It was with some shock that Irish Vape Vendors Association learned of an outlandish article in Irish Sunday Mirror yesterday, Sept 23. Prof Sherif Sultan from Galway Clinic called for a ban on vaping and warned: “It’s more dangerous than smoking and booze combined”. Speaking this morning, Declan Connolly, director of IVVA, said that “this statement from Prof Sherif Sultan is blatantly untrue, and these ill-informed comments should be withdrawn immediately. There has been ever growing negative hysteria about vaping in recent weeks, and articles such as the one published in yesterday’s Irish Sunday Mirror will persuade current vapers to go back smoking, and have the added effect of discouraging current smokers from switching to vaping which is at least 95% safer than smoking, according to Public Health England and backed up by the Royal College of Physicians and Cancer Research UK.”
Unfortunately, the article in Irish Sunday Mirror, didn’t stop there, and readers were also informed about another lady whose “lung consultant told her he would prefer to see her “smoke a cigarette rather than vape””.
If the message being promoted by these cardio & lung consultants, and the Irish Sunday Mirror, is to go back smoking, then there is something very seriously wrong. Smoking will prematurely kill 50% of those who smoke.
The Irish Vape Vendors Association also call on Simon Harris & Department of Health to issue a statement. The 200,000 people who vape in Ireland, and those smokers currently considering switching, need to be informed with evidence based data and recommendations.
On Thursday, the Centre for Disease Control & Protection (CDC) in US posted their latest recommendations on vaping, and state “If you are an adult who used e-cigarettes containing nicotine to quit cigarette smoking, do not return to smoking cigarettes.”
Writing in British Medical Journal on Saturday, Prof John Britton (Director of the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies, University of Nottingham) states “The effects of nicotine on the human body are broadly similar to those of caffeine, indicating that long term use probably represents a health risk similar to that of coffee consumption. Since the harms of smoking arise not from nicotine, but from the many other toxins in tobacco smoke, it follows that providing smokers with nicotine in a smoke free formulation should enable smokers to quit smoking more easily, by removing the need to overcome addiction to nicotine. Unlike conventional nicotine replacement therapies, electronic cigarettes achieve exactly this by delivering nicotine in a vapour that, while not harmless, is substantially less toxic than smoke.”