Recent statistics have shown a decline in smokers in Canada and some have pointed to the success and popularisation of e-cigs as the reason.
Despite how Canadian and US legislators continually disavow vaping, ex-smokers have switched to e-cigarettes to avoid the majority of carcinogens in tobacco smoke to protect their health.
And it appears that the Canadians switching to vaping are protecting their health, if mainstream science is anything to go by. According to scientists from British American Tobacco, e-cig vapour doesn’t induce DNA mutations like tobacco smoke, and doesn’t trigger an oxidative stress in viable lung epithelial cells.
“I would think that tobacco-control people would be celebrating. That’s more rapid (a drop) than would be predicted. With increasing use of e-cigarettes, and decreasing use of tobacco, it totally makes sense that there has been substitution going on,” says Mark Tyndall, executive director of the B.C. Centre for Disease Control.
David Sweanor, an Ottawa lawyer and member of the anti-smoking movement, supports e-cigs and believes that the trend has been inspired by consumers and entrepreneurs, not by officials.
“It is being done despite the anti-smoking establishment,” said Sweanor. “It isn’t that governments have been encouraging this … quite the opposite. Governments have been doing things to get in the way.”
There appears to be some validity in Sweanor’s comments, that legislators worldwide have attempted to prohibit the popularisation of e-cigarettes, and e-cigarettes should be credited for the sharp drop in smoking.