World Vaping Day – Thursday 22nd March 2012
Thousands of smokers and ex-smokers across the world will be celebrating World Vaping Day on Thursday 22nd March 2012 to celebrate the success of the electronic cigarette, and to encourage new smokers who can’t or don’t want to quit smoking to switch to the e-cigarette. This press release is issued by the ECCA UK secretariat at info(at)eccauk(dot)org, http://www.eccauk.org, on behalf of the World Vaping Day Project Group, which comprises the following e-cigarette consumer groups: ECCA UK (UK), Stelda NL (Nederland), CASAA (USA), IGED (Deutschland), ATACA (Australia), and contact information can be found on the World Vaping Day website.
(PRWEB) February 25, 2012
Thousands of smokers and ex-smokers across the world will be celebrating World Vaping Day on Thursday 22nd March 2012. At http://www.world-vaping-day.com can be found more details of this global event. The day of celebration is organised by the World Vaping Day Project Group, comprising of following e-cigarette consumer associations: ECCA UK (UK), Stelda NL (Nederland), CASAA (USA), IGED (Deutschland), ATACA (Australia), and contact information can be found on the World Vaping Day website.
World Vaping day aims to celebrate the success of the electronic cigarette and to encourage new smokers who can’t or don’t want to quit smoking to switch to the e-cigarette. It is already known this approach (called THR or tobacco harm reduction) works extremely well and saves huge numbers of lives, because Sweden reduced the number of smokers by 40% [1], and achieved the lowest smoking-related mortality rate of any developed country, by the use of smokeless tobacco. In fact, this approach works orders of magnitude better than any official methods currently used.
Sweden has the lowest lung cancer rate in Europe [2] and the lowest smoking death rate of any comparable country [3]. E-Cigarettes are very likely to work even better than than Swedish smokeless tobacco (Snus) in this regard – so countries that fully embrace the use of e-cigarettes should eventually be able to achieve an even better result than the Swedish reduction of smoking by 40% [4].
On the World Vaping Day website, printable information and flyers about vaping have been prepared, and vapers (people who use electronic cigarettes) are organising events where smokers can try electronic cigarettes.
E-Cigarettes are devices that deliver nicotine without the tar and 5,300 other chemicals and carcinogens found in regular cigarettes. When a person inhales on an electronic cigarette, a liquid solution that can contain nicotine is heated producing a vapor; crucially, and in contrast to tobacco cigarettes, no combustion takes place. The result is a water-based mist, not smoke.
According to scientists like Professor Carl Phillips and Professor Michael Siegel [5], electronic cigarettes carry a fraction of the risk of smoking cigarettes, and are no more harmful than drinking a cup of coffee. And the UK government’s ‘nudge unit’ recently stated: “There’s no doubt it [the electronic cigarette] can save many lives and hundreds of millions of pounds.” Quotes from all the public health experts who have endorsed e-cigarettes can be seen here: http://www.world-vaping-day.com/quotes.html
Dr J Nitzkin, Chair, Tobacco Control Task Force, AAPHP (American Association of Public Health Physicians) said: “E-cigarettes deliver the same nicotine found in the pharmaceutical products, with no more contamination by toxic substances than the pharmaceutical products already approved by FDA.” And further, that “If we get all tobacco smokers to switch from regular cigarettes to electronic cigarettes, we would eventually reduce the US death toll from more than 400,000 a year to less than 4,000, maybe as low as 400.”
E-Cigarettes have the potential to drastically reduce the death toll from smoking. Get the message:
E-Cigarettes are the #1 weapon against smoking-related death and disease
For more information about World Vaping Day, visit the website:
http://www.world-vaping-day.com
or contact:
info[AT]world-vaping-day.com
The World Vaping Day Project Group comprises the following e-cigarette consumer groups: ECCA UK (UK), Stelda NL (Nederland), CASAA (USA), IGED (Deutschland), ATACA (Australia), and their contact information can be found on the World Vaping Day website or at the following consumer association websites:
eccauk.org
casaa.org
stelda.nl
ig-ed.org
ataca.org.au
References
[1] Sweden reduced their smoking prevalence to 12%, the lowest in any developed country, a reduction of >40% compared to the usual prevalence of 22% or higher:
pnlee.co.uk/Downloads/ISS/ISS-Sweden_090724.pdf
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12930202
who.int/tobacco/en/atlas5.pdf
swedishmatch.com/en/Snus-and-health/Tobacco-use-in-Sweden/
acsh.org/factsfears/newsid.362/news_detail.asp
physorg.com/news97993016.html
tobaccoprogram.org/pdf/TC12349.pdf
[2] Sweden has the lowest male lung cancer rate in Europe: OECD Health data 2010, diagram: eccauk.org/index.php/ecca-library/21-why-is-snus-important.html
ec.europa.eu/health/population_groups/docs/men_health_extended_en.pdf
acsh.org/healthissues/newsID.744/healthissue_detail.asp
isi.cbs.nl/iamamember/CD2/pdf/134.PDF
[3] Sweden has the lowest smoking-related mortality of any developed country because there are more Snus users than smokers and because the health risk of Snus use at population level is shown by more than 150 clinical trials over 25 years to be the same as for non-smokers:
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17498798
biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/7/36
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21163315
tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/12/4/349.full
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17498797
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17498798
ec.europa.eu/health/ph_determinants/life_style/Tobacco/Documents/tobacco_fr_en.pdf — chart p39 — population adjusted mortality = far lower than for the UK and US
[4] Because the uptake of e-cigarettes (5% prevalence already in some countries) is much faster than that which occurred with Snus (50 years plus to reach current usage figures), and because it is estimated that the health risks for e-cigarettes are equivalent to or less than those for Snus, experts estimate that the health benefit at population level will eclipse even that of Snus:
eccauk.org/index.php/tobacco-harm-reduction-uk.html chart p39 – population adjusted mortality = far lower than for the UK and US ref#15
ihra.net/files/2011/07/13/Rodu_-_Burden_of_Mortality.pdf chart p39 – population adjusted mortality = far lower than for the UK and US
eccauk.org/index.php/uk-sitrep.html — e-cigarette uptake in the UK from 0 at introduction in 2006 to measurement by ASH UK of 310,000 e-cigarette users in 2010 averages more than 500% growth per year, and is even higher in the US since there are nearly 10 times more e-cig users.
[5] Relevant quotes from expert epidemiologists are at: world-vaping-day.com/quotes.html — all original sources are referenced there — some of the shorter ones are given here:
“If we get all tobacco smokers to switch from regular cigarettes to electronic cigarettes, we would eventually reduce the US death toll from more than 400,000 a year to less than 4,000, maybe as low as 400.” – Dr J Nitzkin, AAPHP
“…..But nicotine is one of the safest of drugs, and is being sold as the alternative to the most dangerous consumer product – the tobacco cigarette. Low risk compared to cigarettes is the real world risk that smokers face.” – Dr Murray Laugesen
“They [people who use electronic cigarettes] are not going to die from an e-cigarette.” – Dr Murray Laugesen
“AAPHP favors a permissive approach to e-cigarettes because the possibility exists to save the lives of four million of the eight million current adult American smokers who will otherwise die of a tobacco-related illness over the next twenty years.” – Dr J Nitzkin, AAPHP [he specifically refers to a projected reduction of 50% in smoking mortality if e-cigarettes are permitted and promoted]
“Smokers smoke because they are addicted to nicotine in cigarettes, but it is the smoke, not the nicotine, which causes a long list of diseases, including lung cancer, heart disease, stroke and emphysema.” – Dr Richard Daines, New York State Health Commissioner
“Nicotine is the addictive ingredient in cigarettes that keeps smokers hooked, but it’s not the ingredient that harms smokers’ health,” emphasized Ursula Bauer, Ph.D., M.P.H, director of the state’s Tobacco Control Program. “With safe nicotine products, smokers can give up the smoke without giving up the nicotine.” – Ursula Bauer, Ph.D., M.P.H, director of the New York State Tobacco Control Program
“…..harm is not caused by the nicotine, but by toxic products of combustion. A cigarette smoker can reduce his or her risk of future tobacco-related death ….. by 99.9% or better by switching to a nicotine-only delivery product like one of the pharmaceutical products or e-cigarettes.” – Dr J Nitzkin, AAPHP
“THR has been described as having “the potential to lead to one of the greatest public health breakthroughs in human history by fundamentally changing the forecast of a billion cigarette-caused deaths this century.” – Prof Brad Rodu
“…..our estimate is that [the e-cigarette] is probably in the order of 99 percent less harmful than smoking, I think there’s little doubt that it’s down in the neighborhood.” – Prof Carl Phillips
“In exposure terms, quitting equates to switching to the e-cig.” – Prof Riccardo Polosa
“Now the safest of the tobacco products are what they call Snus. And the literature on Snus, which is evaluated on our website, basically shows that in the best of the epidemiological studies available today Snus do not increase any cause of death. In other words, if there is a health hazard from Snus it is smaller than can be measured with these studies. With that in mind we would figure that a tobacco product that is delivered with just the nicotine and without any of the other toxic chemicals should be at least as safe. So if we can figure that the nicotine in the e-cigarettes is basically a generic version of the same nicotine that is in prescription products, we have every reason to believe that the hazard posed by e-cigarettes would be much lower than one percent, probably lower than one tenth of one percent of the hazard posed by regular cigarettes.” – Dr Joel Nitzkin.