. X,
Last Friday evening, I watched yet another negative news story about e-cigarettes on your 6pm news show.
Please do your viewers a valuable service -- by also airing some positive stories about e-cigarettes and the success people have had using them to quit smoking.
I quit easily after smoking 40+ years, as did my wife… and we know many others who have also quit – by using e-cigarettes as a substitute.
Our health and well-being have improved dramatically, with no negative side-effects.
I respectfully suggest that when airing articles pertaining to human health, your reporters could also do some diligent research. Instead of simply passing-on what turns out to be proven misinformation, gotten “off the wire” – they could use internet search engines; read internet forums related to e-cigarettes; or even interview real, local people who are using e-cigarettes to successfully quit smoking very harmful tobacco cigarettes.
Statistically, the success rate using e-cigarettes is much higher than nicotine patches, gum, or drugs. The failure rate of patches and gum, and the horror stories -- including suicides, and attempted suicides -- related to the use of Chantix, Wellbutrin, et al, are many and well-documented. The news article on your program quoted a study which said that 60% of people who tried to quit smoking using e-cigarettes failed. This is not a true representation and can be proven so by empirical evidence -- if one does the research.*
On April 27th, 2013, I got my first e-cigarette and have not bought a pack of tobacco cigarettes since that day. Yes, in the following 2-3 months I had moments of weakness and would “bum” a cigarette from smoker friends… but soon the craving for even the occasional cigarette subsided and eventually went away. A few months later, my wife decided to try e-cigs and still has the same unopened pack of tobacco cigarettes she had bought that day -- she has not smoked even one since January 2014. So the success rate in my house is 100%.
Are e-cigarettes 100% safe? Probably not. Breathing anything other than clean, pure air is not “good” for you, but anyone who lives in a city or near a busy highway is not breathing clean, pure air all the time either. I see e-cigarettes as “harm reduction” -- as opposed to inhaling the 69 known carcinogens, smoke particulates from burned tobacco and paper, and the thousands of chemicals in tobacco cigarettes.
In the past two years alone, e-cigarettes have evolved and improved dramatically. I have thoroughly researched both the hardware and the e-liquid used in e-cigarettes, mix my own e-liquid with FDA approved-for-human-ingestion ingredients which are also USP certified, and I know exactly what it is I’m inhaling… something I never could say when smoking chemically engineered tobacco.
As a bonus, I have reduced the nicotine content of my eliquid from 24mg/ml. when I started to 5mg/ml. currently. I plan to reduce it further, and even possibly quit using e-cigarettes altogether eventually. My wife has stated that is definitely her intention.
Disseminating positive, factual information regarding e-cigarettes could help many many other people do the same – with the first, main goal being to quit smoking cigarettes.
*Some links:
•
CASAA - The Consumer Advocates for Smoke-free Alternatives Association Consumer Advocates for Smoke-free Alternatives
• A list of lab reports on the CASAA website
•
American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) American Council on Science and Health
• An article on the acsh.org website directly refuting the news story from Friday April 17, 2015
• Link to a PDF detailing the (lack of) contaminants in e-cigarettes
• European Addiction Research paper
•
www.e-cigarette-forum.com The leading website for information, links, and resources for e-cigarette users (the forum will be upgrading their software soon and may be offline for a day or two)
If you or one of your reporters would like I can provide many more links and information. If needed, please contact me anytime via email or the cellphone number below – I will be more than glad to help in any way I can.
Thank you,
My name
City, State
cellphone #
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The links in ~some of~ the bullet points didn't copy/paste, but all he has to do is click and read -- or hopefully forward it to a reporter who will.
