USA: electronic cigarettes would cost social security more than cigarettes

This is the conclusion of a new American study of which only the stupidity equals the inaccuracies.

Have you vaped once? 1000 times ? It’s the same, don’t worry.

Laughing man It’s been several weeks since we were treated to a garbage study on electronic cigarettes. Luckily, thanks to a few researchers at the UC San Francisco School of Nursing, we’ve got it. The research (1) in question, called Healthcare utilization and expenditures attributable to current e-cigarette use among US adults, was published in the medical journal Tobacco Control. Using data from 2015 to 2018, she looked at the health costs of vaping. According to its authors, “the health care costs attributable to e-cigarette use are already greater than our estimates of the health care costs attributable to cigar and tobacco use. smoke-free”. But how to explain such a result?

First, it should be noted that the way in which the 109,133 participants were classified is strange to say the least. All were dispatched into 4 groups:

1. Current exclusive vapers: all people who have used an electronic cigarette at least once in their life, and at least once in the last 30 days. In other words, a person who vaped 5 years ago to try, and who did it again during a single evening with friends last week, was classified as a vaper. In the same way as a person who never leaves his vape on a daily basis.
2. Current polyvapers: participants similar to those in the first category, but who have also smoked a maximum of 100 cigarettes in their lifetime, or used another tobacco product.
3. Users of other tobacco products: all other people who did not fit into the previous categories.
4. Non-users of anything: people who have never smoked or vaped.

By observing the detail of these categories, it already seems difficult to take this study seriously. How can we classify a daily vaper for 5 years in the same category as a person who has only vaped twice in 10 years? In addition, the researchers indicate that they added to their calculations, “other independent variables that were selected on the basis of previous studies that examined health expenditure attributable to smoking, cigars and smokeless tobacco consumption” . As these variables are of course not mentioned, it is impossible to verify any results. Not to mention the fact that it seems complicated, once again, to understand what health problems might have in common between people who have perhaps smoked all their life, and someone who has vaped twice to try.

A broken knee? It’s the vape’s fault

But this way of categorizing the participants is not the only oddity to be noted in this work. The second concerns the medical acts taken into account in order to calculate what a vaper costs in health care. The authors thus indicate that they have taken into account “hospital nights, visits to the emergency room, visits to the doctor, and the call of a doctor at home”. Since the data used for this study did not indicate the details of the services provided, a vaper who would have been to the emergency room after having cut his toe while passing the lawn mower would have cost money to the American health system, to cause of vaping. A person who inadvertently consumed a jar of expired crème fraîche during a meal and who was seized with violent vomiting to the point of calling a doctor at home would also have cost the public health system money , because of the vape! Decidedly, the electronic cigarette seems to be responsible for all the ills of society across the Atlantic.

All these inaccuracies, which did not prevent the researchers from carrying out their work, do not prevent them from concluding either:

“The economic burden associated with e-cigarette use is substantial.” Cheer. And to think that this study was partly funded by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the body responsible for managing public health in the United States…

(1) Wang Y, Sung H-Y, Lightwood J, et al. Tob Control Epub ahead of print. doi:10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2021-057058 (in PDF format)

Source: Vaping Post