How e-cigarettes could save lives
Yes, we still need research on the long-term health and behavioral impacts of e-cigarettes. Brad Rodu, a pathologist at the University of Louisville, offers an apt analogy between electronic cigarettes and cellphones. When cellphones became popular in the late ’90s, there were no data on their long-term safety. As it turns out, the risk of a brain tumor with prolonged cellphone use is not zero, but it is very small and of uncertain health significance.
In the case of e-cigarettes, Rodu says that “at least a decade of continued use by thousands of users would need to transpire before confident assessments could be conducted.” Were the FDA to ban e-cigarette marketing until then, the promise of vaping would be put on hold. Meanwhile, millions of smokers who might otherwise switch would keep buying tobacco products. “We can’t say that decades of e-cigarette use will be perfectly safe,” Rodu told me, “but for cigarette users, we are sure that smoke is thousands of times worse.”
