Tobacco cigarettes, for instance, have also long been known to contain diacetyl — at levels over 100 times those found in electronic cigarettes — yet earlier tobacco studies found that even these levels were not enough to cause popcorn lung in smokers.
"The Harvard study is a perfect example of something that happens over and over," says Michael Siegel, a physician and professor at Boston University. "It creates a scare by omitting a key piece of information, undermining the public's appreciation of the severe hazards of tobacco smoking and leading to perverse public health outcomes." Siegel, who studied under Glantz in San Francisco, has spent much of his career fighting tobacco companies: testifying against them in court, pushing for smoking bans in bars and restaurants, advocating for policies making it illegal to market cigarettes to youth. When e-cigs first started gaining popularity, he was skeptical, believing them to be little more than a product designed to mask the dangers of smoking. Today, however, he has become one of the most outspoken supporters of the idea that e-cigs can succeed where the crusade against smoking has come up short. Given that the current e-cig market is dominated by habitual smokers, Siegel calls the U.S. government's reluctance to allow them to be pitched as a safer alternative "irresponsible."
"Even the worst case scenario — that a current pack a day smoker replaces a single cigarette with an e-cig — is better than where we are right now," he says. "All conclusive evidence shows that these are safer, so why aren't we encouraging smokers to make the shift? If we did, we'd be saving millions of lives and talking about the greatest public health moment of our generation."
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