Sixty years ago, the U.S. surgeon general released a report that settled a longstanding public debate about the dangers of cigarettes and led to huge changes in smoking in America.
Today, some public health experts say a similar report could help clear the air about vaping.
Many U.S. adults believe nicotine vaping is as harmful as — or more dangerous than — cigarette smoking. That’s wrong. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and most scientists agree that, based on available evidence, electronic cigarettes are far less dangerous than traditional cigarettes.
But that doesn’t mean e-cigarettes are harmless either. And public health experts disagree about exactly how harmful, or helpful, the devices are. Clarifying information is urgently needed, said Lawrence Gostin, a public health law expert at Georgetown University.
This is about the same history I have, except with 25 years of smoking. I’ve been off the analogs for 7 years now and haven’t had shortness of breath or night time wheezing in all of that time. I don’t like the idea of folks who don’t smoke getting on the vape, but I am also very against banning it as it would just lead to more people like me dying of smoking related diseases.
I’m not completely against the idea of them being prescription-based. Not completely for it either, though.
The direction regulation has been going I’m not so sure of either. They’ve limited the strength and last I heard they were planning on limiting flavours, but both of those things are helpful for breaking the smoking habit of converting it to a vaping habit for those who aren’t yet ready to quit but know they should stop smoking for their health. If the vape isn’t as satisfying or didn’t taste good, some won’t bother changing. I didn’t for a while because I didn’t initially get strong enough juice so vaping wouldn’t scratch the itch at all.