The differing reality of Web Health

Breaking News! E-Cigs Will Help Them Quit Smoking! A survey says…

Same old same old. Whenever someone references a “survey” it does make me wonder who wrote the survey, and how they interpret the results.  This one is unfortunately no different.

E-cigarette users are much more hopeful that the devices will help them quit smoking than the general public is, including people who just smoke traditional tobacco cigarettes, according to a new French survey.

See, this first sentence bothers me immensely. We’ve already seen that many of the general public incorrectly believe that vaping is as harmful or more harmful than smoking. It’s no surprise to see that the ‘conclusion’ reached by this particular survey hints at the very same thing. It would appear that it’s only vapers that believe vapour products are harmless whilst everyone else believes they are not. Sad but true.

“Vapers” (people who use e-cigarettes) also are much less concerned about how possible toxins in e-cigarette vapors might affect them and those around them, said lead study author Dr. Sebastien Couraud, a doctor of respiratory medicine and thoracic oncology at Lyon Sud Hospital and Lyon University Cancer Institute in France.

Interesting comment about the exhaled vapour from the lead author. It’s almost as if he doesn’t believe it himself, which is pretty clear as the article goes on. The shocking thing is, we already know that exhaled vapour is safe, so why making a big deal out of it in his statement is a little mind-boggling.

“E-cigarette users appear to have a different view of reality, compared with everyone else,” Couraud said. “Their reality is elsewhere.”

Ah. Therein lies the crux of it all. Apparently all vapers are deluded individuals with no real concept of reality. Please. This is a not-so-subtle derogatory attack on an already heavily marginalised sector of the population. I’d dearly love to say that Conrad’s view of reality is heavily distorted by the back-hander paychecks he gets to spout utter nonsense, but then I’d be stooping to his level wouldn’t I. Oh well.

Findings presented at meetings are generally viewed as preliminary until they’ve been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

So this ‘survey’ hasn’t even been reviewed yet and it is getting attention. Of course, the subject is the oh so controversial electronic cigarettes which everyone loves to have a pop at. Well, there’s a whole host of actual experts, some of them are also doctors in respiratory medicine and thoracic oncology themselves and they tell us the exact opposite of what this moronic Conrad is saying. Give me strength.

About 69 percent of e-cigarette users believe the devices can help a person quit tobacco smoking, compared with just 31 percent of the general population, researchers found.

A whopping 69 percent of users believe the devices can help cessation, in comparison 31 percent of the general public say the same. I wonder just how much media propaganda is responsible for such low public figures. As a former smoker of 20 years, I can safely attest to the fact that vapour products can aid cessation but that is not their intended positioning. I don’t know about you, but I get fed up with saying that vapour products are not, never were and never will be cessation devices.

The findings from this survey highlight why regulation of e-cigarettes from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is needed as soon as possible, said ASCO spokesperson Dr. Jyoti Patel, an associate professor of hematology and oncology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

Sometimes, I really do wonder where they dredge up these so-called ‘experts’. I do wonder what results from this survey prompt the need to regulate the product, I mean it is obviously doing something (helping with cessation) that the FDA, CDC and the other agencies have consistently failed to do.

“For people who are addicted to nicotine, e-cigarettes don’t help,” said Patel. “They are still addicted, and they use a lot. It’s not a bridge to abstinence. It’s a way for them to stay addicted in a restaurant or an airplane, where they are unable to smoke.”

Here’s the thing. Our friend Nick O’Teen is not addictive. It is a freaking stimulant, much like caffeine but we never hear about people suffering from addiction to coffee now do we? It is pretty clear that this Putty dude has been well schooled in Glantzian pseudo-science, or at the very least told what to say to the media to over exaggerate anything and everything. This is true head/desk type stuff.

indeed, users of e-cigarettes tend to be much more dependent on nicotine than traditional cigarette smokers, based on a standard test of nicotine addiction, Couraud said. About 58 percent of e-cigarette users registered as very or highly addicted, compared with 46 percent of people who only smoked tobacco.

Oh dear. As far as I know, there is no standardise measuring for e-cig use, considering that a cigarette user sparks up, takes x number of puffs, but yet has to finish the cigarette. In contrast, a vaper can use his or her device for anywhere up to 5 or 6 seconds at a time, but can go several minutes or even hours between use. There is no way at all that the ‘standard test’ can truly be applied here. I smell a very twisted agenda, or at the very least a heavily twisted sense of reality.

For the study, Couraud and his colleagues surveyed nearly 1,500 residents of France. Ninety-three (6 percent) of those surveyed were e-cigarette users, and 74 of them also still smoked tobacco cigarettes, according to the survey.

Out of 1500 participants, only ninety-three were vapers. There seems to be a whole subset of number mashing going on here.

  • 33 percent of vapers (93 remember) believed the devices were effective for reducing death by lung cancer – 30 out of 93
  • 18 percent of smokers (74) believed the devices were effective for reducing death by lung cancer – 13 out of 74
  • 12 percent of the general population (1333) believe the devices were effective for reducing death by lung cancer – 159 out of 1333
  • 68 percent of vapers believed exhaled vapour is less harmful than cigarette smoke for the user, compared to 40 percent of the public
  • 87 percent of vapers said the vapors pose less of a threat to those around them than secondhand cigarette smoke would, compared to 55 percent of the public

“Probably they aren’t completely wrong, because we know that e-cigarettes are less toxic than traditional cigarettes,” Couraud said. “But there still is some toxicity, and they have a low awareness of that.”

“There is still some toxicity”, of course there is moron. There’s toxins in the everyday air we breathe, even more in cities where there’s a high level of traffic pollution, which by the way is far more harmful than the aerosol from a vapour product.

Couraud and Patel both said that American opinions of e-cigarettes likely are similar to those found in this French survey.

I strongly doubt that, the CDC makes damn sure that any surveys it does produce the information it needs to suit its own agenda, none of them favour vaping in any way, but even then the results published so far by the CDC do not lend any credence at all to their existing claims. Odd that isn’t it?

“I do have safety concerns for e-cigarettes because nicotine is bad for you, and we don’t know all of the risks with e-cigarettes,” said Masters, an oncologist at the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center in Newark, Del.

Oh yippee-ky-fuckin’-a. Another “we don’t know” hand wringer. The trouble with the infamous Nick O’Teen is that pretty much all studies performed are in conjunction with tobacco and smoking. There are very few studies dedicated to Nick on its own. You would have thought, given that our oh-so-considerate friends at Big Pharma sell Nicotine Replacement Therapies there would be something, but no. But I keep forgetting, the Pharma Nick is all made from fairy dust and unicorn farts.

Oh let’s not forget the icing on this rather disgusting cake:

“But I struggle when I get asked by patients, should I use e-cigarettes? I don’t want to condone e-cigarettes as a healthy alternative, but could it be a less dangerous alternative? It could be,” he added.

I guess they conveniently forget that a number of vapers don’t actually use nicotine at all. Honestly, you really can’t make this stuff up.

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