Message from the Experts

E-cigarettes are not just a huge public health breakthrough. They are one of the most impressive examples of People Power of recent times, and should be mentioned alongside the Arab Spring and Occupy. I worked for years to promote smokeless tobacco as an alternative to smoking, but outside of a few populations, it never reached critical mass. But e-cigarettes seem to have mobilized an unstoppable push-back against the failed “quit or die” approach that those in power are trying to impose on an unwilling population.

The story is still being written, with new smokeless nicotine products, including improved e-cigarettes, coming out every year, but it seems pretty clear how it will play out. Smokeless tobacco paved the way, and gave us evidence, including my lab’s calculation that it is about 99% less harmful than smoking. While it will be years before we know if vaping has risks that are quite that low, we can be quite confident it is pretty close, and when combined with the popularity, that makes it a public health miracle that has come despite the efforts of the “Public Health” community to stop it

- Prof Carl Phillips
2012-02-22

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“E-cigarettes deliver the same nicotine found in the pharmaceutical products, with no more contamination by toxic substances than the pharmaceutical products already approved by FDA.”

- Dr J Nitzkin, Chair, Tobacco Control Task Force, AAPHP
American Association of Public Health Physicians
aaphp.org, 2010-04-02

http://www.aaphp.org/Resources/Documents/20100402AAPHPEcigLegisStatemnt.pdf

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“If we get all tobacco smokers to switch from regular cigarettes to electronic cigarettes, we would eventually reduce the US death toll from more than 400,000 a year to less than 4,000, maybe as low as 400.”

- Dr J Nitzkin, AAPH