On April 24, Guy Bentley, director of Consumer Freedom at the Reason Foundation, reportedly wrote that over the past few weeks, a number of sources have indicated that vaping may be a risk factor for contracting or exacerbating the severity of COVID-19. These reports are based almost entirely on the guesswork of anti-vape advocates, who rarely receive significant opposition.

On 23 March, American surgeon Jerome Adams appeared on NBC's Today show and hypothesized, without evidence, that e-cigarettes may be the reason why young people may be at a higher risk of COVID-19 than previously thought.

"There is a theory that this could be because we know there are higher percentages of e-cigarette users in the US and Italy." "Adams said.

But on April 16th the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) told Bloomberg that e-cigarette use exposes the lungs to toxic chemicals, but whether these exposures increase the risk of COVID-19 is unknown.

The statement is quite different from that of Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Dr. Volkow recently wrote in the Annals of Internal Medicine that e-cigarette users are at high risk of contracting the coronavirus.

Similarly, last week, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey went so far as to issue an advisory warning that e-cigarettes could exacerbate the spread of COVID-19.

Last month, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio asserted that "if you are a smoker or a vape, that does make you more vulnerable."

After an apparently unclear email exchange with FDA officials, Bloomberg published an article with the headline: "FDA says e-cigarettes may increase virus-related health risks," prompting Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller and 12 public health experts to write a complaint to the agency.

The signatories warned FDA that it would be better for FDA and its media spokespeople not to comment further at this time if its communications were arbitrary and ill-conceived, spreading fear and confusion in the absence of scientific evidence and unpredictable consequences.

Thankfully, the FDA finally seems to be taking this advice seriously. In his editorial, Bentley writes that there is currently no evidence anywhere in the world that e-cigarette users are at higher risk of COVID-19.

The Science Media Research Center recently released statements from public health experts to help journalists understand what we know about smoking, vaping, and COVID-19.

"There is no evidence that e-cigarettes increase the risk of infection or progression to serious illness from COVID-19." Caitlin Notley, Ph.D. She added that because switching from smoking to e-cigarettes can improve cardiovascular and respiratory conditions, smokers who switch to e-cigarettes may have a better prognosis if they contract COVID-19.

Similar to last year's lung disease outbreak, which was initially erroneously linked to traditional e-cigarettes but was later found to be the result of adulterated black market marijuana products, much of the communication around e-cigarettes and COVID-19 has been directed at young people in an effort to get them to stop vaping.

The Campaign for Smoke-free Kids (CTFK) and Parents Against E-Cigarettes (PAVE) have been promoting stories linking e-cigarettes to the coronavirus. On April 15, for example, they even launched a campaign to tell the White House that vape shops are not an essential business.

Public health experts are increasingly concerned that e-cigarettes put users at greater risk of serious complications from COVID-19, that these products are addictive to our children, and that they have not yet been shown to help smokers quit, CTFK said.

The statement is disingenuous. E-cigarettes have been shown to be unquestionably much safer than combustible cigarettes and have consistently been shown to help smokers quit. Italy, Spain, France and Switzerland remain open because they recognize the public health benefits of ensuring access to safer alternatives to cigarettes.

It's time for the anti-vape community to stick to the facts and stop spreading fear and misinformation about a product that is saving millions of lives in the United States and around the globe. Stopping kids from vaping is undoubtedly a noble goal, but that is no excuse for misleading the public in a way that might deter smokers from switching to safer products.