A large dose of scepticism might have been preventative, but it's too late now. Where are those "experts" today?
On the same day that the Dunedin Report was issued, it was announced that the Government would now be legalising sale of e-cigarettes. Similar smiling faces on the television and, once more, unnamed experts are assuring us that these things are "perfectly" safe.
The argument made is that it's "only nicotine" that is being delivered into the lungs by the new sexy buzzword "vaping" (designed to deflect from the now declasse, used-to-be-sexy "smoking").
Disclaimer: any time we're given a new name involving a controversial issue, my b******* detector goes off.
Let's get to a few facts. There are no studies that establish that e-cigarettes are safe.
Even the immediate effects of heating liquid nicotine and its accompanying propylene glycol and flavourings into a mist that is inhaled into the lungs are unknown. By the way, propylene glycol is marketed as an anti-freeze for cars.
There are also constituents in that vapour such as formaldehyde and heavy metals. The issue is not the carcinogenic potential, rather -- like cigarettes -- the long-term effect on cardiovascular disease and especially chronic respiratory illness which not only cut lives short but diminish its quality are unknowable.
E-cigarettes are touted as a help to quit smoking although there's no evidence to support that idea and the fact of nicotine, a source of habituation, present in both tobacco cigarettes and e-cigarettes makes for serious doubt.
Like cigarettes, we won't see the ill effects for at least 20 years.
When Associate Health Minister Nicky Wagner, admitting there's no research, says: "They are about 95 per cent less harmful than cigarettes", I have to wonder where she pulled that out from.
While our parliamentarians rush to legalise e-cigarettes on the basis of no research, they stand (albeit unsteadily), almost as one, opposed to legalising medical marijuana, demanding "further study".
The reason that qualm is plainly ridiculous has to do with cannabis having been around for 4000 years and having been the subject of major studies intermittently since 1894.
There's a growing opioid problem in the US and probably here as well. Most of those ensnared started out with opioids as treatment for chronic pain. There's evidence cannabis does a better job.
And while 13,000 people died from opioid use in the US last year, the rate of death from cannabis was zero.
As noted in recent articles in Science in the US, the difficulty with doing research to establish conclusively the usefulness of cannabis in treating varieties of chronic pain is due to the resistance of the pharmaceutical lobby, which sees cannabis as an economic threat.
Meantime, in the face of a growing opioid epidemic, public health researchers in The Journal of the American Medical Association (https://biturl.io/VZtd40,) found that the rate of deaths from opioid use declined 25 per cent in those US states which legalised medical marijuana.
When I consider our representatives in light of their haste to legalise e-cigarettes and their avoidance of science where cannabis is concerned, I can only wonder what have they been thinking.
�Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.
