SAotD: Vape This

Stupid Article of the Day

This is one of those articles I tried hard not to hate.  The writer, Bradley Morris of the Urban Tulsa Weekly, seems to be making an attempt to remain impartial, but in doing so he falls right into the traps e-cigarette opponents have laid all over the Internet.

For starters, he drags out this one, and it’s getting really old at this point:

“A recent Greek study … may show e-cigarette vapors to be harmful to the lungs…”

The problem with this, of course, is that no matter how badly e-cigarette opponents would like people to believe this, it’s not true.  The study being referred to found no such thing. While it may have noted some degree of airway constriction for a few minutes after vaping in some vapers, that’s a damned far cry from lung damage.

Also included are quotes from CDC officers, such as Director Tom Friedman, who said “There is still a lot we don’t know about these products, including whether they will decrease or increase use of traditional cigarettes.”  Now, I’m going to assume that most of the people who read this will be vapers.  If a single one of you has increased your cigarette usage, we’d love to hear about it, because of all the vapers we know, this has not been true of a single one of them.  Not one.  While it’s no strict scientific study, the data we have around here tells us that an increase in traditional cigarette smoking among people who vape just does not happen.  You might as well say “We don’t know if vapers will grow wings and fly,” because we haven’t spent millions studying that, either.  We haven’t seen any of them go airborne yet, but apparently until we’ve checked every last one of them, it’s worth worrying about.

Apparently there’s a lot of this sort of flawed logic at the CDC.  Another quote from the CDC’s Tim McAfee, Director of their Office of Smoking and Health, states, “If large numbers of adult smokers become users of both traditional cigarettes and e-cigarettes — rather than using e-cigarettes to quit cigarettes completely — the net public health effect could be quite negative.”  Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that there are vapers who continue smoking the same amount, even after they start vaping.  What, exactly, are these negative health effects we need to be concerned about?  Does the CDC know something we don’t, or are they just talking out their collective asses again?

Excuse me while I sprout wings.

Vape This – E-cigarettes now commonplace – Featured Sections – Health and Fitness – Urban Tulsa Weekly

SAotD: Vape This