Vaping isn’t smoking, it’s a disease prevention method

[Bill Godshall]

Sklaroff/Godshall/Gambescia: vaping isn’t smoking, it’s a disease prevention method
thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/healthcare/324534-vaping-should-be-recognized-as-a-disease-prevention-public

I coauthored this article.

 

[Riplea]

Nice article. Thank you for writing this. I did share it.

 

[Just Me]

Thanks, Bill.

 

[mostlyclassics]

Excellent, Bill! Very much appreciated.

 

[zoiDman]

A Good Article.

Thank you Bill for Co-Authoring it. And then getting The Hill to publish it.

 

[CarolT]

Unfortunately, it also harms vapers when you endorse the lie that "smoking is physically and psychologically addictive," because they use that as one of their pretexts for treating vaping like smoking. "Nicotine addiction" is a lie that "could only be sustained by systematically ignoring all contradictory evidence."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3116468/

 

[CarolT]

It doesn't help vapers either to endorse the lie that "We should be reminded that public health measures remain well-grounded in the biomedical and behavioral sciences, with cigarette smoking remaining public health enemy number one, the major cause of preventable disease, disability and death in America."

The anti-smokers deliberately use scientific fraud to falsely blame smoking for diseases caused by infection, and every Surgeon General report is proof of their use of this fraud.
The Surgeon General Lies About Cancer
The Surgeon General Lies That Smoking Causes Heart Disease

Anyone claiming, for example, that vaping is 95% safer than smoking, should readily see that it's better to have a smaller number to claim to be safer than, than a bigger one.

 

[Rossum]

Unfortunately, it also harms vapers when you endorse the lie that "smoking is physically and psychologically addictive," because they use that as one of their pretexts for treating vaping like smoking. "Nicotine addiction" is a lie that "could only be sustained by systematically ignoring all contradictory evidence."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3116468/

Sure, smoking is not addictive at all -- that's why it was so easy for all of us here to quit, even without vapes, right?

 

[defdock]

From what im to understand, nicotine isnt even the addictive substance. Its in a few of your everyday vegitables but you dont see people going nuts for it, or getting angry/anxious about not getting their veggie fix within that hour. The chemicals used to "absorb nicotine quicker" and "affect taste" that are sprayed onto cigarette tobacco is what is addicting.

Everything we do/ingest comes with risks. The benifits of vaping very greatly outnumber the risks of smoking cigarettes.

 

[sofarsogood]

How about let's use the term habit forming...very very habit forming. The most excitiing possibility is that kids are bypassing cigs enmass for vaping. If the kids don't smoke, it's over.

 

[LaraC]

"Nicotine addiction" is a lie that "could only be sustained by systematically ignoring all contradictory evidence."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3116468/

The document at the link you gave, Carole, was one of the most interesting I've ever read regarding nicotine. Thank you very much for posting it.

That excellent 2011 analysis criticizing a previous Surgeon General's report in regard to fears of "nicotine addiction" could still apply in many ways to critiquing the current (2016) Surgeon General's demonization of e-cigs.

Also to addressing the continued mythical and unfounded "nicotine addiction" attitude of most doctors, Public Health officials, and the non-smoking public in general, toward both smokers and e-cig users.

A quote from the document:

Two decades ago, Aker [96] suggested that the motivation for calling smoking an addiction was to give it a bad name. "Anything addictive is bad; if it is not addictive, it is probably not too bad. A tobacco smoking habit is bad enough, but it is even worse when one thinks of it as an addiction (p. 778)".
96. Akers RL. Addiction: The troublesome concept. J Drug Issues. 1991;21:777–793.

 

[Bill Godshall]

"Nicotine addiction" is a lie that "could only be sustained by systematically ignoring all contradictory evidence."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3116468/

While nicotine can create daily dependence (especially via smoking cigarettes and using smokeless tobacco), nicotine itself isn't addictive (as a drug addiction requires both compulsive use/dependence as well as harm to the user and/or others).

As such, daily smoking of multiple cigarettes is the really the only form of nicotine or tobacco use that can be considered an addiction.

That was a key point of our article. It's the 27 million daily cigarette smokers will have significant disease risks (in sharp contrast to vapers, smokeless tobacco users, cigar smokers, hookah and other pipe smokers).

 

[Ca Ike]

While nicotine can create daily dependence (especially via smoking cigarettes and using smokeless tobacco), nicotine itself isn't addictive (as a drug addiction requires both compulsive use/dependence as well as harm to the user and/or others).

As such, daily smoking of multiple cigarettes is the really the only form of nicotine or tobacco use that can be considered an addiction.

That was a key point of our article. It's the 27 million daily cigarette smokers will have significant disease risks (in sharp contrast to vapers, smokeless tobacco users, cigar smokers, hookah and other pipe smokers).

Well said Bill. I think most of us know by now that it's never been the nicotine that's been the problem. It's all the other highly addictive alkaloids largely added by the process of making cigs that is the addictive element. Just look at the warnings for those same alkaloids used in treating mental problems.

Those other tobacco products you mention use a different process than cigs and don't have the same toxin levels that cigs have. I can't find any quantitative reports right now but I remember a comparison of cigs to cigars done years ago that showed a lot less toxins in cigars. If I can find the study I'll post a link. Iirc there was a theory presented at that time that it was in part the paper and added substances in processed cig tobacco that added the extra toxins.

 

[CarolT]

Sure, smoking is not addictive at all -- that's why it was so easy for all of us here to quit, even without vapes, right?

Sure, smoking is not addictive at all -- that's why it was so easy for all of us here to quit, even without vapes, right?

The quitters that aren't here, who didn't use vaping, outnumber the vapers. The vast majority just quit without using anything. It's not surprising that vaping boards are an echo chamber for vapers, this just needs to be remembered.
Tobacco and Smoking

 

[Bill Godshall]

Those other tobacco products you mention use a different process than cigs and don't have the same toxin levels that cigs have. I can't find any quantitative reports right now but I remember a comparison of cigs to cigars done years ago that showed a lot less toxins in cigars. If I can find the study I'll post a link. Iirc there was a theory presented at that time that it was in part the paper and added substances in processed cig tobacco that added the extra toxins.

The reason cigarettes are far more harmful is because most cigarette smokers inhale smoke 100+ times per day for many decades.

The two key reasons why cigars pose far fewer disease risks than cigarettes are because 90% of cigar smokers don't inhale the smoke, and because 90% of cigar smokers don't smoke cigars daily. About 2%-5% of cigar smokers (depending upon definition) who inhale the smoke, and who smoke multiple cigars daily face risks similar to daily cigarette smokers. Many/most of those cigar smokers used to smoke cigarettes and then switched to cigars (primarily little cigars).

Hookah and pipe smoking pose far fewer disease risks than cigarette because 95% of hookah and pipe smokers are very infrequent users (typically just once or twice, or just several times per year, similar to many cigar smokers), and because you cannot do it outdoors.
Hookah is still mostly a fad among college aged.

 

[Bill Godshall]

The quitters that aren't here, who didn't use vaping, outnumber the vapers. The vast majority just quit without using anything.

That is correct.

It's also one of the reasons why (in 1996) Big Pharma and Big Pharma financed researchers, smoking cessation experts, ACS, AHA, ALA conspired to lobby the USPHS to create Clinical Guidelines for TobaccoSmoking Cessation (and then stacked the committee that wrote the guidelines) that recommended Big Pharma NRT (and counseling services that hawk NRT) as the ONLY recommended method(s) for "smoking cessation" (which they subsequently renamed "tobacco use")

John Polito (who is a nicotine prohibitionist who hates vaping, smokeless tobacco and cigarettes as much as he hates NRT and Chantix) has documented how Big Pharma lobbied DHHS to grant Big Pharma drugs a smoking cessation monopoly and to bury the truth about cold turkey quitting at
GlaxoSmithKline Continues Defrauding Smokers

Even though >90% of former smokers in the US (and worldwide) had quit smoking cold turkey (before 1996), the USPHS Clinical Guidelines for quitting tobacco did not recommend (nor even mention) COLD TURKEY.

So nobody should be surprised that these same Big Pharma shills would also lobby USPHS, CDC, FDA, SG and the rest of DHHS falsely claim there is no evidence smokeless tobacco (since 1990) and vaping (since 2009) can help smokers quit.

 

[gremlin222]

makes me wonder about % of smokers going down. how many of these have quit smoking because they are dead from smoking related diseases.

 

[Rossum]

The quitters that aren't here, who didn't use vaping, outnumber the vapers. The vast majority just quit without using anything.
It's not surprising that vaping boards are an echo chamber for vapers, this just needs to be remembered.

Yes, vaping forums are full of people who were not able to quit any other way, many (or most) of whom would have continued to smoke until the day they died. There is a spectrum with all addictive substances. Some people never become dependent on them to begin with. Some people can quit a particular substance with relative ease, while others cannot.

Tobacco and Smoking

I find the question, "Do you consider yourself addicted to cigarettes or not?" to be quite interesting. Answers over the years vary between roughly 2/3 and 3/4 of smokers considering themselves addicted, with no clear changing trend over time.

 

[CarolT]

makes me wonder about % of smokers going down. how many of these have quit smoking because they are dead from smoking related diseases.

I've heard of dead people voting, but not of them responding to Gallup polls.

 

[CarolT]

I find the question, "Do you consider yourself addicted to cigarettes or not?" to be quite interesting. Answers over the years vary between roughly 2/3 and 3/4 of smokers considering themselves addicted, with no clear changing trend over time.

They're just exaggerating. Quitting smoking is in no way comparable to the real thing.

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