电子香烟是传统香烟的安全替代品吗？它能帮助成千上万的吸烟者戒烟吗？如果可以，那为什么反烟主义者反对电子香烟呢？通过这个短视频了解电子香烟的真相吧！
中英对照文本
翻译：Sunny | 校对：FungChuh
Imagine if there were an alternative to smoking cigarettes.
设想如果传统香烟有替代品。
Imagine this alternative could help millions of people quit smoking and came with only a fraction of the harmful chemicals that cigarettes do.
想象这个替代品能够帮助上百万人戒烟，而其产生有害化学物质只是传统香烟的一小部分。
Well, you don’t have to imagine it. It exists.
其实，你无需想象。它确实存在。
E-cigarettes are the most innovative and promising smoking-cessation product yet invented. So, public health officials and anti-tobacco activists are all in favor of this life-saving innovation, right?
电子香烟是至今发明的最新颖最有效的戒烟产品。所以，公众健康官员和反烟主义者都应该大力支持这个拯救生命的创新，对吧？
Actually, they’re almost all totally against it.
实际上，他们几乎都彻底反对它。
Why?
为什么呢？
Because, incredibly, they make no substantial distinction between e-cigarettes and real cigarettes -- even though they are completely different products.
难以置信的是，他们认为电子香烟和传统香烟并没有本质区别，尽管两者是完全不同的产品。
To begin with, e-cigarettes aren’t cigarettes. They contain no tobacco. Instead, a liquid containing nicotine derived from tobacco leaves is vaporized, and users of e-cigarettes inhale that vapor. Vapor, mind-you – not smoke.
首先，电子香烟不是烟。它不含烟草。相反，它蒸发一种提取自烟草叶的含有尼古丁的液体，电子香烟使用者吸入这种蒸汽。注意，是蒸汽不是烟雾。
This is significant because the real harm from tobacco comes from the combustion process, which releases hundreds of toxic compounds known as tar. Since e-cigarettes have no tobacco and no combustion, they release no tar. This makes them, according to Britain’s Department of Health, at least 95% less harmful than tobacco cigarettes.
这是至为重要的一点，因为传统香烟的真正危害来自于燃烧过程，这个过程释放了无数的有毒化合物 —— 焦油。电子香烟不含烟草，也没有燃烧过程，自然也不释放焦油。根据英国健康部门报道，这使它们的危害至少比传统香烟低 95%。
E-cigarettes do contain nicotine, an addictive drug. However, there is little evidence that nicotine alone is bad for you, making it similar to, say, caffeine--a drug used every day by millions of people.
电子香烟确实含有尼古丁这种成瘾的药物。然而，鲜有证据表明单独摄入尼古丁对人体有害，举个例子，就像咖啡因，一种数百万人每天都服用的药物。
Brad Rodu, an oral cancer specialist at the University of Louisville, put it this way: “I love coffee, and I’m sure I could get caffeine if I smoked my coffee beans…but I would be paying a much different price in overall health [if I did].”
布拉德·罗度，路易斯维尔大学的一位口腔癌专家，这样说道：“我爱喝咖啡，并且我确信如果我吸咖啡豆，我也可以摄取咖啡因，但是（如果这样做）我将会付很不一样的健康代价。”
In other words, when it comes to addictive substances like caffeine or nicotine, it isn’t the addictive substance that’s harmful; it’s how it’s delivered. As South African psychiatrist Mike Russell said about cigarettes: “[People] smoke for [the] nicotine, but they die from the tar.”
换句话说，当谈及咖啡因、尼古丁这样的成瘾物质，有害的不是成瘾物质本身，而是它传递的途径。正如南非的精神病专家迈克·罗素对香烟的评论：“（人们）为了尼古丁而吸烟，却死于焦油。”
And again, there’s no tar in e-cigarettes.
再重复一遍，电子香烟不产生焦油。
Does this all mean e-cigarettes are completely safe? Of course not. Nothing is completely safe. E-cigarettes are a relatively new innovation so more research is needed, especially on long-term effects. There’s also a place for sensible regulation to ensure consumer safety.
这意味着电子香烟绝对安全？当然不是。没什么是绝对安全的。电子香烟是比较新的发明，所以需要更多的研究，尤其是关于它的长期影响。也有必要进行合理的监管来确保消费者的安全。
But unlike normal everyday products, any potential risk posed by e-cigarettes is far outweighed by a real – not potential – good: saving lives by providing the nicotine that smokers enjoy without delivering the deadly toxins that can kill them.
不同于日常用品，电子香烟的任何潜在风险都远不如其实在（并非潜在）好处：拯救生命，提供吸烟者喜爱的尼古丁又不传递可以杀死他们的致命毒物。
Many former smokers have successfully used e-cigarettes to help them kick their nicotine addiction altogether. A recent study in an Oxford Journal peer-reviewed publication, Nicotine and Tobacco Research, said that e-cigarettes could reduce smoking-related deaths by 21 percent. That’s thousands of lives every year.
很多曾经吸烟的人成功利用电子香烟彻底摆脱了自己对尼古丁的瘾。最近牛津周刊同行评审刊中的一个研究——尼古丁和烟草研究表明，电子香烟可以将与吸烟相关的死亡率降低 21%。即是每年数千条生命！
John Britton, an epidemiologist and director of the University of Nottingham’s Center for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies, is even more optimistic:
约翰·布里顿，诺丁汉大学烟草和酒精研究中心的一位流行病学家兼中心负责人，则更加乐观：
“[E-cigarettes are] the first genuinely new way of helping people stop smoking that has come along in decades…[They] have the potential to help half or more of all smokers get off cigarettes.”
“（电子香烟是）几十年来第一种真正可以帮助人们戒烟的新方法。（它们）有潜力帮助一半甚至全部的吸烟者摆脱香烟。”
So, again, you’d think public health officials and anti-tobacco groups would be doing everything they could to encourage smokers to switch to e-cigarettes.
所以你再一次认为公众健康官员和反香烟团体会尽一切所能鼓励吸烟者转向电子香烟。
Instead, they push for laws and rules that equate the two products: cigarettes are bad, so e-cigarettes must also be bad. As of August 2016, the US Food and Drug Administration has ruled that all e-cigarettes must go through a long and expensive application process. This process could end up costing as much as $1 million per new product.
相反，他们推动法律和相关规章制度平等对待这两种产品——传统香烟有害，所以电子香烟也一定有害。
2016 年 8 月，美国食品和药物管理局规定所有电子香烟必须经过一个冗长而昂贵的申请过程。这个过程可能最终花费每个新产品 100 万美金。
While some of the biggest manufacturers will be able to shoulder the costs and navigate the regulatory mess, most small e-cigarette companies will be forced out of business. With less competition, e-cigarettes will become more expensive, and many people will go right back to smoking.
尽管一些大制造商能够承担这些费用并应对监管乱局，但大部分小型电子香烟企业将被迫退出市场。缺乏竞争，电子香烟会变得更加昂贵，很多消费者又会转回传统香烟。
E-cigarette prohibitionists may think they’re using a “better-safe-than-sorry” approach to save consumers from some yet-to-be-discovered danger, but they’re not.
禁电子香烟主义者或许认为他们在用“安全总比后悔好”的方法保护消费者于尚未发现的危险中，其实没有。
They’re actually endangering millions of smokers who would make the switch if the e-cigarette market were allowed to flourish.
他们实际危害到数百万吸烟者，如果电子香烟市场能够繁荣，这些吸烟者就能转向电子香烟。
As Joe Nocera, a New York Times columnist, wrote:
如纽约时报专栏作家乔·诺切拉写到：
“Equating smoking cigarettes with inhaling e-cigarettes...is a huge disservice to public health. On the scale of potential harms, e-cigarettes aren’t even in the same ballpark as combustible cigarettes. They have the potential to save millions of lives.”
“平等对待抽烟和吸电子香烟……对公众健康而言是一种巨大的伤害。就潜在危害程度，电子香烟根本无法和可燃的香烟相提并论。它们可能拯救百万人的生命。”
The government needs to develop a new paradigm for dealing with e-cigarettes - one that ensures basic standards but recognizes their relative safety and immense benefit to public health.
政府需要设立一个新的范例来对待电子香烟，这个范例要确定电子香烟的基本标准，但也要承认它相对的安全性和对公众健康的巨大好处。
If they don’t, more people will die.
如果政府不这样做，将会有更多人死去。
Imagine that.
难以想象。
I’m Caroline Kitchens of the R Street Institute for Prager University.
我是 R 街研究所的卡罗琳·基钦斯，为 PragerU 制作。
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