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Ross Responds

Louise Ross, National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training and Vice Chair of the NNA, responds to the 16 paediatric professionals in The Guardian

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Yesterday, POTV covered the letter from sixteen paediatric healthcare professionals that was published in The Guardian. They claimed that “we cannot sit back and accept a blanket message from Public Health England that vaping is 95% less harmful than tobacco smoking”. The errors and guesswork have been called out in a response from Louise Ross, National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training and Vice Chair of the New Nicotine Alliance.

Louise Ross writes: “The letter from 16 paediatric professionals (Vaping poses serious threat to children, 27 November) is an argument based on error and supposition, starting with the claim that ‘nobody knows exactly what substances are in these liquids’. The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency knows exactly what’s in them, and UK products are highly regulated. Surveillance by Action on Smoking and Health and Cancer Research UK points to vaping displacing smoking among young people, and that there is only negligible use among never-smokers.”

“The letter writers might like to consider the positive effect of parents who smoked switching to vaping, avoiding smoking-related disability and premature death. That surely improves young people’s wellbeing.”

We pointed out yesterday that, according to ASH UK, Cancer Research UK and the ongoing research conducted by Smoking In England, there is no evidence of a significant uptake of vaping in non-smoking teen in the United Kingdom.

Well done, Louise.

Related:

  • “Vaping, smoking and young people”, The Guardian – [link]
  • “The Coordinated Threat”, POTV – [link]
  • National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training – [link]
  • New Nicotine Alliance – [link]
  • Use of e-cigarettes among young people in Great Britain, ASH UK – [link]
  • Smoking Toolkit Study – [link]
Dave Cross avatar

Dave Cross

Journalist at POTV
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Dave 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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