RCP Report recommends promotion of vaping

j26m

The Royal College of Physicians has issues a report. It's interesting that they are suspicious of the tobacco industry involvement.

Key recommendations

Smoking is the biggest avoidable cause of death and disability, and social inequality in health, in the UK.

Most of the harm to society and to individuals caused by smoking in the near-term future will occur in people who are smoking today.
Vigorous pursuit of conventional tobacco control policies encourages more smokers to quit smoking.

Quitting smoking is very difficult and most adults who smoke today will continue to smoke for many years.

People smoke because they are addicted to nicotine, but are harmed by other constituents of tobacco smoke.

Provision of the nicotine that smokers are addicted to without the harmful components of tobacco smoke can prevent most of the harm from smoking.

Until recently, nicotine products have been marketed as medicines to help people to quit.
NRT is most effective in helping people to stop smoking when used together with health professional input and support, but much less so when used on its own.

E-cigarettes are marketed as consumer products and are proving much more popular than NRT as a substitute and competitor for tobacco cigarettes.

E-cigarettes appear to be effective when used by smokers as an aid to quitting smoking.
E-cigarettes are not currently made to medicines standards and are probably more hazardous than NRT.

However, the hazard to health arising from long-term vapour inhalation from the e-cigarettes available today is unlikely to exceed 5% of the harm from smoking tobacco.

Technological developments and improved production standards could reduce the long-term hazard of e-cigarettes.

There are concerns that e-cigarettes will increase tobacco smoking by renormalising the act of smoking, acting as a gateway to smoking in young people, and being used for temporary, not permanent, abstinence from smoking.

To date, there is no evidence that any of these processes is occurring to any significant degree in the UK.

Rather, the available evidence to date indicates that e-cigarettes are being used almost exclusively as safer alternatives to smoked tobacco, by confirmed smokers who are trying to reduce harm to themselves or others from smoking, or to quit smoking completely.

There is a need for regulation to reduce direct and indirect adverse effects of e-cigarette use, but this regulation should not be allowed significantly to inhibit the development and use of harm-reduction products by smokers.

A regulatory strategy should, therefore, take a balanced approach in seeking to ensure product safety, enable and encourage smokers to use the product instead of tobacco, and detect and prevent effects that counter the overall goals of tobacco control policy.

The tobacco industry has become involved in the e-cigarette market and can be expected to try to exploit these products to market tobacco cigarettes, and to undermine wider tobacco control work.

However, in the interests of public health it is important to promote the use of e-cigarettes, NRT and other non-tobacco nicotine products as widely as possible as a substitute for smoking in the UK.

https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/projects/outputs/nicotine-without-smoke-tobacco-harm-reduction-0

Zelda247

Very interesting indeed. It will be great if it helps to dispel the belief that they are as harmful as cigarettes which is a comment I have head from so many misinformed people.

j26m

A person in work saw this on the news and came up to me asking about vaping.

He's been thinking about for a while it but was put off by the scare stories. Now he's ready to give it a try.

Thecageyone

I've been preaching about the benefits for a long time, but doing a course recently I ramped it up even more. Not one person on it vaped, 5 heavy smokers [2-3 rollies/smokes per short break] some of them had never even seen anything beyond a cig-a-like. I felt like I was catapulted back 3 years. But, all of them were intrigued, especially when I told them I make my own juice. We all have a job in this, to educate the interested, and the ignorant. Great to finally see some light, and positive coverage. There will always be hard headed antis who refuse to accept anything positive, but then there's people still insist coffee can kill you ...

Zelda247

Thecageyone wrote: »

I've been preaching about the benefits for a long time, but doing a course recently I ramped it up even more. Not one person on it vaped, 5 heavy smokers [2-3 rollies/smokes per short break] some of them had never even seen anything beyond a cig-a-like. I felt like I was catapulted back 3 years. But, all of them were intrigued, especially when I told them I make my own juice. We all have a job in this, to educate the interested, and the ignorant. Great to finally see some light, and positive coverage. There will always be hard headed antis who refuse to accept anything positive, but then there's people still insist coffee can kill you ...

Absolutely spot on. A few smokers we have mentioned to me, say " ah we tried vaping but did not like it". But I do often wonder if people tried it properly. My belief is you need to get proper advice about what product to use to suit you. My husband went into the Ecig store in Talbot Street Dublin and spent about 45 mins in there talking to the owner and then some customers who happen to come in about what product would be best of him. Before he went into the store he really had not got a clue about the whole thing but learnt tons and came out with the products which have suited him exactly and it been a huge success. He was a very heavy smoker for about 55 years and now a committed Vaper! wonderful, he looks so much better, his skin has improved and also the colour of his teeth also he has more energy.

8mm

So this report made an appearance on our national main news at 9pm on RTE.

All well and good but then they end with a bit from the Irish Cancer crowd who won't recommend vaping to smokers. I sit there with my wife and I'm slightly aghast as they throw out a variation of the "we don't know what's in em" rhetoric ie we dont know what long term harm they may cause.

Here we have a fantastic method of harm reduction that will improve health and reduce cancer risk and you lot in Irish Cancer can't recommend them?

Arguing about what the future may bring is no argument at all.

Thecageyone

8mm wrote: »

So this report made an appearance on our national main news at 9pm on RTE.

All well and good but then they end with a bit from the Irish Cancer crowd who won't recommend vaping to smokers. I sit there with my wife and I'm slightly aghast as they throw out a variation of the "we don't know what's in em" rhetoric ie we dont know what long term harm they may cause.

Here we have a fantastic method of harm reduction that will improve health and reduce cancer risk and you lot in Irish Cancer can't recommend them?

Arguing about what the future may bring is no argument at all.

It's sad to say, but the ICS are an embarrassment. They have put out scare mongering, BS anti-vape articles many times in the past. i actually responded to them a few times, saying they are killing people by spreading this hogwash. It actually feels at times like they are being funded by big tobacco/big pharma. they have no business whatsoever to be involved in the vaping side of things. As it's not a tobacco product. There isn't ONE actual case of anyone, anywhere developing any type of cancer through vaping. So it begs that question - what does it have to do with them? Why are they trying to turn people away from saving their lives? It stinks. And is saddens me as like many others, I too have lost numerous people to Cancer. What the ICS are doing in relation to vaping p**ses me off greatly. They're undoing any good they have done in the past IMO

Zelda247

Thecageyone wrote: »

It's sad to say, but the ICS are an embarrassment. They have put out scare mongering, BS anti-vape articles many times in the past. i actually responded to them a few times, saying they are killing people by spreading this hogwash. It actually feels at times like they are being funded by big tobacco/big pharma. they have no business whatsoever to be involved in the vaping side of things. As it's not a tobacco product. There isn't ONE actual case of anyone, anywhere developing any type of cancer through vaping. So it begs that question - what does it have to do with them? Why are they trying to turn people away from saving their lives? It stinks. And is saddens me as like many others, I too have lost numerous people to Cancer. What the ICS are doing in relation to vaping p**ses me off greatly. They're undoing any good they have done in the past IMO

Oh No.... I did not see that on the news. I am horrified, just when I am thinking there is some hope these people will not educate themselves on Vaping, they are a disgrace. I am going to write to them.

Thecageyone

If you look up Irish cancer society on vaping, you'll come across a bunch of links going back to 2013, all of them involving ICS being completely negative towards vaping. And like I say I don't see any reason for them to even be involved in any vaping discussions. As nobody has ever gotten cancer via vaping. they should butt-out, pun intended

bd2012

Thecageyone wrote: »

It actually feels at times like they are being funded by big tobacco/big pharma.

No ifs about it

http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.ie/2015/06/another-sales-pitch-from-irish-cancer.html?m=1

richardw001

Some of the Fellows in that research paper are funded by Pharma companies as well - tbh I don't think there is a conspiracy or otherwise

This purely lazy and incompetent journalism from RTE imo

If RTE were to be truly objective - they should have emphasised that there hasn't been one linked case of cancer with ecigs.
Or if they are going down the route of speculation then they should have also had someone at the end of the piece from the an Alzheimer's organisation and maybe one that deals with Parkinson's

http://www.tampabay.com/news/health/study-finds-nicotine-safe-helps-in-alzheimers-parkinsons/2175396

Vaping is getting a "guilty by association" reputation - nothing is proven either way - but the conservative less than 5% figure assessment of the dangers relative to smoking from the RCP would be accurate in my view.
So out of 100 smoking related deaths - if everyone moved to vaping you would save 95 lives (or more than 95)

Mainstream journalism seems eager to find the next great scoop that indicates they are bad.
What I would suggest is that they should be actively looking to find a scoop that shows its safe - and maybe save millions of lives in the process

Or at least try and be objective.