Forbes Article on FDA & Vaping
June 25, 2018 2018-11-10 5:55Forbes Article on FDA & Vaping
Forbes Article on FDA & Vaping
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Here at Drip we want to share what’s happening in the world about Vaping. The following article from Forbes Magazine highlights disinformation campaign that has been waged against the vaping community globally and nationally by agencies like the World Health Organization, FDA, CDC and local health departments across the country. Below is an excerpt from the article and a link to the full story.
WHY IS THE FDA SHIELDING SMOKERS FROM THE GOOD NEWS ABOUT E-CIGARETTES?
By Gilbert Ross, M.D.
Any clear-thinking health professional would agree that cigarette smoking is without question the most devastating and preventable public health risk that we need to address in this country. And now, four-plus years after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was given legal authority over tobacco products, the regulatory agency faces arguably its most important public health decision in its history. The time has come to confront their responsibility to smokers trying to quit and their families.
The worldwide death-toll of cigarette smoking is reliably predicted to hit one billion this century. Despite this depressing fact, the measures implemented by the FDA thus far, ostensibly to reduce the toll of smoking, have been almost entirely lip service, without making any real impact. A relatively new method of helping addicted smokers quit has been adopted by millions of smokers – many of whom are now ex-smokers — over the past few years. I refer of course to electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes). Concurrent with the dramatic spike in sales of this device comes word of historic declines in the sale of real cigarettes.
E-cigarettes work by delivering a potent “hit” of nicotine in water vapor, with flavorings and propellants of no significant health concerns — neither to the “vaper” (as they call themselves), nor to bystanders. Most of them resemble cigarettes — which is both their blessing, and their curse.
Astoundingly, this nascent public-health miracle has been met with something between derision and hysteria by anti-tobacco groups worldwide: globally, the WHO, health-oriented NGOs, the British regulator MHRA, and many nations are sparing no effort to discourage smokers from trying them, employing misleading (even false) alerts and dire website warnings, phony surveys, and exaggerated concerns about youth being led astray. Unfortunately, and embarrassingly for science-based public health policy, our FDA and CDC have been willingly complicit in this widespread disinformation campaign. Meanwhile they purposely ignore studies that indicate the benefit of e-cigarettes for helping smokers quit. I ask, “How could this be?”
The possible explanations are not pretty: willful ignorance, dogma based on experiences garnered in the 20th century, or greed.
Read the full magazine online at Forbes.com.
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