US vapers “save $1,400 per year”
An American consumer advisory group has found that smokers who switch to vaping are saving considerable amounts of money. Although this won’t come as a surprise to any but the most gadget-addicted vapers, it provides more confirmation that electronic cigarettes can benefit financial, as well as physical, health.
LendEDU, which provides free advice on how to manage money, carried out a poll of 1,000 vapers in the USA. The poll was limited to people who vape daily, to give an accurate picture of how much the typical switcher spends. They found that, on average, US vapers are saving $118.05 every month compared to what they used to spend on cigarettes, giving an annual saving of $1,416.60.
Other facts that emerged from the poll were that the average vaper spends $80.20 on each new device they buy and makes 9.29 vaping-related purchases a month, with an average monthly spend of $60.76 on liquid or cartridges. Overall, 71% of vapers said the switch was saving them money.
Tasmania tightens vaping regulations
Australia’s war against harm reduction showed no sign of moderating this week, as the island state of Tasmania amended its 1997 smoking ban to include e-cigarettes. From 29 November the state’s vapers, already handicapped by some of the harshest laws in the world, will face a wide range of further crackdowns.
The amendment brings the law on vapour products fully into line with the law on tobacco. This means anyone who sells them requires a state-issued licence, following checks to ensure they’re a “fit and proper” person to sell e-cigs. There will be increased penalties for selling them to under-18s and it also becomes a crime to give vapour products to under-18s. Vaping will be banned everywhere that smoking is, and no advertising will be allowed.
According to the state government the aims of the amended law are to prevent people taking up vaping, protect the public against “second-hand vapour” and “ensure our existing efforts to reduce smoking are protected.”
“Second-hand vapour” is not a problem
A new study provides further evidence that so-called “second hand vapour” from e-cigarettes poses no detectable risk to health. The paper, which will be published in the quarterly Journal of Aerosol Science in January, examined the risk of lung cancer for both vapers and those exposed to vapour. They found that, statistically, vapour is 5,700 times less likely than cigarette smoke to cause the disease. In real world terms this means there is no risk.
The team from the University of Cassino looked at the actual chemical composition of vapour, rather than testing unrealistic cell culture models. They found that the levels of all harmful substances are well within the safety limits issued by both the WHO and the US Environmental Protection Agency. Their conclusion was that the levels of excess lung capacity risk from inhaling vapour were “extremely low”.
PHE slams Australian vape inquiry
An official note from Public Health England, written in mid-October but released late last week, expresses serious criticism of Australia’s latest inquiry into vaping. Outlining “a series of factual errors”, the document lays out a catalogue of errors in the Australian debate, which concluded that nicotine e-liquids should remain banned.
Among the more serious untruths PHE highlighted were that the UK has a fundamentally different approach to vaping than the rest of Europe (all EU countries have similar laws); that the UK has never tried interventionist tobacco control measures (it has some of the strictest in the world, and is now realising that they don’t work); that the widely quoted figure of 95% safer was the result of “basically a vote” (it was based on the largest expert review of the evidence carried out so far); and that the UK’s world-leading Smoking Toolkit Study shows vaping to be “robustly associated” with smoking initiation (this is a completely false claim).
Stoptober turns into win for vape shops
The annual Stoptober campaign, run by the British National Health Service, has now finished for the year – and the results show that the campaign’s long-overdue endorsement of vaping has made a huge difference to its effectiveness. In previous years Stoptober has directed smokers to old-style medical products or NHS stop smoking clinics, but the public is well aware that these aren’t very effective. This year, however, vapour products were a prominent part of the campaign, and retailers report sales increases of up to 29% over the same period last year.
The prohibitionists have no interest in actual since. Of course second hand vapour poses no health risk to others; second hand smoke does’t either and tobacco control concealed that fact as well.