The word ‘cigarette’ might appear in the term ‘e-cigarette’, but that is as far as their similarities extend, according to a Northwestern Medicine report published on Friday in the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research.
Assuming e-cigarettes were equal to cigarettes could lead to misguided research and policy initiatives, said a Northwestern University story that reported on the paper’s findings at eurekalert.org.
“Comparing cigarettes to e-cigarettes can give us a false sense of what dangers exist because it misses the gap in understanding how people use them and how they can make people dependent,” first author Matthew Olonoff, a PhD student at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, was quoted as saying. “Before we start making policy changes, such as controlling nicotine or flavor options in e-cigarettes, we need to better understand what role these unique characteristics have.”
The commentary is said to distill articles and published studies that compare e-cigarettes to cigarettes and supports the importance of investigating e-cigarettes as a unique nicotine delivery system.
“There are enough key differences between cigarettes and these products, especially newer-generation devices, to show that they are not interchangeable nicotine delivery systems,” Olonoff said.
E-cigarettes not cigarettes
