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March 16, 2015 Other Voices

CT should help smokers, not cigarette industry

Dr. Gilbert Ross
By Dr. Gilbert Ross

On the subject of public health, the Connecticut legislature is off to a very bad start. New measures have been introduced in both the House and Senate that would severely interfere with smokers’ ability to quit their deadly habit. Passing laws that re-define common words, such as tobacco and smoke, is a slippery slope. Using that subterfuge to torpedo a successful and safe smoking cessation method is the opposite of responsible lawmaking, antithetical to public health, and will wipe out many thriving, successful small businesses.

The method to which I refer is, of course, the “controversial” electronic cigarette and related vapor products (e-cigs). Why controversial? You tell me. Vaping — the common term for using e-cigs — can resemble smoking: That’s one reason for some to hate the behavior, whatever its benefits. Yet, studies have shown that smokers trying to quit have had as good, or better, results from vaping than from all the FDA-approved methods put together.

This should not come as a surprise. Vaping reproduces just about everything that a smoker might crave, as opposed to the patches, gums and pills that the FDA says should work but don’t (quit rates with these hover in the 10 percent range, unacceptably low). E-cigs supply nicotine in a misty plume of water vapor and glycerin and/or propylene glycol; the nicotine in e-cigs has been shown to be far less addictive than in cigarettes, while the other components of the vapor have been thoroughly studied and are recognized as safe, although long-term studies are still pending.

But here’s the most important consideration, rarely discussed by politicians: Their mission is to help addicted smokers finally escape the clutches of cigarettes. Compared to smoking cigarettes, e-cigs are about 95 percent (or more) less harmful. We surely know the long-term studies of smoking: over one-half of regular smokers will die from their habit, and many more will be chronically sickened. Among the 43 million American smokers — three-quarters of whom want to quit — almost a half-million die each year from cigarettes. That is the real problem.

Yet politicians and public health officials are targeting — not cigarettes, but e-cigarettes. How did we come to this, where the solution has become the problem?

A few of Connecticut’s lawmakers have come to believe, or so they say, that the flavors of vaping liquids are so “kid-friendly” that the e-cig companies must be marketing them to youngsters. Is that the case, though?

Absolutely not. The CDC’s own figures show that while youth experimentation with e-cigs has increased over the past few years, the smoking rate among teens has declined by levels unseen in years. And the number of kids vaping who were not previously smokers is minuscule.

On the other hand, adult vapers prefer flavored liquids three-quarters of the time; indeed, many ex-smokers who switched to vaping have reported (in surveys) that eliminating the flavors they enjoy would likely send them back to deadly cigarettes.

The attractions that have made vaping the life raft for desperate smokers include flavors; the nicotine hit; and the lower cost. (But wait: hypocritical politicians have become addicted to cigarette tax money, so their next step will be to tax them. But if they tax them at a high enough rate, that too will drive vapers back to smoking).

It would be a tragedy, a travesty of sound lawmaking, if Connecticut deems e-cigarettes to be a “tobacco” product and restricted them accordingly, taxed them, and banned flavors — a lose-lose for public health and for Connecticut businesses, driving the e-cig industry across state lines. E-cigarettes have no tobacco and emit no smoke. There are many common consumer products that have “kid-friendly” flavors, including vodka, energy drinks, and dishwashing cubes — and, ironically, nicotine gum. Why not ban them too? The way to deal with that supposed problem is to enact strict age restrictions, making it illegal to market or sell them to young people.

How did fighting America’s most important public health problem — cigarette smoking — become so politicized and controversial? If the crusade against e-cigs is successful, the winners would be Big Pharma — sellers of hugely profitable but almost useless nicotine gum, patches and cessation drugs — and Big Tobacco, eager to keep selling their deadly cigarettes if the e-cig market is stifled by state and federal over-regulation and official misleading alarmism. n

Dr. Gilbert Ross is the executive director and medical director of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), a New York-based consumer education-public health organization. About 5 percent of ACSH’s budget comes from e-cigarette companies. 

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