The real problem with vapes? Bad press and a false narrative

August 14, 2019

are the biggest driving factors about the health benefits being lost for the public today.  Putting it bluntly, this misinformation and lack of clearly accurate information is leading to more deaths from smoking, which could easily be prevented if people were aware of the benefits of vaping eLiquids. 

Non smokers and smokers alike should be confident that vaping is much less harmful to the lungs than smoking cigarettes, according to a new article published in the Expert Review of Respiratory Medicine. According to the latest journal there is growing evidence showing that vape emission aerosols are relatively safe compared to tobacco smoke.

Led by Dr. Riccardo Polosa, director of the Center of Excellence for the Acceleration of Harm Reduction at the University of Catania, "The effect of e-cigarette aerosol emissions on respiratory health: a narrative review" provides a critical assessment of the research published on the effects of vaping on the respiratory system.

"For smokers who want to do something about their health, our review shows that switching to vaping is a very good option if they don't want to or can't quit completely. No-one can prove that e-cigarettes are one hundred percent safe, but all the science points to vaping being very much safer than smoking," said Dr. Polosa.  She added; "We agree with Public Health England and the Royal College of Physicians of London that it is reasonable to proceed on the basis that vaping is at least 95% less risky than smoking, and probably even less risky than that."

These findings once again indicate that the lack of clear and accurate reporting of experimental studies directly related to vaping has resulted in at best a confusion about the respiratory health risks of vaping, and at worst as we've seen a general cloud of misinformation and outright false information being massively reported. 

"The millions of deaths resulting from cigarette smoking illustrate an ongoing, immediate and preventable tragedy that should be fully factored into a rational risk-benefit analysis," said Dr. Polosa. "In our view, there is a growing body of evidence that suggests substituting ECs for cigarettes is an effective method of curbing the use of tobacco cigarettes. Unfortunately, consumer understanding of the relative risks is distorted and in the past few years fewer adult smokers have perceived e-cigarettes as less harmful than tobacco cigarettes. These misperceptions have real consequences and require corrections."

According to Dr. Polosa this latest article is an attempt to correct most of these misconceptions and to provide authoritative reference when communicating to the public one way to improve personal and public health of current smokers. Improvement in risk communication can promote more switching among smokers who do not want to quit or cannot quit and eventually reduce or prevent some of the respiratory deaths and disease caused by tobacco smoking.

The authors of the review also found that smokers who substituted cigarettes with vaping experienced improvements in smoking symptoms like coughing and phlegm production also exhibited lower levels of exhaled carbon monoxide. These results were even more beneficial for smokers who completely replaced cigarettes with vaping.

Dr. Donald Tashkin, pulmonologist and professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, explains: "Yielding accurate findings for determining the respiratory health risks and benefits of e-cigarette use requires substantial improvement of current research designs. Obviously, only large, long-range prospective studies of vapers who have never smoked can provide definitive data to demonstrate any potential impacts regular use of vaping products may have on long term health."

Dr. Polosa concludes: "Challenging uninformative or even misleading research due to problem with methodology and interpretation of these studies is not enough. It is urgent to address common mistakes and to develop robust and realistic methodological recommendations in order to adequately assess the impact of EC use on human health under normal condition of use. The adoption of standardized methods can enable better tobacco harm reduction science."

There you have it, finally some more experts are aware of the misinformation campaign that vaping has been facing since pretty much day one, and good on them for doing something about it through solid research and reporting. What do you think about this? Is it the sign of a rising tide to fight against the anti-vape narrative? Too little too late? Futile attempt at stopping the already powerful mound of nonsense that keeps gobbling people up?  Time will tell. 

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