Conflicted Coverage over Ecig Continues
It’s just one person’s truth against another’s as the media still hunts out fear rather than fact
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by Dave Cross
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“As the vaping movement gathers steam, health experts have grown increasingly worried about e-cigs,” explains the Dallas News, “and whether they might be hurting more people than they help — including impressionable teens.” So in the opening salvo, Thor Christensen lines up all health “experts” against whomever – the inference being that they are not experts. He lines them up to defend everybody stupid enough to vape...but especially teens. And especially the impressionable ones.
As this feature is being compiled it’s early, far too early to be drinking anything other than a cup of coffee. So it’s with a heavy heart that the Anti-vaping Advocacy Game has to be pushed to one side. In paragraph 3, we discover that vapour is made up of a “cocktail” of nicotine and “chemicals like formaldehyde”. You are welcome to knock back the drink of your choice and we thank you for playing Antz Bingo. The “cocktail”, the word used because it implies a lack of purity, “poses a very real risk to heart health” according to an unknown doctor not citing any studies – yey! Time for another drink.
“It’s scary,” drink. “They’re addictive and totally unregulated,” two more drinks. “Just like street drugs,” neck half a bottle of vodka. The half bottle might not be part of the game but it is recommended to dull the senses to this onslaught of tripe.“[They] aren’t required to disclose what substances are in them,” yet another drink. So, “we don’t know what long-term effect they have on the heart or the brain”. Drink with gay abandon as you puzzle over how one minute they can pose a real risk to the heart and the next we have no idea what effects they have on the heart. At least we can agree with vaping’s effects on the brain – those virulently opposed to it seem to lose control of theirs. There is no other conclusion that can be drawn, especially when supported by the evidence of someone making the following statement: “People are basically inhaling a mystery vapour.” Oh, take another drink. With no hint of irony, Christensen goes on to write that people are being misled about ecigs. They are, Thor, being misled by people like you.
James Felsen, a semi-retired doctor, argues that the entire aspect of harm reduction is being lost in debate. He postulates that ecigs, like cannabis and condoms, are falling victim to a polarized environment where the only option being offered up by Christensen’s experts is to “just say no”. “However,” he says, “if one is engaged in reducing high-risk pregnancies, unwanted and abused children, HIV/Aids, hepatitis C, venereal diseases, lung cancer and other serious medical conditions, such an approach is inadequate.”
Inadequate, dangerous and liable to get you very drunk.
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous vape companies to develop content for their websites.
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