Vaping has become a support for those people looking to leave aside their addiction to tobacco. For this reason, more and more people are choosing electronic cigarettes, which, although not harmless, serve as a tool to abandon conventional cigarettes. Although there are some medical professionals who have proven to disagree, such as cardiologist Aurelio Rojas who has sent an alarming message through his social network Instagram. “There is a high risk of heart attack and stroke.”
In the video he insists on the importance of knowing vaping in depth before starting, because there are many things “that we still don’t know.” The well-known doctor Fernando Fernández Bueno, a doctor at the Gómez Ulla Hospital in Madrid who is also the spokesperson for the Platform for the Reduction of Harm from Smoking, wanted to respond to this precisely. This expert positions the vape as a support, an aid to quit smoking that has the particularity of being less harmful than conventional cigarettes.
In an interview for The SpanishFernández Bueso is blunt. Electronic cigarettes are “safe because it is the Ministry of Health that approves them and the Treasury that markets them, it is all a tremendous hypocrisy: I sell it, I market it but it is very bad… where are the sick vapers?”
“In Spain we have been vaping for 20 years and it is considered that there are now between 50,000 or 60,000 vapers, let’s say that 10% have been harmed by vaping, I say that in this time we should have had news of associated damage. And no one releases this data, why? Because they do not exist.”
The popcorn lung, as a decontextualized health message
Rojas refers in his video to ‘popcorn lung’ disease, an ailment that affects the lung alveoli, complicating the body’s ability to exchange gases. “It is a serious illness that frequently requires hospitalization and can cause death,” he says forcefully.
But studies say the opposite and several health experts as well as well-known organizations such as the National Health Service (NHS) of the United Kingdom have already spoken out on the matter. Not only have they ruled out that regulated vaping is linked to ‘popcorn lung’, but they also position electronic cigarettes as an effective tool for quitting tobacco. As appears in several reports, “vaping is less harmful than smoking” offering better results when compared to other traditional methods of quitting nicotine in adult smokers.
The damage is not in the nicotine, but in the combustion
The studies are based on a key approach, that the damage does not reside in nicotine but in the combustion of tobacco, which is responsible for the majority of toxic substances that cause cardiovascular, respiratory diseases and cancer. That is why the replacement of the traditional cigarette with non-combustion alternatives should be taken into account in a context in which one seeks to abandon tobacco.
French authorities also recognize that vaping plays a crucial role in quitting cigarettes. Although they assure that it is not harmless, the problem is not in the regulated product, but in the home manipulation of the liquids, which may add some harmful or dangerous substance.
For example, in the United States in 2019 there were some episodes of lung injuries that raised alarm linked to THC cartridges purchased through unregulated channels.
New Zealand has become, after Sweden, a ‘smoke-free’ country with a policy of reducing smoking through vapes, making it practically impossible for minors to access these products. Thanks to these measures, smuggling is also prevented.