By Kennedy Shelley
The American Heart Association reversed itself by letting the world know vaping won’t give you a heart attack.
This is a reversal of their pronouncement eight months ago that just taking a toke off of a JUUL could lead to sudden death.
Of course, the announcement eight months ago was made without any evidence at all, but what got the AHA to reverse course in such a public way?
In a statement released February 18, 2020, the AHA Journal (Journal of the American Heart Association) stated they misinterpreted a report and gave false information.
Interestingly, the original report eight months ago even implied that a JUUL could give you a heart attack even before you tried it, which hinted that just looking at a JUUL was potentially fatal.
While there is ample evidence that smoking can put people at risk of heart disease because of the chemicals found in burning tobacco, there isn’t any evidence that vaping, and nicotine replacement causes heart issues.
But the original report came from a known anti-smoking zealot who equates nicotine with smoking.
Dr. Stanton Glantz has long been opposed to vaping and has been making claims without evidence about it for years.
Dr. Glantz published his story in the AHAJ after a study called PATH Wave 1 came out.
It showed that people who already had a heart attack, and smoked, but then gave up smoking to switch to vaping were still at risk of a heart attack.
Dr. Glantz said that data applied to everyone. And that was just absolutely wrong. You could not get that from that data.
Why did it take eight months to retract the story that was so glaringly wrong?
The AHA claimed that they wanted to get “everyone’s input on the subject” and that took eight months.
Dr. Glantz who made his pronouncement based on the PATH Wave 1 study claimed he could not access the data, but if he didn’t have access to the data, why was he making this type of announcement in the first place.
This is one of the problems with medical research reports. Often, we do not know that people who make claims that ‘meat will kill you’ are in fact, militant vegans.
And many of the reports that vaping is dangerous have strong prejudices against it because of years of fighting Big Tobacco.
Interestingly, the retraction comes out on the heels of a new study that shows smokers who buy a JUUL starter kit quit all nicotine within three months, making it one of the most effective stop smoking products out there.
There was a survey of over 7,000 JUUL users who bought the starter kit, and half of them had quit smoking and quit using their vaping device.
The FDA won’t allow vaping companies to advertise their products as smoking cessation devices.
But only 15% of those who quit cold turkey are able to get nicotine-free. And that is the best of all the treatment options. Nicotine replacement and the use of other drugs work less often.
But according to the anti-vaping crowd, the complete lack of evidence of harm is enough to ban the product.
