TIME Magazine has never exactly had a reputation for fearless journalism. In light of their recent article on vaping, that looks unlikely to change.
The piece's author, Jamie Ducharme, is the magazine’s health correspondent. She also wrote the novel Big Vape: The Incendiary Rise of Juul, which has since become a Netflix documentary.
Ducharme’s latest article, "Having Trouble Quitting Vaping? You’re Not the Only One," is essentially a cosy sit-down with other anti-vaping figures, including Amanda Graham, the chief health officer at the anti-tobacco lobby group Truth Initiative, or Richard Stewart the CEO of a company trying to sell the first dedicated vaping-cessation aid.
What could go wrong by only choosing to air the opinions of people with set-in-stone biases and a financial incentive to trash the most successful smoking intervention ever made?
Well, as it turns out, quite a lot.
Here are the six most misleading statements from TIME magazine’s latest piece on vaping.
#1. Vapes are not the answer to tobacco use
Amanda Graham suggests that “e-cigarettes are often pitched as an answer to the bane of tobacco use. So far, that has not come to fruition,”
It would be a rather tall order for vapes to wipe out smoking entirely. However, US smoking rates are at an all-time low of 11%, a phenomenon that is at least partly driven by vapes.
In the UK, a recent ASH report showed that vaping has helped over 3 million citizens quit smoking.
People in both regions are smoking less tobacco, so it’s fair to say these harm-reduction products are bearing fruit.
#2. Nicotine use is as problematic as smoking
On people trying to quit vaping, Graham says. “What we see is a lot of people saying, ‘I’m using way more nicotine now than I ever did with a cigarette.’”
While some can consume more nicotine with vaping, it’s one of the least problematic ingredients in a cigarette. Most importantly, it’s not what kills anybody.
So, yes, while some people might consume more nicotine, they’re not consuming:
- Seventy known carcinogens like Benzene, Arsenic, Cadmium, Tobacco-specific nitrosamines (TSNAs), Polonium-210, etc.
- Tar
- Carbon monoxide
- Ammonia
- Hydrogen cyanide
#3. Vapers would never have smoked
Ducharme states that “Given plummeting cigarette use among teenagers and young adults, many of these people likely picked up vaping without ever having been regular smokers—hence the widespread concern that e-cigarettes would addict entire new generations to nicotine.”
The reason why many of these people didn’t become smokers is BECAUSE of vaping. If vaping were not around, a good chunk of these people would done what many teens did before them — start smoking.
The idea that vapes are addicting an “entire new generation” is laughable. As this graph of CDC and NIH data from the peerless Charles Gardner shows, US teen nicotine use has never been lower.
#4. Vapes are uniquely addictive
Another voice that Ducharme calls upon is Benjamin Toll. In what is a scarcely believable passage, he seems to lament the decline of the cigarette, suggesting that the lethal product offers a cut-off point because “there's a limited number in a pack, and each one burns out fairly quickly.”
He also claims that “if you have a 2,000-puff vape, there’s [almost] no stopping point,” blissfully unaware of the concept of chain smoking.
Of course, fanciful theorising of this kind has a mortal enemy called reality. In this UK paper, only 6% of people who used both products felt vapes were more addictive.
#5. Vaping is a public health crisis
The article also quotes Richard Stewart, CEO of Achieve Life Sciences. He claims that “vaping is a public health crisis,” in no way overexaggerating what’s happening so he can shill his vaping-cessation aid.
Public health crises are things like COVID-19, Ebola, or the Zika virus. Or even something like cardiovascular disease (20 million deaths globally each year) or diabetes (6.7 million deaths each year).
Vaping has killed precisely zero people.
Additionally, some research forecasts that replacing cigarettes with vapes over ten years in the USA could result in 6.6 million fewer premature deaths.
If anything, vaping is a life-saving public health intervention.
#6. Swapping pouches for vapes is ironic
Ducharme channels her inner Alanis Morissette and claims that there is a sense of irony in someone transitioning from vapes to nicotine pouches. For me, there’s not much ironic about someone choosing a safer way to consume nicotine and then, when an ever safer way to consume nicotine becomes available, selecting that.
This is the fundamental point that people like Ducharme and Graham fail to understand. People like nicotine. It has many benefits and minimal downsides. They can consume it in a lethal way (smoking) or one of the far, far safer ways, such as vapes or pouches.
It’s a shame that TIME magazine is giving space to this kind of zealotry, especially when there is so much misinformation about vaping already.
People need accurate information to make the right health choices. Ducharme and TIME are getting in the way
