Dr Kayat: Back With More Nonsense
Planet of the Vapes reported Dr Sara Kayat to the General Medical Council for her popcorn lung claims – but she’s back on television claiming that vapes are “more addictive” than cigarettes
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by Dave Cross
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Dr Sara Kayat misled viewers, saying: "Often, the nicotine found within vapes can be significantly higher than those in cigarettes."
She continued by telling them vapes “can be even more addictive" than smoking tobacco.
Only the other week, Action on Smoking and Health pleaded with media organisations to be more responsible when it comes to stories about vaping and combat misinformation.
Action on Smoking and Health responded to Kayat’s nonsense, saying: “The claim that vaping is more addictive than smoking cigarettes is not supported by the evidence.
“Cigarettes carry the highest risk of addiction following initiation, due to cigarette designs that facilitate efficient inhalation of nicotine-laden smoke deep into the lung and from there to the brain, and constituents that reinforce the addictiveness of nicotine.”
Action on Smoking and Health say that while smokers switching to vaping may remain addicted to nicotine, “they are reducing their risks of relapsing back to smoking which is far more harmful. The same is true for licensed nicotine products (NRT), which are licensed by the medicines regulator to help people stop smoking and prevent relapse back to smoking, the main reasons why ex-smokers vape.
“One analysis of US surveys of youth use between 2012 and 2019 found that young people who vape but don’t smoke are much less likely to be strongly nicotine dependent than those who smoke.
“Cigarettes generally contain 10 to 15 mg nicotine per rod, which is 200 to 300 mg per pack of 20 cigarettes. A UK standard disposable vape with the highest legal level of nicotine (20 mg/ml) contains 2 ml of liquid which amounts to 40 mg of nicotine.
“There is real-world evidence from population surveys in England that smokers who use an e-cigarette in a quit attempt are more likely to succeed in that attempt. Changes in the prevalence of e-cigarette use through to 2022 have been associated with increases in the success rate of quit attempts. This suggests that e-cigarettes have helped in the region of 30,000 to 50,000 additional smokers to successfully quit each year in England since 2013.
“The persistent level of inaccurate reporting around vaping is likely a driver for the inaccurate perceptions of the relative harms of vaping compared to smoking. We have published a mythbuster to address this.”
Previously, Dr Kayat told ITV's This Morning: “[Popcorn lung] is an inflammatory lung disease that can occur as a result of vaping.”
Public Health England, now called the UK Health Security Agency, pointed out in 2018 that Kayat’s claim is complete nonsense: “One of the most commonly held concerns is that e-cigarettes might cause ‘popcorn lung’. However, diacetyl is banned as an ingredient from e-cigarettes and e-liquids in the UK. It had been detected in some e-liquid flavourings in the past, but at levels hundreds of times lower than in cigarette smoke. Even at these levels, smoking is not a major risk factor for this rare disease.”
Cancer Research UK unequivocally states: “Diacetyl was banned in e-cigarette liquids under the EU Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) in 2016. E-cigarettes don’t cause the lung condition known as popcorn lung.”
Maybe it is high time the GMC stepped in to prevent this self-publicist from spreading demonstrable lies on national television.
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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