Despite being both a governing body and a health professional, Councilman Shawn Klein, who was absent on the night of the final vote, thinks that the council took a step in the right direction.
“I am proud of this council and the action it took,” he said about the final vote. “No one wants to live in a nanny state but a community needs to figure out where it should draw a line. This council had an opportunity to try to limit damage, to protect its residents, and did not let that opportunity go by. As a town and as a government, we need to continue to make choices about what kind of town we want to be.”
The vaping industry is not the tobacco industry
Sadly, Klein continued by saying that cigarette manufactures have historically been “massively dishonest about how addictive and dangerous their products were,” and that documents have indicated that cigarettes were “designed and altered to be extremely addictive.”
The councilman went on to list a number of negative side effects of vaping, most of which have been proven untrue, however he missed a main point. No public health expert or vaping advocate is suggesting anyone takes up vaping, unless its for smoking cessation purposes, since the devices are known to be significantly safer than regular cigarettes.
Policy informed by misinformation
In a press release last February, Public Health England (PHE), released findings from an e-cigarette review that was conducted by leading independent tobacco experts, and updated the organization’s 2015 vaping report, confirming that vaping is at least 95% safer than smoking.
The claims made by Councilman Shawn Klein are an unfortunate example of the misinformation that is still rife and spreading in relation to vaping products. Misinformation that is informing policy, and sadly stopping millions of smokers from considering the switch that could save their life.
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