E-cigarettes could be a game-changer in public health...
...helping millions of people to quit smoking
Something in the region of 7m people a year...
...are dying because they smoke
E-cigarettes can provide a route out of smoking for many of those people
More than 40m people worldwide are vaping
...e-cigarettes are more controversial than ever before
There was yet another death connected to the use of e-cigarettes
Nicotine exposure during adolescence...
...can uniquely harm the developing adolescent brain
30 countries have banned e-cigarettes outright
But the facts have gone up in smoke
The death toll linked to vaping is climbing tonight
His infected lungs nearly collapsed
Colorado’s first case of a rare, vaping-related illness
America has been in the grip of a health scare over e-cigarettes
Because of a deadly outbreak of what is being called “EVALI”
EVALI is electronic cigarette, or vaping, product-use associated lung injury
People were complaining of respiratory symptoms...
...really having trouble breathing and in some cases it was fatal
Since April 2019, 60 deaths and over...
...two-and-a-half-thousand hospital cases have been reported in America
The American Medical Association and the Centres for Disease Control...
...advised the country’s 11m vapers to quit
Seven states proposed partial or total bans
Some politicians called for a national ban on all e-cigarettes
Yet the health scare isn’t down to nicotine-based vaping...
...but illicit cannabis-vaping products
Tetrahydrocannabinol, THC, is the...
...ingredient in cannabis that makes you high
And so people have been vaping THC for a long time
But at some point Vitamin E acetate was cut in with THC...
...and that became a contaminant that people were inhaling
Vitamin E acetate thickens the THC...
...and makes it seem like it’s more high quality than it actually is
There are over 40m vapers across the world...
...but this outbreak of EVALI is unique to America
In the United States, you’ve got a market that is really not well regulated
It’s possible for manufacturers to put these...
...dangerous chemicals into the liquids
But in addition to that, you’ve got this varied legalisation of cannabis...
...and heavy usage of cannabis oil
Put the two together and you’ve got a very dangerous situation
The misconception that this EVALI outbreak...
...is caused by vaping nicotine products...
...could have dire consequences
Globally more than 8m people die every year...
...from smoking tobacco but also inhaling second-hand smoke
Almost half a million of these in America alone
Come to where the flavour is, come to Marlboro country
The concern is that e-cigarette users...
...who have used an e-cigarette to stop smoking will go back to smoking
If that happens, many lives will be lost
There’s a fair chance I’d be dead right now if it wasn’t for electronic cigarettes
I started smoking when I was nine. I smoked for 41 years
The last 30 of those trying to quit
I poked my head in the door here at 906 Vapor...
...and 20 minutes later I walked out a non-smoker
Then Marc Slis went one step further
He decided to buy the vape shop in Michigan...
...that had introduced him to e-cigarettes
My customers come from a wide variety of backgrounds, ages
The average customer is a middle-aged professional...
...but they do have one thing in common and that’s a desire to quit smoking
Do you want another?
Yet there is major concern that vaping is appealing...
...to increasingly younger customers
The device has now hooked countless teenagers
In 2018 the Food and Drug Administration reported...
...an alarming increase in high-school students vaping
A 78% increase in 2018 alone
I am officially declaring e-cigarette use among youth...
...an epidemic in the United States
The reaction we’re seeing in the United States is a kind of mass hysteria
The problem is nothing like what it’s being portrayed as...
...by public-health officials in the United States
The evidence doesn’t support that kind of language
A national youth tobacco survey in America revealed...
...that there are many more teenagers trying e-cigarettes
But the number using them more regularly, nearly every day, is far smaller
And the vast majority of those previously used tobacco products
What you see is actually that among never-smokers, e-cigarette use is rare
The use regularly on a daily or nearly daily basis is extremely rare
And among all of those...
...the reports of cravings and signs of addiction is very small
Whereas with a cigarette, you see the conversion rate...
...from trying a cigarette to becoming a regular, addicted smoker...
...is really quite high. In people who just use an e-cigarette...
...and have never smoked, is really quite low
The e-cigarette phenomenon has really called into question...
...whether it’s just nicotine on its own that is highly addictive...
...or whether there’s something else going on
This goes against decades of widely held beliefs...
...around the addictive nature of nicotine
Nicotine is the chemical that causes addiction
It can change the way your brain works causing you to crave more nicotine
Combustible cigarettes are far more addictive...
...than vaping products because they deliver...
...many other chemicals, along with nicotine
What we call monoamine oxidase inhibitors
When you use nicotine, that causes release of dopamine...
...that dopamine is part of the dependence process
Now, if you’ve got a monoamine oxidase inhibitor that you’re inhaling as well...
...and that’s preventing that dopamine from being broken down...
...it’s amplifying the effect of nicotine
Cigarettes are actually giving you a cocktail of psychoactive drugs
And bingo, you’ve got a highly addictive product...
...when if you had nicotine alone, not so much
If nicotine is more addictive in cigarettes than vapes...
...then is it harmful on its own?
We’ve conflated nicotine with cigarettes, so nicotine was the devil
Really it’s not nicotine that’s causing the damage
In the doses that you get it from a cigarette, the risks are minimal
And the reason we know that is because...
...there is a part of the world which takes in a lot of nicotine...
...in a form that isn’t smoking
Scandinavians have been using snus, a form of chewing tobacco, for centuries
Frequent users receive high concentrations of nicotine...
...on a daily basis, for decades
Now, if nicotine were causing the kind of consequences...
...that smokers suffer from...
...we would definitely see it and we don’t see it
But the myth still persists
It’s a myth that is driving health campaigns...
...in America and around the world...
...especially focusing on teenagers
Scientists say it can change your brain
There’s a narrative going around now born out of the United States...
...around nicotine being damaging to the adolescent brain
This is based on studies in animals in their...
...version of the adolescent stage of development
But the epidemiology itself is not backing up what they are trying to assert
People have been using nicotine for centuries
If nicotine in adolescents were causing this lasting damage to the brain...
...would we not have seen it?
What critics will say to this...
...is that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence
And that is a good point
That said, we should be careful about getting too hysterical about...
...the long-term impacts of children vaping nicotine
British public-health experts say that e-cigarettes are around...
...95% less harmful than tobacco
That’s only a back-of-the-cigarette-packet calculation
So other than nicotine, what else is in them?
The liquid contains glycerol or propylene glycol...
...which is the substance that makes the visible vapour
Basically what we use in stage smoke
There’s a lot of studies done on it and we know...
...what effect it has on the lungs
As far as we can tell, it doesn’t cause an inflammatory reaction
It causes a local dryness in the membranes
Also, trace amounts of heavy metals...
...from the heating elements can be inhaled
Heavy metals are not the sort of thing...
...you want to be inhaling in any amount
It’s fair to say that we don’t really know the long-term effects...
...that these are going to have on anyone who vapes
Indeed, for any of the components of e-cigarettes
But the point about vaping is you’re supposed to use it to stop smoking...
...which is really harmful, and then use vaping to help yourself quit
In 2018 the global e-cigarette market was valued at $15.7bn dollars
It’s expected to almost triple by 2023
Appealing flavours have helped the vaping industry to flourish
I’ve got a blue raspberry candy, a strawberry kiwi custard
One of my favourites—whipped peanut butter and caramel...
...it tastes great and it helps people to quit smoking
Yet the many flavours have caused an uproar in America
Cherry crush! How can you sit here and say you’re not marketing to children?
Today Michigan will become the first state in the nation...
...to ban flavoured e-cigarettes and vaping products
Marc Slis gave testimony to help block...
...an emergency flavour ban in his state of Michigan
The numbers in my shop are that 99% of my customers use flavours
The flavours are absolutely necessary and they are the key to quitting smoking
In early 2020 President Trump banned almost all flavours...
...of e-cigarette cartridges across the nation
And globally e-cigarettes are now entirely banned in 30 countries
For many of us that sounds crazy because in those same countries...
...you’ve got high smoking prevalence...
...and they’re not really doing very much about it
In Lebanon, for example, where e-cigarettes are now banned...
...the World Health Organisation says...
...almost 26% of all male deaths were tobacco related in 2017
My concern is that forbidding e-cigarettes is going to deter smokers...
...from switching to something far less deadly
Countries should regulate e-cigarettes very tightly...
...rather than banning them
Public Health England, they are now currently opening up vape shops...
...in their hospitals. They know it works, they know it saves lives
Governments need to think about tightly regulating e-cigarettes
Take a leaf out of the book of the EU
What goes into them, the quality of the devices...
...and tightly control how they’re marketed
What you want from a public-health perspective is to capture...
...the benefits of e-cigarettes as a tool for helping smokers to quit...
...whilst not appealing to young people who never would have smoked at all