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到底有没有健康隐患 电子烟与尼古丁

来源:可可英语 编辑:shaun   可可英语APP下载 |  可可官方微信:ikekenet

“We need a national debate on nicotine,” said Mitch Zeller.

“我们需要就尼古丁展开一场全民大讨论,”米奇·泽勒(Mitch Zeller)说。
Zeller is the director of the Center for Tobacco Products, a division of the Food and Drug Administration created in 2009 when Congress passed legislation giving the F.D.A. regulatory authority — at long last! — over cigarettes. In addition, the center will soon have regulatory authority over other tobacco products, including electronic cigarettes, which have become enormously controversial even as they have gained in use. Through something called a “deeming rule,” the center is in the process of asserting that oversight over e-cigarettes.
泽勒是烟草制品中心(Center for Tobacco Products)主任,这个食品与药品管理局(Food and Drug Administration,简称FDA)下属机构,是国会2009年——终于!——立法授予FDA香烟管制权后成立的。除了香烟,中心不久还会获得其他烟草产品的管制权,包括使用量在增加但争议极大的电子烟。通过一个叫做“推定规则”的条款,烟草中心即将得到监管电子烟的权力。

Opponents of electronic cigarettes, which include many public health officials, hope that the center will treat these new devices like it treats cigarettes: taking steps to discourage teenagers from “vaping,” for instance, and placing strict limits on the industry’s ability to market its products.

包括许多公共卫生官员在内的电子烟反对者希望烟草中心能把这些新型烟具当成普通香烟一样处理:比如着手抑制电子烟在青少年中的流行,对该产业的产品营销能力进行严格限制。
Proponents, meanwhile, hope that the center will view e-cigarettes as a “reduced harm” product that can save lives by offering a nicotine fix without the carcinogens that are ingested through a lit cigarette. In this scenario, e-cigarette manufacturers would be able to make health claims, and adult smokers might even be encouraged to switch from smoking to vaping as part of a reduced harm strategy.
与此同时,支持者则希望中心把电子烟当做一种“减害”产品,它能让人过尼古丁瘾,但又不会产生燃烧的香烟会有的致癌物。照这个说法,电子烟生产商就可以声称它们的产品有益健康,甚至将之纳入整体的减害策略,提倡成年烟民从吸烟转向吸电子烟。
When I requested an interview with Zeller, I didn’t expect him to tip his hat on which direction he wanted the center to go, and he didn’t. Indeed, one of the points he made was that the F.D.A. was conducting a great deal of scientific research — more than 50 studies in all, he said — aimed at generating the evidence needed to better understand where to place e-cigarettes along what he calls “the continuum of risk.”
在向泽勒提出采访请求的时候,我并不指望他会透露自己希望中心该走哪条路,他也确实没说。事实上他的其中一项表态是,FDA在做大量的科学研究——据他说在50项以上——希望能充分积累证据,以便更好地判断电子烟在他所说的“风险序列”中处于什么位置。
Zeller is a veteran of the “tobacco wars” of the 1990s, working alongside then-F.D.A. Commissioner David Kessler, who had audaciously labeled cigarettes a “drug-delivery device” (the drug being nicotine) and had claimed regulatory authority. Zeller left the F.D.A. in 2000, after the Supreme Court ruled against Kessler’s interpretation, and joined the American Legacy Foundation, where he helped create its hard-hitting, anti-tobacco “Truth campaign.” After a stint with a consulting firm, Pinney Associates, he returned to the F.D.A. in early 2013 to lead the effort to finally regulate the tobacco industry.
泽勒是参加过1990年代“烟草战争”的老兵,辅佐当时的FDA局长戴维·凯斯勒(David Kessler),后者曾甘冒大不韪将香烟称为“药物递送装置”(药物指的是尼古丁),并为此声称自己拥有监管权。凯斯勒的解释遭到最高法院否决后,泽勒于2000年离开FDA,进入美国遗产基金会(American Legacy Foundation)工作,并在那里策动了强有力的反烟活动“真相运动”(Truth campaign)。之后他在咨询机构Pinney Associates工作过一段时间,于2013年初回到FDA,着手实现对烟草行业的监管。
“I am fond of quoting Michael Russell,” Zeller said, referring to an important South African tobacco scientist who died in 2009. In the early 1970s, Russell was among the first to recognize that nicotine was the reason people got addicted to cigarettes. “He used to say, ‘People smoke for the nicotine but die from the tar,’ ” Zeller recalled.
“我喜欢引用迈克尔·拉塞尔(Michael Russell)的话,”泽勒说,这位南非著名烟草科学家已于2009年去世,他在1970年代初提出尼古丁是人对香烟上瘾的原因,是这一理论的先驱之一。“他说过,‘致人抽烟的是尼古丁,致人死亡的是焦油,’”泽勒说。
This is also why Zeller found e-cigarettes so “interesting,” as he put it, when they first came on the market. A cigarette gets nicotine to the brain in seven seconds, he said. Nicotine gum or patches can take up to 60 minutes or longer, which is far too slow for smokers who need a nicotine fix. But e-cigarettes can replicate the speed of cigarettes in delivering nicotine to the brain, thus creating real potential for them to become a serious smoking cessation device.
这也是为什么当市场上刚出现电子烟的时候,泽勒会说这是个“有意思的”东西。他说香烟可以在七秒钟内将尼古丁送达大脑。尼古丁咀嚼糖或贴片需要长达60分钟,甚至可能更久,对希望过尼古丁瘾的烟民来说实在太慢。但电子烟的尼古丁递送速度可以和香烟媲美,因此有望成为正经的戒烟手段。
But there are still many questions about both their safety and their efficacy. For instance, are smokers using e-cigarettes to quit cigarettes, or they using them to get a nicotine hit at times when they can’t smoke cigarettes? And beyond that there are important questions about nicotine itself, and how it should be dealt with.
但人们对它的安全性和功效仍然有很多疑问。比如烟民是在用电子烟戒香烟,还是在不能抽香烟时,用它来过尼古丁瘾呢?除此之外,关于尼古丁本身及其处置方式,也有一些重要的问题尚待解答。
“When nicotine is attached to smoke particles, it will kill,” said Zeller. “But if you take that same drug and put it in a patch, it is such a safe medicine that it doesn’t even require a doctor’s prescription.” That paradox helps explain why he believes “there needs to be a rethink within society on nicotine.”
“尼古丁和烟尘颗粒在一起,可以致命,”泽勒说。“但同一种药物放到贴片里就安全了,安全到连医生处方都不需要。”正是出于这种困惑,他认为“社会对尼古丁需要有一个重新的认识”。
Within the F.D.A., Zeller has initiated discussions with “the other side of the house” — the part of the agency that regulates drugs — to come up with a comprehensive, agency-wide policy on nicotine. But the public health community — and the rest of us — needs to have a debate as well.
泽勒在FDA内部已经开始跟“房子那一头的人”——负责药物监管的部门——讨论制定一个全面的、各部门统一的尼古丁政策。但公共卫生领域,以及我们大家,也需要展开讨论。
“One of the impediments to this debate,” Zeller said, is that the e-cigarette opponents are focused on all the flavors available in e-cigarettes — many of which would seem aimed directly at teenagers — as well as their marketing, which is often a throwback to the bad-old days of Big Tobacco. “The debate has become about these issues and has just hardened both sides,” Zeller told me.
泽勒说,“阻碍这种讨论的其中一个因素”是,电子烟反对者抓住了电子烟的多种口味——其中许多口味是直接迎合青少年的——以及它们的营销方式,时常让人想起穷凶极恶的“大烟草公司”时代。“讨论已经开始围绕这些问题展开,导致双方的态度都强硬起来,”泽勒对我说。
It’s not that Zeller believes nicotine is perfectly safe (he doesn’t) or that we should shrug our shoulders if teenagers take up vaping. He believes strongly that kids should be discouraged from using e-cigarettes.
这并不表示泽勒相信尼古丁是绝对安全的(他不这么认为),或者我们不需要把青少年吸电子烟太当回事。他坚信应该设法制止青少年使用电子烟。
Rather, he thinks there should be a recognition that different ways of delivering nicotine also come with different risks. To acknowledge that, and to grapple with its implications, would be a step forward.
他的看法是我们应该认识到,不同的尼古丁递送方法,带来的风险也是不同的。明确这一点,面对它可能带来的后果,就是一种进步。
“This issue isn’t e-cigarettes,” said Mitch Zeller. “It’s nicotine.”
“问题不在电子烟,”米奇·泽勒说。“在尼古丁。”

重点单词   查看全部解释    
issue ['iʃju:]

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n. 发行物,期刊号,争论点
vi. & vt

 
administration [əd.mini'streiʃən]

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n. 行政,管理,行政部门

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switch [switʃ]

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n. 开关,转换,鞭子
v. 转换,改变,交换

 
recognition [.rekəg'niʃən]

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n. 认出,承认,感知,知识

 
device [di'vais]

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n. 装置,设计,策略,设备

 
nicotine ['nikəti:n]

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n. 尼古丁

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community [kə'mju:niti]

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n. 社区,社会,团体,共同体,公众,[生]群落

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interview ['intəvju:]

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n. 接见,会见,面试,面谈
vt. 接见,采

 
cessation [se'seiʃən]

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n. 中止,(短暂的)停止

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acknowledge [ək'nɔlidʒ]

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vt. 承认,公认,告知收到,表示感谢,注意到

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