ENDS Adults Who Smoke: Difference between revisions

===2020: Are E-Cigarette Regulations Jeopardizing the Public Health?===

The demonization of e-cigarettes in the U.S. is counterproductive. As part of a tobacco harm reduction strategy, the potential public health benefits from e-cigarettes are substantial. Opposition to e-cigarettes, often fueled by misleading information, curbs their use as a smoking cessation aid by millions of adults.

E-cigarettes are far less harmful than combustible cigarettes and constitute one of the most common -- and effective -- smoking cessation aids. Overzealous or poorly designed restrictions on vaping, combined with misleading information about e-cigarettes’ true health risks, are deterring smokers from pursuing a potentially life-saving alternative.

If cigarette use were largely replaced by vaping over a 10-year period in the U.S., it would prevent as many as 6.6 million premature deaths.

A report by a government agency, the Public Health of England, an agency of England’s Department of Health and Social Care, reported that most consumers who vape do so in order to stop smoking.

The doses of toxins contained in e-cigarettes are typically hundreds or thousands of times lower than in regular cigarettes. While non-smokers would be ill-advised to take up vaping, smokers could reap significant health benefits from switching to e-cigarettes.

Underage vaping by nonsmokers is rare, which supports the correlation that the rise in vaping has led to a decline in smoking among teens.Not only does the hysteria surrounding e-cigarettes endanger smokers and jeopardize public health, it also undermines the credibility of health authorities on other important issues like the coronavirus and vaccines. The American public should be told the truth about e-cigarettes.

===2020: A rational approach to e-cigarettes -challenging ERS policy on tobacco harm reduction===

We  believe  that  blanket  opposition  to  e-cigarettes  is  misguided  and  will  lead  to  a  number  of important consequences that are adverse to health.  

First, smokers who would otherwise have quit smoking  by  switching  to  a  lower  risk  product  will  continue  to  smoke,  and  die  prematurely  from cancer,  cardiovascular  and  respiratory  disease.   

Second,  people  who  have  successfully  switched  to vaping may relapse to smoking if they come to believe that there is no health benefit from vaping, and  thus  increase  their  risk  of  avoidable  morbidity  and  premature death.

Third,  the  pursuit  of arguments that vaping can’t help people to quit smoking, in the face of clear evidence that it does, risks undermining public trust in science.

===2020: The Effects of E-Cigarette Taxes on E-Cigarette Prices and Tobacco Product Sales: Evidence from Retail Panel Data===

We simulate that for every one standard e-cigarette pod (a device that contains liquid nicotine in e-cigarettes) of 0.7 ml no longer purchased as a result of an e-cigarette tax, the same tax increases traditional cigarettes purchased by 6.2 extra packs.  

===2020: Vape shop owners/managers’ opinions about FDA regulation of e-cigarettes===

Vape shop owners/managers reported:  

1) entering the industry with positive intentions for their customers;  

2) training their personnel to adhere to regulations and provide good customer service; and  

3) significant concerns about the impact of FDA regulations. With regard to the latter, participants reported mistrust of the intentions of the FDA regulations, financial implications of the regulations (particularly for small businesses), difficulty understanding and interpreting the regulations, insufficient evidence to support the regulations, negative impact on customer service, negative impact on product offerings and product innovation/advancement, and negative implications of flavor bans and/or restrictions on sale of flavors.

===2019: E-Cigarettes and Adult Smoking: Evidence from Minnesota===

We provide some of the first evidence on how e-cigarette taxes impact adult smokers, exploiting the large tax increase in Minnesota. That state was the first to impose a tax on e-cigarettes by extending the definition of tobacco products to include e-cigarettes. This tax, which is 95% of the wholesale price, provides a plausibly exogenous deterrent to e-cigarette use.

Our results suggest that in the sample period about 32,400 additional adult smokers would have quit smoking in Minnesota in the absence of the tax. If this tax were imposed on a national level about 1.8 million smokers would be deterred from quitting in a ten year period. The taxation of e-cigarettes at the same rate as cigarettes could deter more than 2.75 million smokers nationally from quitting in the same period.  

===2019: E-cigarettes: Comparing the Possible Risks of Increasing Smoking Initiation with the Potential Benefits of Increasing Smoking Cessation===

Potential life-years gained as a result of vaping-induced smoking cessation are projected to exceed potential life-years lost due to vaping-induced smoking initiation. These results hold over a wide range of plausible parameters

Our analysis strongly suggests that the upside health benefit associated with e-cigarettes, in terms of their potential to increase adult smoking cessation, exceeds their downside risk to health as a result of their possibly increasing the number of youthful smoking initiators. Public messaging and policy should continue to strive to reduce young people's exposure to all nicotine and tobacco products. But, they should not do so at the expense of limiting such products' potential to help adult smokers to quit.

*Acknowledgment: Funding was received from the Food and Drug Administration through the National Institute on Drug Abuse under

grant 1R01DA036497-01.