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Should Stanbrook be commended for his early and enduring crusade calling for a ban on flavourings in e-liquids, restrictions on advertising or shamed for crying wolf? French experts have an opposite view.
In 2016 the French High Council of Public Health began its recommendation with “E-cigarettes are an aid for stopping or reducing smoking” and concluded by suggesting that people reflect on a “medicalized e-cigarette” (https://www.hcsp.fr/explore.cgi/avisrapportsdomaine?clefr=541), apparently ignoring the 2015 warning from the WHO against such claims. In January 2019, the Official Bulletin of the Republic published a report from the Economic, Social and Environmental Council, the third French assembly, recommending in #15: "Position the electronic cigarette with or without nicotine among the other smoking cessation devices: integrate it into the addiction prevention discourse …”.(https://www.lecese.fr/sites/default/files/pdf/Avis/2019/2019_02_addictio...)
After the epidemic of serious lung diseases in the US, the secretary of health claimed "We are not in the same situation as in the US. We do not have a specific health alert, there may be long-term side effects, we do not know today." and stressed that “e-cigarettes are prohibited for sale under 18 years.” (https://www.rtl.fr/actu/politique/vapotage-pas-de-restriction-supplement...) However, a recent sting operation from a NGO showed 1/10 of French tobacconists sold tobacco to those aged 12 y, despite the legal age having been raised to 18 in 2009 (https://cnct.fr/actualites/linterdiction-de-vente-de-tabac-aux-mineurs-u...). This confirmed previous testing and is not surprising: the law lacked enforcement and compliance checks.
Meanwhile, Lee and colleagues after having shown in mice that electronic-cigarettes smoke (ECS) produced DNA damage in the lungs and bladder and inhibits DNA repair in lung tissues (this being confirmed in other species) just showed the development of lung adenocarcinomas and bladder urothelial hyperplasia.(1) In my opinion, these findings fulfill the IARC definition (https://www.iarc.fr/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Monographs-QA.pdf) of a Group 2A carcinogen.
References
1. Lee HW, Park SH, Weng MW, et al. E-cigarette smoke damages DNA and reduces repair activity in mouse lung, heart, and bladder as well as in human lung and bladder cells. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2018;115(7):E1560–E1569. doi:10.1073/pnas.1718185115