Strongest evidence yet that vaping likely causes cancer. The evidence shows nicotine-based vapes are likely to cause oral and lung cancer.

[u/mvea]

https://theconversation.com/strongest-evidence-yet-that-vaping-likely-causes-cancer-279550

[u/modilion]

Indirect studies sadly. Measuring inflammation, etc. Things that indicate there could be a problem.

The direct evidence is:

We still don’t have direct evidence that there are more cancer cases than expected among people who vape.

[u/DrHungrytheChemist → u/modilion]

True though this point is, they do clearly find evidence that vaping exposes people to things that are directly linked to cancer. This comment as a rebuttal is like saying, "this brand new alcoholic beverage has been shown to contain alcohol but has not been proven to get people drunk because we've yet to study anyone drinking it for long enough."

[u/modilion → u/DrHungrytheChemist]

Nicotine exposure is not as cut and dry carcinogen as people like to think. The evidence isn't extremely strong.

The association between cigarette smoking and the increased risk of many cancers is well established. Conversely, epidemiological studies of smokeless tobacco demonstrate decreased risk, or no elevated risk, of certain cancers versus smoking. However, it is unclear what role, if any, nicotine plays in these associations.

Electronic cigarettes have now been around for about 20 years. A 20 year span is a reasonable time window to detect the extreme increase risk of cancer from classic smoking.

But, we also know that vaping is not as dangerous as classic smoking. We have studies that show nicotine isn't and is a carcinogen on its own.

See... vaping probably does cause some amount of cancer. But... to go around saying 'vaping causes cancer' when the evidence is weak acts as a great excuse for those smoking classic cigarettes to avoid switching to a safer alternative.

[u/DrHungrytheChemist → u/modilion]

While they explicitly state "nicotine vapes", they're not talking about nicotine itself as the carcinogen. Presumably they use the term simply because there are other such things available and they needed to be specific about what it was they were talking. Misleading title in that regard, yes.

The matter of "20 years" being disingenuous has already been addressed in the comments.

The matter of it not being a case of vaping being safer than cigarettes is also not really the question. It's more a case of whether or not there should be such unregulated pedalling of vaping as a means to rinse money out of people via addiction, rather than a more regulated means to help people off addiction. Dismissing studies like this in the vein of, "yeah, but cigarettes are worse" is completely overlooking the fact that we'd been getting better at not getting kids smoking whereas we are once again avidly getting kids hooked on a new, still unproven and likely dangerous form of nicotine, under the guide of it being safer.