Less oversight than a bag of dog food

While I was surfing the net looking for vaping stories to talk about I found this one from NBC entitled “What’s So Bad About E-Cigarettes?” I felt it did a decent job of showing both sides of the vaping argument but again the anti-vapers are unmatched in their hyperbole.

First let’s hear from a pulmonologist at the Georgetown University School of Medicine…

“Electronic cigarettes may represent the next evolution of nicotine replacement, supplanting the gum, patch and the existing inhaler. However, most consumers would be shocked to realize the products they buy have less oversight than a bag of dog food, and are often manufactured and imported from countries that have histories of tainted pharmaceutical and food products,” Cobb added.

Just because something has no government oversight doesn’t necessarily make it a bad thing. Yes, I am sure there are dangerous knock offs out there but that can be said about a lot of products. How many recalls have their been in the past few years from major retail outlets because of lead found in various products. Products, I may add, that are supposed to be overseen by the government. In my opinion if you’re going to a quality ape store or buying name disposables you shouldn’t have too much to worry about, Besides, if a vape store is going to make a faulty product they probably won’t be in business long. Heaven forfend that an industry in this country should be self-regulated, but again I don’t think the FDA rules are anything to worry about yet.

Now lets’s hear from a smoking cessation specialist from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center here in North Carolina…

Spangler’s been studying this and doesn’t have final data yet. But in general, e-cigarettes appear slightly less effective than nicotine gum or patches or drugs such as Chantix, he says.

“I do have about 20 percent of my smoking patients in my clinic who are using electronic cigarettes,” he said. “Of the patients who use them, about 10 percent of them actually quit smoking using electronic cigarettes.”

Is it just me or do you never hear people rave about how the patch or Chantix helped them quit smoking? For the most part I hear from people who couldn’t stand being in Chantix and went right back to smoking. I quit smoking while on the patch but it was only temporary, The longest I stayed quit on the patch was 9 months and I would sneak a cigarette now and then. Vaping is the only thing that has worked for me and I’ve been literally smoke free for 9 months now. So if vaping is helping people quit smoking, even 10 percent of people, what is the problem? That’s 10% that won’t be smoking anymore. Any method that gets people to quit smoking for good should be celebrated, not vilified.

Now let’s get to some busybodies…

Public health advocates say even that worries them. “You should always be suspicious when the tobacco industry applauds something,” says Tom Glynn, senior director of cancer science and trends for the American Cancer Society.

Apparently vaping retailers and the tobacco industry are one in the same. Granted some of the e-cig makers are owned by tobacco companies this isn’t a vast conspiracy by ‘Big Tobacco’.

“Like cigarette companies, e-cigarette makers claim they don’t market to kids. But they’re using the same themes and tactics tobacco companies have long used to market regular cigarettes to kids,” says Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

Really? How are they marketing to kids? Have they taken out ads on Nickelodeon? I was a kid when smoking was still acceptable to do indoors and I witness a ton of billboards and print advertising about cigarettes. None of them cause me to start smoking at age 15. Give kids a little more credit than that.

Again, I think all these people and organizations are getting up in arms about vaping for two reasons. The first is it looks like smoking and the second is that e-cigs have the word cigarette in them so they must be the same.

I wonder what it must feel like to be outraged over semantics.