Is Vaping a Public Health Crisis, Or a Public Health Solution?
Note: Please consider giving Drugs + Hip-Hop as a gift, to support my work. Thank you!
Who thinks vaping is cool? Comedian Nick Kroll calls the habit “embarrassing,” and in his act mimes a user sheepishly exhaling a comically-large plume of smoke. The process resembles sucking on a “little robot dick,” he adds.
Young people, however, are often drawn to vaping, to the chagrin of parents everywhere. Just as teen cigarette smoking waned, it seems, along came the shiny, next-gen version, updated with every flavor imaginable, like an addictive drug wrapped in a fashion statement.
Some vapes even have digital displays.
You’d have to be a moron to advocate for vapes, or would you? At a conference in Baltimore last year, I was shocked to hear a strong argument in their favor from harm reduction elder statesmen Ethan Nadelmann.*
*Nadelmann, the founder of Drug Policy Alliance, also hosted the incredible Psychoactive podcast (RIP). I recommend the archived episodes.
He claimed that if we could somehow get the world’s cigarette smokers — all one billion plus of them — to switch to vaping, it would be the greatest public health triumph ever.
I wasn’t the only sceptic in the audience. After all, the conventional wisdom has long held that vaping is more dangerous than cigarettes. But Nadelmann asserted otherwise. It’s the toxins in combustible cigarettes, such as tar and carbon monoxide, that cause cancer, he said — and e-cigarettes don’t have them.
Sure, he went on, both vapes and traditional cigarettes have nicotine, which is an addictive substance, but nicotine itself doesn’t cause cancer.
Nadelmann’s talk made a big impression on me, which is why I was surprised when, at a different conference a few months later, another speaker I respect made the exact opposite argument.