Evidence about electronic cigarettes: a foundation built on rock or sand?

Evidence about electronic cigarettes: a foundation built on rock or sand?

Those responsible for safeguarding the health of the public must often tackle complex and controversial issues. Public Health England (PHE) has been courageous in entering the debate on the role of electronic cigarettes in tobacco control. In a new report it concludes that e-cigarettes are much safer than conventional cigarettes, and one of its author is quoted as describing them as a potential...

The Potts model built on sand

We consider the q = 4 Potts model on the square lattice with an additional nonlocal interaction. That interaction arises from the choice of the reference measure taken to be the uniform measure on the recurrent configurations for the abelian sandpile model. In that reference measure some correlation functions have a power-law decay. We investigate the low-temperature phase diagram and we prove ...

Electronic Cigarettes on Hospital Campuses

Smoke and tobacco-free policies on hospital campuses have become more prevalent across the U.S. and Europe, de-normalizing smoking and reducing secondhand smoke exposure on hospital grounds. Concerns about the increasing use of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) and the impact of such use on smoke and tobacco-free policies have arisen, but to date, no systematic data describes e-cigarette pol...

Special issue on electronic cigarettes

The recent rise in public interest in electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) such as electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) has attracted significant attention from health practitioners, policy makers and regulatory authorities, investigative researchers, and the private industry. Tobacco use is clearly preventable, and according to health authorities at regulatory agencies is the single lar...

Electronic cigarettes