WASHINGTON — The head of the FDA’s tobacco center wants to do more to tout the health benefits of switching from cigarettes to e-cigarettes, now that youth vaping rates are declining.
“With the reductions in [youth vaping rates] that we’ve seen, we’ve got an opportunity to ramp up our efforts related to the continuum of risk,” said Brian King, director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, at a Friday event. “I am wholly open to enhanced efforts by the Center for Tobacco Products to message not only on the continuum of risk, but also misperceptions related to nicotine.”
King was referring to the fact that e-cigarettes don’t expose smokers to the same level of carcinogens that cigarettes do, and that those carcinogens – not nicotine – cause cancer, a misconception that even many doctors get wrong.
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