So the World Health Organization has come out with a news release condemning E Cigarette marketers who claim that the organization supports the claim that their products are an “authorized” smoking cessation aid”.
First of all, to the few E Cigarette sellers that this applies to, stop making claims that aren’t true! Any short term gains you make with cheap marketing tricks will be erased by the long term damage done to the E Cigarette industry. If you’re in this for the long haul doesn’t it make sense to play by the rules?
Secondly, if you’re an E Cigarette consumer, stay away from anyone making ridiculous claims about the health benefits of the E Cig. The truth is no one knows for sure just how safe these things are, and a company claiming that they are the answer to all your problem probably isn’t to be trusted. I for one am certain that the E Cig is a truly health giving product in comparison to the cancer sticks I used to smoke but everyone has to decide for themselves.
I’m always dubious about anything that comes out of the mouth of an international organization. Where exactly does the funding come from and what effect does this have on the neutrality of the information that they give out. When you take a closer look at the WHO’s Tobacco Free Initiative program you see that it receives 70% of its funding from the very pharmaceutical industries that supplies NRT products. How am I supposed to take anything such an organization says seriously when their sponsers have such a vested interested in the information being disseminated.
The organization states in the release that it “does not consider it to be a legitimate therapy for smokers trying to quit” and that the only way to know if they are a useful smoking cessation aid is to test.
Its glaringly obvious that E Cigarettes aren’t considered “legitimate” because their partners in the chemical industry don’t have their finger in the pie. Who after all, apart from Big Pharma, has the money to “conduct clinical studies and toxicity analysis and operate within the proper regulatory framework” to make E Cigarettes “legitimate”?
All this is par for the course I suppose, but its shocking to me that this information will be regurgitaed many times as gospel because it came from someone “respectable” at the World Health Organization. I’ll stick to making up my own mind about how to live my life based on my experiences and those of people I trust, you should do the same!
