BANGOR, Maine — The Bangor Region Public Health Advisory Board voted Wednesday to draft a statement regarding the health effects of vaping.
The advisory board is tasked with providing advice and guidance to the city of Bangor, public and private health care organizations and public policy makers in order to improve the health of the region’s population.
To date, scientific research has not produced definitive findings regarding benefits or health consequences of vaping, but the panel voted to have board member Patty Hamilton draft a statement for consideration.
“In my mind — and I have not yet brought this to the group — I feel that we ought to err on the side of the public’s health,” Hamilton, who also serves as director of Bangor Health and Community Services, said after the meeting.
“In other words, some of the data says that it could be dangerous. Other data says it isn’t. I would rather take the chance that we put guidance in place and that, if we find out that it’s not, then we can relax that guidance,” she said.
Voting Wednesday, the board approved the motion from member Bruce Campbell, clinical director for the addiction treatment agency Wellspring, directing the preparation of a statement about the health effects of vaping.
“The thing that I’ve not been convinced of is the long-term benefit of nicotine addiction,” he said. “I get it that the smoke is not going into the lungs.”
Campbell also raised concern that vaping providers target young people “because as soon as someone gets addicted to the substance, the longer they’re going to have an active customer.”
Other board members raised concern that “big tobacco” has a stake in vaping, that use is growing among adolescents and that some of the devices can be filled with “liquid marijuana” that does not produce the same odor as regular marijuana.
The board also heard about the conflicting nature of scientific studies on the health effects of vaping.
“The literature is incredibly conflicting,” said Jamie Comstock, who provides staff support for the board and serves as program manager for Healthy Maine Partnerships.
“For every study that says it’s harmful, you can find a study that says, well, it’s kind of inconclusive at this point,” she said.
Hamilton said she will prepare the statement for the board’s consideration most likely at its next meeting Sept. 18. The board will have the opportunity to edit the statement and make comments before voting, she said.
The proposed statement from the board comes as the Bangor City Council prepares to consider an ordinance that would prohibit vaping in the same places where tobacco smoking is currently banned in the city.
The proposed ordinance would also ban vaping and smoking within 20 feet of playgrounds and picnic areas in all city parks. Smoking is currently allowed in city parks.
Both proposals come in the wake of a January media splash over a paper published by the New England Journal of Medicine that said researchers detected formaldehyde, a known carcinogen, when they tested an electronic cigarette at higher voltages.
But one of the authors has since disputed media reports that claimed the paper meant electronic cigarettes were more dangerous than traditional cigarettes, saying no such statement was made by the researchers.
The paper stated that no formaldehyde was found when they tested the device at lower voltages. The researcher still advised that users should not assume safety when it comes to vaping.
According to a survey released in April by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, electronic cigarette use by middle and high school students tripled from 2013 to 2014. In all, about 2 million high school students and 450,000 middle school students said they had vaped at least once in the past 30 days.
Those results come as some vaping providers accuse large tobacco companies of pushing for increased regulation of vaping as a means to stymie competition and of using their own electronic cigarette brands to convince consumers the products are more dangerous than traditional cigarettes, Reuters reports.
Follow Evan Belanger on Twitter at @evanbelanger.