E-Cigarette Debate: 7,000 Flavors Of Addiction, But What Health Risks?

I'm not young or edgy enough to hang out with anyone who smokes e-cigarettes, but I've been vaguely aware that they're a big and growing thing, and the focus of a big and growing controversy. To wit: Do they end up a net positive, because they help people quit the classic "cancer sticks," or a net negative, because they act as "gateway" cigarettes just when we've finally beaten our smoking rates down?

Answer: We don't know yet. That's my takeaway from a major multimedia project on electronic cigarettes on Boston University's new research website. But it's such an important question that it's even a source of debate between prominent researchers on campus — though both strongly concur that more research is needed. From "Behind The Vapor:"

At Boston University, Avrum Spira, a pulmonary care physician and School of Medicine associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and bioinformatics who studies genomics and lung cancer, was one of the first scientists to receive funding from the FDA to investigate the health effects of e-cigarettes. “In theor y—- and how they’re marketed — e-cigarettes are a safer product because they don’t have tobacco, which has known carcinogens,” Spira says. “The question is: does safer mean safe?”

Across BU’s Medical Campus from Spira, Michael Siegel, a physician and professor of community health sciences at the School of Public Health, has emerged as perhaps the country’s most high-profile public health advocate for e-cigarettes. Siegel, who is not currently researching e-cigarettes, says he believes that the device could potentially help large numbers of smokers quit, or drastically decrease, a habit that is the leading cause of preventable deaths in the US. He points out that despite all the existing smoking cessation products on the market, only a small fraction of cigarette smokers manage to quit. Only 4 to 7 percent break the habit without some nicotine replacement or medication, according to the American Cancer Society. At the same time, Siegel says, more research is needed on the health effects of e-cigarettes as well as their effectiveness in helping people quit smoking.

Check out the full project here, including the video above, "7,000 Flavors of Addiction." And while you're on the new website, a couple of other particularly grabby features: The Secret's In The Spit (the gluten-saliva link — who knew?) and The Secret Life of Neutrinos.