The ALA recently published a particularly specious screed, “Vapor Hiding Dangerous Ingredients.” The source for much of the article was ALA Chief Medical Officer Dr. Albert Rizzo, a pulmonary physician who has published a few peer reviewed articles, but none on e-cigarettes or vapor products.
In a 2015 interview with the Delaware Academy of Medicine, Dr. Rizzo acknowledged that it is difficult to get smokers to quit: “we know that a lot of pulmonary diseases could be prevented if we could get people off of cigarettes…but the challenge is many people have been smoking for many years, and it’s a chronic disease, so the most I’m going to be able to do for some of these patients is to help them have a better quality of life, but I can’t necessarily cure them.”
When asked about e-cigarettes in that interview, Dr. Rizzo said, “I certainly don’t include them as a routine effort for smoking cessation.” His reasoning was vague: “The short answer is we don’t know enough about it. I think the public health community has individuals who look at it at as a safer cigarette, and we just don’t know that, some people look at it as a way to quit smoking and we don’t know that, we just don’t have the evidence that e-cigarettes are all their carried to be.” [emphasis added]
In truth, over the past 10 years, a wealth of data demonstrated that vaping is vastly safer than smoking. We also know from two clinical trials and population evidence that e-cigarettes help people quit. Back in 2015, Dr. Rizzo said, “the FDA hasn’t been able to come out and speak clearly about what they’re going to recommend.” Since then, the FDA has approved 39 vapor products as appropriate for the protection of public health.
Dr. Rizzo ignores the scientific reality, claiming, “E-cigarettes are addictive and dangerous due to the presence of nicotine, a highly addictive substance, and other harmful chemicals in the vapor.”
His current screed visits many of the common false or misleading claims, including those below.
Nicotine. The article invokes all the usual scares, including a threat to teen brains and addiction, but then goes off on a tangent. “Nicotine also stimulates the adrenal glands, which increases blood pressure and heart rate and can, over time, lead to cardiovascular disease.” As I have thoroughly documented, increases in blood pressure and heart rate are transient, and they don’t lead to any serious medical issues.
Propylene Glycol (PG) and Vegetable Glycerin (VG). The article asserts: “Though they are common additives in food and believed to be safe for ingestion, they are also used to make things like antifreeze, paint solvents and artificial smoke in fog machines which are dangerous when inhaled.” The ALA is artificially painting a pernicious phantasm misleading smokers into believing that switching to vapor will kill them.
Popcorn Lung. Dr. Rizzo offers an entire paragraph devoted to a disease that has never been diagnosed in a vaper. The definitive article on this is by Clive Bates (here).
Heavy Metals and Volatile organic compounds. Dr. Rizzo: “The composition of e-cigarettes is not as regulated as traditional cigarettes. There are a variety of harmful substances beyond just nicotine, including carcinogens like formaldehyde and acrolein, heavy metals like lead, and ultrafine particles that can damage the lungs contained in e-cigarettes and the amounts vary from product to product.”
Dr. Rizzo ignores the fact that these contaminants, if present at all in vapor, are in minuscule amounts compared with cigarette smoke. He is right about one thing: “traditional cigarettes” aren’t regulated at all. They were grandfathered into the market, whereas e-cigarettes like JUUL NJOY, Logic and Vuse underwent years of FDA review to satisfy the agency that they are “appropriate for the protection of public health.”
The ALA brags, “Our work directly touches more than 20 million individuals each year and supports millions of people.” I urge everyone to stop funding this organization; it is contributing to the untimely deaths of smokers within its target audience.
