NEWS
Vaping – a new
paradigm in
nicotine use?
By Jillian Godsil
“Vaping offers a nicotine delivery system that transitions
smokers seamlessly from tobacco and that also promises
not to provide any of the carcinogenic side effects
normally associated with traditional smoking.”
E-cigarette consumption, or vaping as
it is now more commonly called, has
rapidly gained ground to replace
other nicotine replacement
therapies on the global
marketplace. The
entrenched popularity
of nicotine use
combined with the
known carcinogenic
properties of tobacco
had previously
created a Mexican
standoff. On the one
hand, medical councils and
governments decry a product that
costs millions in health care and lives, on
the other, the relentless consumption of
tobacco continues unabated.
Health campaigns, education and rising
costs of tobacco have done little in real
terms of culling smokers – only illness
and or death appears to do that. The
nicotine replacement therapy (NRT)
industry, patches, sprays and chewing
gum, has also remained spectacularly
unsuccessful in migrating smokers
permanently from smoking and by
default, serious and life threatening
illness and cancer.
However, vaping appears to provide a
solution to both sides of the coin. Vaping
offers a nicotine delivery system that
16 ISSUE 03 VAPOUROUND MAGAZINE
transitions smokers seamlessly from
tobacco and that also promises not to
provide any of the carcinogenic
side effects normally
associated with traditional
smoking. In addition,
those noxious second
hand issues of
tobacco smoke are
also notably absent.
The speed of
uptake of vaping has
confounded experts
and stakeholders including
Big Tobacco companies,
governments and medical
healthcare organisations. The former
wants to maintain its vice like
grip on sales of nicotine
via its own products.
Governments are
walking a tight rope
between taxation and
duty of care to its
citizens. And finally
Medical healthcare
organisations are
pointing out the obvious
correlation between
tobacco use and rising
health costs in all countries
where tobacco is legal, i.e. the world.
In reality, there is no way to square the
amount of tax earned, over the cost of
tobacco in financial and human terms.
In essence, NRT does not replace
nicotine and is not a therapy, but another
way to deliver a product. Its growing
irrelevance is only inversely matched by
the growth of its lobbying power.
While vaping has been quietly growing
in popularity under the radar, the
stakeholders are reacting in knee jerk
fashion. According to what you read,
vaping is either a clean alternative
to sampling nicotine or worse than
ingesting 4000 different chemicals, at
least 70 of them carcinogenic.
Oh, actually, the latter is what is
in cigarettes and already
approved by government
regulations.
Contrary to
the flimflam
surrounding
the supposed
ills of vaping
there are
many studies
validating the
safely of vape
juice. Studies
conducted since 2012
when the product went
mainstream, have consistently
shown that vaping is not dangerous.