Reduced-harm message getting lost

Federal public-health officials in the US might be neglecting their do-no-harm vows by downplaying or dismissing the potential reduced-harm role of electronic cigarettes, according to a story by Richard Craver for the Winston-Salem Journal quoting two researchers.

Craver said that in a report in the International Journal of Drug Policy, researchers Lynn Kozlowski and David Sweanor take to task officials with the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

They also referred to public-health advocates, such as the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute, and health-care facilities, such as the Mayo Clinic.

Kozlowski is a public-health professor at the University at Buffalo. Sweanor is an adjunct law professor at the University of Ottawa in Canada.

‘The United States provides an example of a country with legal tobacco/nicotine products (snus, other smokeless tobacco, cigarettes) differing greatly in risks to health,’ the researchers said.

It was also a country where ‘respected health information websites … continue to omit or provide incorrect differential risk information’.

Craver’s full report is at: http://www.journalnow.com/news/local/researchers-say-that-e-cig-warnings-omit-potential-benefits/article_a1f29ed8-bb24-5aec-be22-8fa7fe1ce750.html.