Sean Yokomizo
By Sean Yokomizo
For Northwest Asian Weekly
On behalf of Asian Pacific Partners for Empowerment, Advocacy, and Leadership (APPEAL), I would like to respond to the commentary, “E-cigarettes and the API Community,” authored by Reid Mukai and posted on Nov. 21, 2014.
First, I would like to make clear APPEAL’s position that e-cigarettes and other electronic devices designed to feed nicotine addiction should be regulated, just as traditional nicotine addiction devices, like tobacco cigarettes, are regulated.
Mr. Mukai opens his commentary by using data from APPEAL highlighting the disproportionate and devastating impacts of tobacco on Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) communities. Indeed, the numbers are alarming and we appreciate Mr. Mukai’s concern for those subjected to the leading preventable cause of disease and death among AANHPIs.
Mr. Mukai goes on to discuss the role of e-cigs as a potential means of lessening the impacts of tobacco by acting as an aid to reduce or quit the use of tobacco. However, Mr. Mukai’s commentary fails to consider some key facts related to the use of e-cigs.
While e-cigs don’t give off smoke, like traditional cigarettes, it’s important to understand that the vapor produced by e-cigs still contains chemicals from the nicotine, flavoring, and other additives. Scientific research is still ongoing to try and determine the actual effects that inhaling those chemicals has on e-cig users, as well as those in close proximity to “second-hand” vapor. The fact that the contents of e-cigs are unregulated and therefore could contain an unknown “cocktail” of chemicals that differs from product to product only complicates that research.
There are also serious concerns about e-cigs acting as a “gateway” tobacco product and the targeting of children through both unregulated marketing and the use of sweet, candy-like flavorings. Studies of traditional tobacco shows that both targeted marketing and the use of menthol and other flavorings increases use among young people. It’s reasonable to assume that the same may be true with e-cigs and there is evidence to support this concern. According to the National Youth Tobacco Survey, between 2011 and 2013, the number of youth who’d never smoked, but used e-cigs increased 3-fold, from 79,000 to over 263,000. The “intention to smoke conventional cigarettes” was 44% among youth who had used e-cigs, compared to 22% of those who’d never used e-cigs.
One of APPEAL’s key missions is to protect the next generation from a lifetime of nicotine addiction and making the regulation of new nicotine delivery systems, like e-cigs, comparable to the regulation of traditional nicotine sources, like tobacco cigarettes, goes a long way toward creating environments in which kids are less likely to start smoking or become addicted to nicotine in any form.
Ultimately, nicotine is an additive substance that provides no benefit and is associated historically with considerable adverse impacts on health. Decades of work, millions of dollars, and literally millions of deaths have been invested in fighting the impact that tobacco and nicotine have had on AANHPI communities. We strongly oppose products that threaten to undo that investment, no matter how profitable it may be for the few in the community who sell those products, as does Mr. Mukai. (end)
Sean Yokomizo is Communications & Development Manager for APPEAL.
This is the comment by “Jesus Godson” that was posted last sunday and mysteriously later omitted for some reason:
Like many prohibitionists, Mr. Yokomizo appears to not understand that tobacco, cigarette smoking, and nicotine are not all the same thing. The simple fact is that over 95% of “tobacco-related” illness and death is caused by cigarette smoking. A cigarette smoker who switches to any other form of tobacco or nicotine use has drastically improved their own health. In falsely conflating all tobacco/nicotine use with cigarette smoking, and creating the perception in the public consciousness that smokers have nothing to gain in switching from cigarettes to lower-risk forms of tobacco/nicotine use, tobacco control activists like Mr. Yokomizo have likely caused far more deaths than they’ve prevented. Tobacco harm reduction supporters refer to this as a “quit or die” mentality, and with good reason. In the minds of people like Mr. Yokomizo, cigarette smokers only have two options: cease all nicotine use or die from smoking. At some point in the last 30 years, the anti-smoking movement morphed into the War on Tobacco, and now it’s morphed again into th Jihad on Nicotine. It is more an exercise in social engineering than in public health.
Moreover, Mr. Yokomizo’s statement about nicotine having “no benefit” is shockingly naive. If people derived no benefit from it, why would they continue to use it? Nicotine, in itself, is a mild, generally benign stimulant that poses no greater health risk than the caffeine on which something like 90% of Americans are dependent. Furthermore, non-tobacco nicotine products have such a vanishingly low potential for abuse and dependence that the FDA sees no cause for concern in their long-term use by any healthy individual over age 12. Tobacco is addictive. Cigarette smoking is highly addictive. Nicotine, in and of itself, is not addictive. In point of fact, nicotine dependence has never been observed in any individual who never used tobacco. If a smoking addiction was all about nicotine, then the traditional nicotine replacement therapies would not all have failure rates in excess of 90%.
Mr. Yokomizo, if you’re serious about reducing the death toll of cigarette smoking, you’re going about it in an exceedingly self-defeating way. You promulgate myths and misinformation that result in more people smoking and fewer people quitting. The only two explanations are ignorance and malice. I hope it’s ignorance.
Why are comments for this post being pulled and/or never posted? I have already tried twice to respond but for some reason neither message was posted. Just this morning someone else wrote a very intelligent and well-researched comment dismantling Yokomizo’s arguments which was posted for a brief time and then pulled. Are comments critical of the author being censored for some reason?