Thanks, but it's not really wisdom - just a practical approach.
There are people who have a financial interest in opposing e-cigarettes, and it is impossible to influence them because a great deal of money is at stake, and maybe their jobs. In this category we could put the pharma industry, some of the
tobacco industry, and state / federal tax agencies. The pharma industry will be the biggest losers in the end because they depend on smokers for two income streams: quit-smoking drugs, and all the treatment drugs for ill smokers. The first, NRTs and suchlike, are a billion dollar a year market. The second - chemotherapy, COPD, and cardiovascular drugs for example - are at least ten times that size. This income will take a 50% hit or more eventually (it cost them 40% of income in Sweden, and e-cigs will be bigger than Snus), and their pain will be intense.
Then there are people who have a vested interest in opposing e-cigarettes because their jobs depend on it. These are mainly in the pharma front groups and the
tobacco control industry - but if 50% of smokers don't die or get ill, there will obviously be a reduction in demand for their services. In fact some jobs will go in many areas of healthcare. It is hard to influence these people because their need to keep their job means that, even subconsciously, they will oppose anything that means their job will disappear.
Then we have the medical profession in general. Rightly, perhaps, they regard anything that looks like a cigarette, has a similar name to a cigarette, and contains nicotine, as somewhat suspect. It is hard to argue with that opinion. However when it is pointed out that:
- First-generation e-cigs were only made to look like that because otherwise no smokers would have bought them.
- They are named that way because no smokers will find them or buy them otherwise.
- The ingredients are similar to those in the nebulizers that lung transplant patients are given.
- Nicotine is harmless, except for a small number of individuals, when consumed responsibly. In fact the pharmaceutical industry were able to prove that long-term nicotine use is harmless when they successfully applied for long-term licensing for NRTs - by using the Snus data from Sweden. There is no other data for long-term use of nicotine.
- A Snus user has about the same risk as a non-smoker.
...then it is hard for the more intelligent among them to dismiss the fact that e-cigarette use will most likely be found harmless (apart from some intolerant individuals, as may be expected).
And when the papers published against e-cigarettes that seem to have some sort of pseudo-medical implications are exposed as the work of crooks, liars and incompetents by the professors of medicine who actually know the facts, it does help.
One of the major tasks in front of us is to educate some of the medical profession. It's just better to do that by assistance and encouragement than by outright criticism. In general their work depends on methods that have been in place for twenty years or more, and they are institutionally opposed to anything new. In twenty years time, e-cigs will be accepted as the #1 weapon against smoking-related death and disease, and there won't be any argument about it.
Well, except from the usual suspects...
