Vaping could save up to 6.6 milion lives

According to a new study published in the journal Tobacco Control, vaping could save millions of lives, if smokers switched from smoking cigarettes to e-cigarettes.

08. 11. 2017.

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The authors of the study used complex computer models to account for many risks and benefits. It addresses tobacco control concerns, considering increased usage by non-nicotine users, and scenarios where e-cigarettes present much higher levels of harm than are currently expected.

The most optimistic projection in the study shows 6.6 million smokers could avoid premature death if 10 percent of the smoking population quits over each of the next 10 years, living a combined 86.7 million more years. Even the most pessimistic model shows that 1.6 million people could avoid early death over the same period.

Lead autor David Levy, a professor of oncology at the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, Georgetown University Medical Center, in Washington, D.C stated to Reuters: “Old policies need to be supplemented with policies that encourage substituting far more deadly cigarettes for e-cigarettes”. The co-authors on the this research include doctors and professors David Abrams, Raymond Niaura, and Ron Borland.

Because of the prestige and renome of the authors, and the fact that the study is published in an anti-vaping journal, the study has received considerable positive coverage in the press.

The authors strike at the prohibitionist wing of public health, noting that “the tobacco control community has had divided approaches to e-cigarettes, and in the process may have lost focus on cigarettes, the most deadly form of nicotine delivery.” Which is exactly what vaping industry has been saying for years.