When Dr. Lynn T. Kozlowski gave a lecture on electronic cigarettes, he guaranteed not everyone would agree with his position.
Kozlowski, professor in the Department of Community Health and Health Behavior, spoke at the 26th annual J. Warren Perry Lecture in Farber Hall Thursday. He said electronic cigarettes, known as e-cigarettes, offer smokers an alternative that reduces the harm of traditional cigarettes and he talked about his three foundations of e-cigarettes: the deadliness of cigarettes, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) limitations on tobacco and harm reduction of e-cigarettes.
“E-cigarettes are safer than cigarettes but not safe,” Kozlowski said.
Electronic cigarettes were introduced globally in 2007. The first generation of e-cigarettes resembled cigarettes by design. Kozlowski said today, e-cigarettes are larger and more modifiable by the user. He said vaping products, like e-cigarettes, will keep changing until nicotine vapors are produced by heating rather than burning.
“We need to appreciate that FDA and society support addictive and deadly cigarettes,” Kozlowski said. “The FDA prevents its [cigarettes] banning and society regularly, most recently in 2014, eight of 10 adults surveyed support cigarettes not being made illegal.”
Kozlowski is an expert in the field of tobacco use and addictions. He worked for 10 years at the Addiction Research Foundation in Toronto and served as the senior scientist and head of their behavioral research program on tobacco use.
In 2006, Kozlowski moved to Buffalo to start the Department of Health Behavior at UB.
He recommends cigarette smokers should be using e-cigarettes to quit smoking as soon as possible and said e-cigarettes are relatively low in danger compared to cigarettes.
Brittany Perry, a senior exercise science major, attended the lecture and agreed electronic cigarettes are safer than cigarettes.
“My sister was a former smoker, smoking a pack a day,” Perry said “She switched to e-cigs. I prefer e-cigs to a pack a day.”
A study done by the New England Journal of Medicine estimated at age 30, if you were to quit smoking you would gain 10 years of life and quitting at age 40 would gain nine years of life. This provides a scientific backing for his first foundation, “the deadliness of cigarettes.”
“The rate of death from any cause among current smokers is three times higher than nonsmokers,” Kozlowski said.
Michelle Hutchison, a sophomore exercise science major, thinks e-cigarettes only offer kids another way to look cool while smoking.
“There has not been enough long term testing on electronic cigarettes to prove any long term effects,” she said. “Whether they’re viewed as a healthier alternative or not, they still promote unhealthy and addictive habits.”
For his second foundation – FDA limitations on tobacco – Kozlowski said they protect cigarettes as a consumer good. He said they prevent banning of cigarettes explicitly and discourage a required change in cigarettes that would create a contraband market and can require standards for nicotine yields of a product.
All of these laws make it difficult to market a reduced-risk product.
“It’s as if the FDA were to turn to caffeine and lower its levels to such a low level of psycho activity, that it would be addictive for no one,” he said.
Kozlowski labeled this law as a “regulatory rabbit being pulled out of a hat” and disagrees with this low nicotine threshold model.
His third foundation has to do with harm reduction. Kozlowski said many experts think vaping is much safer than cigarette smoking, but not entirely safe.
He brought up The Framework Convention Alliance (FCA), a group working to rid the world from health, social, economic and environmental consequences of tobacco and tobacco use. They concluded e-cigarettes are much less dangerous than cigarettes for users.
“If you tell people electronic cigarettes are just as bad as or worse than cigarettes, there you’ve done it,” Kozlowski said. “You’ve just pushed people towards cigarettes.”
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