e-cig

Cigarette smoking has become significantly less popular in the U.S. over the past decade, it still remains a public-health scourge. Smoking accounts for more than 480,000 deaths every year in this country, or about one of every five death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while an additional 16 million Americans live with a smoking-related disease. Clearly more needs to be done to get Americans to quit smoking.

Tobacco opponents say that we’ve had too little experience with e-cigarettes to know whether they are safe. While it is true that we don’t yet know the health consequences of long-term use, that should not discourage smokers from switching.

With the stated purpose of improving public health by making politically unpopular behaviors more expensive, Chicago City alderman Proco Moreno (D-Ward 1) is proposing to add $1.25 to the price of e-cigarette cartridges and $0.25 per milliliter of e-cigarette liquid.

The National Cancer Institute is wasting taxpayer dollars on slanted e-cigarette research that didn’t ask or answer an obvious and important question.

Nicotine can be detected in a chamber after releasing vapor directly from an e-cigarette, according to a report in Nicotine and Tobacco Research (abstract here) by Roswell Park Cancer Institute investigators. A Carl Phillips parody of the abstract (here) convinced me to review the journal article. Clive Bates also published a scathing critique (here).