smoking

A new study finds that if you vape and then quit, you're more likely to suffer a fracture than if you currently vape. The authors say their results suggest that e-cigarettes pose a risk to bone health. What sense does that make? Very little. Let's take a closer look at the paper.
A new study suggests that electronic cigarette users may experience strokes a decade earlier than traditional smokers. But the authors have overlooked a more interesting result: smokers who switch to vaping have a lower overall stroke risk.
A new study suggests that smokers who take up vaping may "relapse" to cigarettes. But this is more a problem of definitions than evidence that e-cigarettes don't promote smoking cessation.
Many tobacco control advocates have attacked vaping by emphasizing the risk it poses to teenagers. While children should never use any nicotine product, there's a strong case to be made that the campaign against teen vaping has distracted us from tackling a critical public health threat: adult smoking.
A recent vaping-related lawsuit in North Carolina illustrates the problem with public health's black-or-white thinking about the effects of electronic cigarettes.
Starting in March 2020, studies began to show that smokers were under-represented among COVID-19 patients, suggesting that something in tobacco may offer protection against SARS-COV-2 infection. The evidence remains inconclusive, but it seems that some public health experts and journalists don't want to get to the bottom of this mystery.
Despite increasing evidence that vaping is safer than smoking, uncertainty surrounds the long-term effects of electronic cigarette use. Many in the tobacco control field have used the lack of data to speculate about these unknown risks. Here's a better way to deal with the uncertainty.
Shipping regulations passed in December 2020 and poised to take effect in the near future will greatly restrict access to electronic cigarettes. Since the law was enacted, additional research has shown that smokers who switch to vaping have a good shot at giving up cigarettes, and maybe even nicotine, forever. Congress is hindering this important public health victory.
The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified calls to ban flavored e-liquids used in electronic cigarettes. One physician says there's good evidence that vaping increases the risk of infection for teenagers. Do her claims stand up to scrutiny?
It's impossible to know for sure if Rush's cigar smoking caused his lung cancer, but it certainly increased the risk, even though cigar smokers don't inhale the smoke.
New Jersey health officials' interpretation of CDC guidance is going to put smokers ahead of nonsmokers in the COVID vaccination program. Crazy? We think so.
As the drumbeats for health systems to treat the socioeconomic determinants of health grows louder -- and administrators eye an enlarging “mission” and the funds that come with it -- ask yourself this: What exactly are those determinants? A new study provides some tentative answers.