UCSF Professor: E-Cigarettes for Quitting Are Wishful Thinking

New Zealand

In one of the most mind-bogglingly nonsensical quotes we’ve ever read, the New Zealand Herald News quotes Professor Stanton Glantz of the University of California at San Francisco, on the effectiveness of e-cigarettes as a smoking cessation device:

“There is no scientific evidence that electronic cigarettes help people to quit smoking. There’s a lot of people saying they do, but the world is filled with people who think treatments work when they didn’t.”

We’d love to hear the rationale behind believe there really could be “a lot of people” who think they have stopped smoking, but are mistaken about it. Maybe we’re oversimplifying, but we would think that the lack of butts in any of our ashtrays, the absence of convenience stores from our credit card receipts, and the lack of stink in our clothes would be enough scientific evidence anyone would need. He’s the university professor, so we’ll have to defer to his expertise when he says that we may just be imagining that we’ve quit, but if it’s true we have been so damned sneaky about smoking that we don’t even know we’re doing it.

Glantz also warns that some may continue smoking in addition to using cigarettes, warning that that’s “not enough difference to matter”, and in the next breath apparently admitting that, in the case of things like lung cancer, it actually does matter. Apparently when considering the harm done by tobacco, Gantz is willing to overlook minor details like lung cancer in his crusade against e-cigarettes.

Glantz will be speaking in New Zealand next week at anti-smoking seminars, and will no doubt be pushing his obsessive and illogical campaign against e-cigarettes.  For the sake of our fellow vapers in New Zealand, we sincerely hope he makes as little sense there as he did when speaking to the Herald.

E-cigarettes wishful thinking for giving up smokes, says US critic – Health – NZ Herald News

UCSF Professor: E-Cigarettes for Quitting Are Wishful Thinking