New warnings from Surgeon General on kids using e-cigarettes

Research locally has not shown vaping helps quit tobacco

More than 50 years ago, the U.S. Surgeon General warned that tobacco use could be hazardous to your health. 

Smoking in public has been cut drastically since then but now, there’s a big worry about a substitute for nicotine, e-cigarettes.

The current Surgeon General wants parents to keep their kids from vaping.

La Crosse County health educator Judi Zabel wasn’t surprised by the new warning from Washington D.C. 

“Many of the same tactics are being used to encourage young people to start using e-cigarettes,” Zabel said, mentioning there is a bubble gum flavored vapor. “That’s where we see the greatest flow of use of e-cigarettes.”

Zabel especially objects to the use of flavors like bubble gum that would attract young buyers of e-cigarettes.

Zabel works on anti-smoking programs in the Coulee Region, and she says e-cigarettes have not been proved effective in getting smokers to give up tobacco.

She’s worked with those programs for several years and wants more research on the effects of using e-cigs.”

“We want to make sure that it’s not the tobacco industry that’s doing the research,” Zabel said, “and that it’s truly, indeed independent scientists that don’t have anything to benefit or gain from it.”

And that includes further research from the feds.

“We want to make sure that the FDA continues to be able to do their work,” Zabel said. “We want to be able to learn what’s in an e-cigarette and it’s impact on adults, and youth is. What it’s impact on second-hand smoke is. And we can only do that with the assistance of the FDA.”