Physician Says that Youth Vaping Leads to Crack Cocaine Addiction

In anarticle published on New Year ' s Eve in thePhiladelphia Inquirer, a physician from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine tackles what should have been a very simple question: " Are e-cigarettes any safer for my child than tobacco? "The actual answer, based on the scientific evidence, is unequivocally " Yes. " However, that ' s not her answer.The Rest of the StoryInstead of simply acknowledging that e-cigarettes are indeed safer than smoking tobacco, the physician gives a five-paragraph answer in which she never actually answers the question. If anything, her dire warnings about the unknown risks of e-cigarettes seems to suggest that her answer is " No. "Certainly, a reader who is unfamiliar with the scientific literature might well come away from this article believing that vaping is just as harmful for their child than smoking.Sadly, this is not only inaccurate, but it is a tremendous disservice to parents because if they give the same information to their children, it could have devastating public health consequences. If youth are widely led to believe that smoking is no more hazardous than vaping, then the public ' s appreciation of the severe hazards of smoking will be undermined. This will in turn undermine what has been a remarkably dramatic decline in youth smoking driven by the de-normalization of smoking in our society.Equally disturbing is how ridiculous this physician ' s answer is. She argues that: " e-cigarettes are a potential “gateway drug”...
Source: The Rest of the Story: Tobacco News Analysis and Commentary - Category: Addiction Source Type: blogs