Experts respond to "Vaping as bad as fags"

Experts respond to "Vaping as bad as fags"

Planet of the Vapes Posted 2nd September 2016 by Mawsley

Just one week ago, The Sun was celebrating the possible demise of the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) and rejoicing that smokers would be able to carry on enjoying their menthol smokes. Seven days later and the paper (along with a number of others) firmly stick the boot into vaping. Ecigs, so they claim, are as bad for your heart as traditional tobacco.

About how “Whitehall insiders” had told the paper that the TPD will “be scrapped” and that the “draconian ban” on minty flavours would not come to pass. Eurosceptic bingo players were shouting with joy as they checked off “meddling rules”, “hated EU judges” and “nanny state”.


The paper quoted Institute of Economic Affairs’ Chris Snowden saying: “Brexit offers a great opportunity to get rid of unnecessary and meddlesome EU regulations. Bans on menthol cigarettes, packs of ten and various types e-cigarette fluid never had any serious justification. Even David Cameron said he couldn’t understand why the EU wants smokers to buy more cigarettes. A great repeal bill should be drawn up and crazy laws like this should be on it.”

But any support for vaping was short-lived as they declared “vaping bad” this week. “Tests found e-cigarettes damage key blood vessels,” their journalist in Rome claimed, although his partner contradicted this position in her piece for The Telegraph.

The broadsheet pointed out: “the study was not designed to show whether electronic cigarettes can cause long term damage to our blood vessels.” The test measured how stiff the aorta got (the vessel carrying oxygen-rich blood from the lungs) after vaping. They quoted lead researcher Charalambos Vlachopoulos saying: “If the aorta is stiff you multiply your risk of dying, either from heart diseases or from other causes.”
In 2014, Konstantinos Farsalinos conducted a study looking at vaping and its effects on the aorta. The research team’s conclusion was: “that e-cigarette use has no adverse effect on the walls of the aorta or its function.”

Earlier this year, scientists at the Medical Research Council Integrative Epidemiology Unit discovered significant differences in the manner in which heart cells respond to vape when compared to the effects of cigarette smoke.

So, how can this latest study be so contradictory? It’s quite obvious, according to Clive Bates: “The claim that prompted these headlines was made at a conference, the European Society of Cardiology congress in Rome, by Professor Charalambos Vlachopoulos, of the University of Athens Medical School. It is, of course, sponsored by pharma interests.”

As Bates and Michael Siegel point out, the same observations of aorta stiffness can be found when someone is drinking coffee, playing sport, stretching their neck or listening to rock music, and none of those activities have (so far) been linked directly to cardio-vascular disease.
While vapers will have paid little heed to the exaggerated nonsense in the newspapers, it is a shame that smokers and their loved ones might factor it into a decision not to quit using ecigs; the cause of harm reduction has not been served by this sorry saga.

 

Well thank you for sharing. I wonder when this would turn up in the forum. It has pretty much been anywhere else in all the German and danish media's and forums. So why not here It is just amazing how far the Big Tobacco and the Big Pharma will go, to scare the puplic, until they "invent" the riskfree e-cigarette in a few years time with secure cartomizer and only a little vape with horrendous prices for the super safety cartomizers, w2hich is very very close to black mail.

 

The Sun is, well, it's the Sun. I sometimes dip into its online football pages. Now I've joined the half million Liverpudlians who'd rather be caught wearing Man U boxers than reading it.

 

nicotine and by consequence vaping is bad just because there is now no tax on it.
stupid European directives take care, don't worry, tax soon will come... it's already bad in France.
Dieter is just right:
wen big company as japan tobaco.... phillip...other will valid there "not smoking" taxable cigarettes....
nicotine will be a good friend for all.