What Do We Really Know About the Safety of E-Cigarettes?

[Cool_Breeze]

By Emily Oster

Last week, I noticed two teenagers loitering outside an IKEA in New Haven, Connecticut, smoking. The only difference between now and what I might have seen five years ago was that the cigarettes were electronic.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-do-we-really-know-about-the-safety-of-e-cigarettes/

 

[DrMA]

I find that article very troubling. It conflates smoking and vaping and makes a lot of generally dubious assumptions.

 

[sebt]

I find that article very troubling. It conflates smoking and vaping and makes a lot of generally dubious assumptions.

We need a Darth Vaper to deal with all these ill-informed articles:

I Find Your Lack Of Facts... Disturbing..... [force-choke]

 

[DaveP]

Fact is, both are illegal for anyone under 18 years old. Teenagers will try anything that presents them as "cool" to their peers. It was that way in the 1950s and it's that way in 2014. Teenagers will steal cars and go joyriding, they will fight to prove superiority, and they will try daredevil activities to show off to their friends.

All that isn't going to change, but how do you prevent online sales to a kid who can purchase a pre-paid debit card and order by falsifying a check box to get into a web site? I started smoking when a tobacco representative walked around the grandstands at a water ski show and handed out free packs of Kools and a free Kool Zippo knockoff lighter that was already filled with fluid. He didn't care that I was only 15. That sealed me into a 40 year smoking habit because it was Kool, uh, cool.

 

[5150sick]

We could start with banning pre paid credit card sales to minors?

 

[AndriaD]

Fact is, both are illegal for anyone under 18 years old. Teenagers will try anything that presents them as "cool" to their peers. It was that way in the 1950s and it's that way in 2014. Teenagers will steal cars and go joyriding, they will fight to prove superiority, and they will try daredevil activities to show off to their friends.

All that isn't going to change, but how do you prevent online sales to a kid who can purchase a pre-paid debit card and order by falsifying a check box to get into a web site? I started smoking when a tobacco representative walked around the grandstands at a water ski show and handed out free packs of Kools and a free Kool Zippo knockoff lighter that was already filled with fluid. He didn't care that I was only 15. That sealed me into a 40 year smoking habit because it was Kool, uh, cool.

That's a better reason than mine... I was 13, and I wanted this "cool" (cigarette-smoking) boy to like me...

But these kinds of things are why I don't get all this "no vaping for minors!" hysteria. They need vaping even worse than adults do, if they're already smokers -- smoking hurts growing bodies far worse than it harms adult ones. Too bad they can't come up with something "cool" that imparts wisdom to adolescents, eh?

Andria

 

[Bill Godshall]

At least Oster's article revealed that CDC’s NYTS found a significant decline in use of “cigarettes or e-cigs” by middle and high school students from 2011 to 2012, the same survey CDC’s Tom Frieden falsely claimed found that e-cigs were addicting children, were gateways to cigarettes and could renormalize smoking.

 

[KODIAK (TM)]

Ms. Oster speaks from dual sides of her mouth:

E-cigarettes don’t necessarily help people quit, but they could still be less harmful to smokers’ health than regular cigarettes.

Yet in the 2 surveys she bases this comment on:

E-cigarettes, with or without nicotine, were modestly effective at helping smokers to quit, with similar achievement of abstinence as with nicotine patches, and few adverse events.

In view of the fact that subjects in this study had no immediate intention of quitting, the reported overall abstinence rate of 8.7% at 52-week was remarkable.

This is the kind of journalism you get when an "economist" thinks she's qualified to interpret findings that fall outside her realm of understanding. And if it weren't for Google, rags like this would never be read.