Nova Scotia’s top doc cautions e-cigarettes could re-normalize smoking
Posted Jan 20, 2014 06:16:48 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The Medical Officer of Health for Nova Scotia is not a big fan of so-called e-cigarettes.
Dr. Robert Strang concedes that there may be some benefit in the battery operated smokes, but there is also a large downside.
E-cigarettes are electronic devices that allow users to inhale a vapour from a look-alike device, as opposed to smoke from tobacco.
Dr. Strang says it may help those addiced to the traditional form of smoking.
“There may be a potential place for e-cigarettes to help people quit smoking,” said Dr. Strang. “There’s very significant potential risks to these products as well.”
Dr. Strang says the big danger is to re-popularize smoking.
“They’re not being marketed as cessation products,” said Dr. Strang. “They’re marketed, real risk, to re-glamourize, re-normalize the smoking behaviour in our culture.”
Strang says data in the US shows that 1 out of 10 people using e-cigarettes is a non-smoker, and he worries that it will open the door to them picking up the habit.
