Tobacco Company Claims that Smoking is No Worse than Vaping for Human Lung Disease

A major U.S. tobacco company on Saturday issued a press release boasting that smoking its cigarettes is no more harmful than vaping an e-cigarette that contains no tobacco and involves no combustion, at least in terms of lung disease. A spokesperson for the company was kind enough to allowThe Rest of the Story to interview him. The transcript appears below, with only slight editing for purposes of clarity. I was given permission to publish the interview, but under the condition that I not name the spokesperson.The Rest of the Story: Let me first make sure I have this correctly. You are saying that in terms of lung disease, smoking is no more dangerous than using an e-cigarette?Tobacco company spokesperson: That ' s right. E-cigarettes are as dangerous as cigarettes for human lung disease. "The Rest of the Story: But that is almost impossible to believe. I mean, cigarettes cause more than 400,000 deaths a year, andmore than 100,000 of those deaths are from chronic obstructive lung disease. You ' re saying that soon we ' re going to have more than 100,000 vapers dying every year from emphysema and chronic bronchitis?Tobacco company spokesperson: Yes.The Rest of the Story: But we haven ' t seen a single case. Shouldn ' t we observe a single case of vaping-induced COPD before we draw such a massive conclusion? I mean, as you know, there is probably no human disease that we conclude is caused by a particular exposure before we actually have at least one case. There were hundreds o...
Source: The Rest of the Story: Tobacco News Analysis and Commentary - Category: Addiction Source Type: blogs