The tobacco industry is the only one selling a consumer product that kills half of its users. Its main objectives, then, are aimed at replacing clients who die prematurely due to the habit and delaying smoking cessation as long as possible. That is why it needs to constantly reinvent itself, create the illusion of security and a low perception of risk.
In the 1910s, advertising extolled the virtues of “natural tobacco,” and in the 1920s it included the idea that there were less irritating brands, even using the image of doctors in advertisements.
But the big milestone came in the 1960s with the introduction of the filter. The first ones had asbestos or asbestos, so they even increased the risk of cancer instead of reducing it, as they claimed.
During the 1970s, the next step in this task of attracting and retaining consumers was to launch cigarettes low in nicotine and tar, the so-called light. Its use was banned in the EU in 2001. And in the 1980s it could be read on tobacco packages “without additives”, although 17 years later the message was forced to be removed as misleading.
Over time, the technology has also been used to create supposedly safer products, such as tobacco-heating devices, which came on the market 35 years ago. The current ones are its logical evolution.
At the same time, the tobacco industry has massively entered the electronic cigarette market in recent years. Is it a good risk reduction strategy for smokers?
Is it as harmful as tobacco?
An intervention that reduces the risk to the health of a group has to be assessed at the population level, with all its pros and cons. We must not fall into the reductionism of believing that the results of controlled clinical trials can be transferred to widespread use of electronic cigarettes.
Since we are talking about a very heterogeneous product whose frequent use is relatively new, we do not have long-term data that we can compare with tobacco use. The toxicity of vaping may be less, but it is not clear that this reduction is significant or harmless.
In fact, the repeated affirmation that it is a product that is 95% less toxic than tobacco lacks scientific evidence and confuses the concentration of substances with the possible risk of their consumption at those concentrations.
In relation to cancer, using only the electronic cigarette, something really rare, does reduce the biomarkers of exposure to carcinogenic substances. Instead, it increases the chances of suffering from a cardiovascular disorder and a serious disease of the respiratory system, in addition to increasing bronchial activity and secretions or favoring inflammatory diseases, among other consequences.
The substances found in the cartridges to promote vaporization and that produce these effects are polyethylene glycol, glycerol or vegetable glycerin and/or propylene glycol. When heated, they generate formaldehyde, acetaldehyde and acrolein (recognized lung toxins and carcinogens), without taking nicotine into account.
Poisonings have also been recorded, mainly in children, when handling nicotine refills, a non-existent risk with tobacco. It can cause dizziness, vomiting, tachycardia, hypertension and rapid breathing.
And does it help to quit smoking?
The latest published studies make it clear that not only does it not help, but it favors relapses. There is no real leap between tobacco and e-cigarette use, rather there is alternative use of the e-cigarette in settings where smoking is prohibited and hinders attempts to quit.
But there has also been an increase in use among young non-smokers, which is not really a way out of tobacco, but rather the way in for many young people. This fact is favored by the ignorance of its effects.
more harm than good
In short, the electronic cigarette does not help to quit smoking, it favors dual use, discourages quitting, encourages nicotine consumption, is a gateway to smoking and contributes to its renormalization. It is clear that if harm reduction is pursued, it will be difficult to achieve it if the advertising is aimed at attracting new consumers who have never smoked, as is currently the case.
The electronic cigarette causes more harm than benefits at the population level. For this reason it should be included in health prevention campaigns and regulate its availability, use, advertising, promotion, sale and recycling in the same way as tobacco.
This article has been published in ‘The Conversation‘.
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