The British government has just released statistics on
e-cigarette use (here). The Office for National Statistics
reports that e-cigarettes were used by 12% of smokers and 5% of former smokers
in the UK during the first quarter of this year, but the rate of use among
never smokers was only 0.14%.
This is direct evidence that it is predominantly smokers who
are using e-cigs, and some of them are becoming ex-smokers.
Release of the British data underscores the distressing fact
that the U.S. neither collects nor publishes similar information, which is
vital to intelligent public health policymaking.
It is disgraceful that 10 years after the introduction of
e-cigarettes and five years after a rapid acceleration in sales, the U.S.
government, particularly the Centers for Disease Control, collects almost no e-cig
data in its many national surveys. I
emphasize “almost,” because the CDC has collected usage information among youth
for the past three years, using it to mislead the public about an
unsubstantiated new childhood tobacco epidemic (here and here).
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