Tobacco companies keep killing us
I’m not sure exactly when I first encountered vaping. I was leading an editing workshop. I explained the house rules, which included “No Smoking.” One participant pulled out an e-cigarette. “Is this okay?” he asked.
He said he was trying to quit smoking. After some discussion, the group let him vape. We were wrong.
It took 500 years for western civilization to recognize the risks of tobacco smoking. The hazards of vaping have become all too evident in one decade.
The U.S. has identified 26 vaping-related deaths, and more than 1,300 illnesses. Canada, so far, has had no deaths, but several confirmed illnesses.
In announcing B.C.’s first confirmed case, provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry stressed that a vaping-related diagnosis is reached — quoting a CBC report
— only after eliminating all other “illnesses that have not been attributed to some other cause, and whose X-rays show pulmonary infiltrates, substances like pus or blood lingering in the lung tissue.”
She called it “a diagnosis of exclusion.” Put another way, when a group of seriously sick people all show common symptoms, but no other common causes, the most likely cause has to be the common factor — vaping.
Symptoms include coughing, shortness of breath, nausea, and chest pain. Hospital treatment enables some to recover. Some die. Some suffer ill effects for months.
I can accept that the Spanish explorers who brought tobacco from America to Europe had no idea of its harmful effects. They had no ill intentions. Smoking was simply a novelty.
I cannot accept that their successors, the tobacco companies who aggressively marketed cigarettes through the 20th century, did not know that their product caused harm. The medical evidence was overwhelming. Smoking made almost every ailment worse, from cancer to heart disease. It also affected brain development in children and teens, making it harder for them to learn and concentrate, and to control their moods and impulses in later life.
The tobacco companies knew exactly what they were doing. And did it anyway.
Similarly, I can accept that Karl Benz had no ill intentions when he created the first automobile. That early oil companies genuinely thought they were serving society by providing petroleum lubricants and fuels. That Monsanto thought it was helping farmers around the world by inventing a killer-ofeverything herbicide — even if Roundup later proved carcinogenic. And that Purdue Pharma thought it was doing a good thing by introducing OxyContin for pain relief — even if it led to the current opioid crises.
I can almost accept that the original makers of e-cigarettes may really have thought they were helping smokers quit their nicotine addiction.
As Michael Blaha of the Johns Hopkins Ciccarone Center has pointed out, tobacco cigarettes contain 7,000 chemicals, many of which are toxic: “There’s almost no doubt that they (e-cigarettes) expose you to fewer toxic chemicals than traditional cigarettes.”
But I simply cannot accept that Juul, the world’s biggest maker of vaping products, had good intentions when it put three times as much nicotine into its U.S. vapes than into its European brands.
And then added fancy fruit flavours to encourage young people to take up vaping.
Juul’s strategy is clear — and ruthless. It intends to enlarge its market by fostering addiction to nicotine, a proven noxious substance. It has no good intentions. None.
It doesn’t surprise me that Juul is owned by Pax Labs, which is owned by Altria, the parent company of Marlboro, which sells more cigarettes than the next seven brands combined.
Two B.C. residents have filed a class action against Juul, for targeting minors with misleading advertising that its products were safer and healthier than smoking. Good luck to them.
It took 20 years for similar claims (against Imperial Tobacco, JTI-Macdonald, and Rothmans, Benson & Hedges) to grind through the Quebec Supreme Court to a $15 billion settlement.
About 30 U.S. states and Canadian provinces have filed suits against pharmaceutical companies for triggering the opioid crisis. Purdue, makers of OxyContin, responded by declaring bankruptcy.
I contend that companies should be, and must be, held accountable for the damages they cause. Just as the government of Canada had to compensate victims for its ill-conceived program of residential schools. Just as Monsanto was hit with a billion-dollar judgement against the carcinogenic effects of RoundUp. Just as individuals are held responsible for their actions in criminal law.
A federal law specifically stating that corporations and companies will be held liable for the long-term consequences of their actions would go a long way towards introducing more caution.