Because smokers miss work due to smoking-related illness and take smoking breaks, Shapiro finds e-cigarette users are on average $2,370 more productive each year than a smoker — a significant impact to American employers.
In an America so consumed by politics that everything short of picking out a dog leash is determined in an ideological construct, there is one thing upon which everyone agrees — smoking is bad and quitting is good.
Yet in the critical debate on the importance of e-cigarettes in turning smokers into non-smokers, a baffling divide has occurred with conservatives generally supporting this pathway and liberals opposing it.
Awash in misinformation and splashy anti-vaping stories from the media, policymakers and the public don’t know what to think. But now a prominent liberal economist and an influential Democrat think tank have released a report that should settle the debate by utilizing a factor that eludes anti-vaping activists — math.
Renowned economist Robert J. Shapiro is a Democrat. He served in the Clinton administration and advised Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Al Gore. The Progressive Policy Institute started in 1989 and still considered in D.C. circles “Bill Clinton’s think tank.”
Shapiro’s report for PPI, The Impact of Electronic Cigarettes on Cigarette Smoking by Americans and Its Health and Economic Implications, is objectively and meticulously researched and comes to firm conclusions — vaping is the most effective method for smoking cessation and is not a gateway to cigarette use. Vaping improves health, saves health-care costs and adds to economic productivity.
Kerri Houston Toloczko – The Hill – August 25, 2019.
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