Real Stories, Real Progress
How Others Are Making the Switch
If you use nicotine, there are many ways to improve your health — from shifting to a less toxic nicotine source to quitting entirely. The first step is understanding the continuum of risk among nicotine products. Smoking cigarettes carries the highest risk, leading to cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and other conditions that can reduce your life span by an average of ten years.
Today, there are over 56 million former smokers in the United States, and more than six million people have successfully transitioned from smoking to vaping. Let’s see what they are saying:
Cigarette Smokers
Real Stories | Real Stories | Tips From Former Smokers | CDC
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Accepting other points of view:
The best advocate for honest communication about nicotine products is Kim “Skip” Murray who maintains an independent website.
Before you move on:
These stories can be inspiring — but they’re not the only voices in the conversation. It helps to understand where different messages about nicotine come from…
Why the messaging around nicotine is so confusing:
Different groups approach tobacco and nicotine with different goals in mind.
Government agencies aim to reduce smoking to lower healthcare costs and prolong lives. They also focus on preventing unintended consequences, such as safety risks, long-term health effects, addiction, and youth uptake. However, interpretations of the same scientific data can vary between countries. At the same time, tobacco products generate significant revenue that would be lost of people stopped smoking. Taken together, U.S. federal, state, and local tobacco taxes generate on the order of roughly $28 billion to more than $35 billion per year from tobacco product taxes. States that produce tobacco have lower taxes on tobacco products and as a result have more use of tobacco products and higher rates of tobacco related disease.
Vendors aim to promote their products and are often less focused on long-term public health consequences. Tobacco companies historically marketed cigarettes despite well-known health risks. Today, many reduced-risk nicotine products are manufactured by these same companies. Over 85% of vape products sold in the USA today have not met FDA requirements and are actually illegal for sale.
Keeping these agendas in mind can help you stay grounded — and choose what’s best for you, not just what’s being promoted.