CDC Uses Vape Research to Misinform
Skewed interpretation of data leads the Centres of Disease Control and Prevention to make ridiculous claims about vaping.
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by Dave Cross
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It claims to find that found that 40% of current users of electronic cigarettes (aged 18 to 24) had never tried traditional tobacco cigarettes before ever using vaping products, and that 43% were current tobacco cigarette smokers. It failed to detail how many of these young adults were regular users of vaping equipment.
The CDC report does state that 3.5% of Americans are current vapers and that all adults over 45 years of age were current or ex-smokers.
The CDC’s Tom Frieden said: “The increased use of e-cigarettes by teens is deeply troubling. Nicotine is a highly addictive drug. Many teens who start with e-cigarettes may be condemned to struggling with a lifelong addiction to nicotine and conventional cigarettes.”
“About 90 percent of all smokers begin smoking as teenagers,” added Tim McAfee, another director at the CDC Office on Smoking and Health. “We must keep our youth from experimenting or using any tobacco product. These dramatic increases suggest that developing strategies to prevent marketing, sales, and use of e-cigarettes among youth is critical.”
And then there’s a quote in the press release from the increasingly ridiculous Mitch Zeller, director of FDA’s Centre for Tobacco Products: “There are still many open questions about ‘are e-cigarettes a gateway to smoking more harmful products’. ”
This isn’t science - this is outright propaganda. It’s the corruption of the scientific process for purely ideological ends. It demonstrates what you can do with statistics if you ignore other statistics – such as the record low in U.S. teen smoking rates.
The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids leapt on the release with glee. Always ready to stick the boot into harm-reduction, the organisation said: “If there is a public health benefit to the emergence of e-cigarettes, it will come only if they are effective at helping smokers stop using cigarettes completely, responsibly marketed to adult smokers and properly regulated to achieve these goals. They will not benefit public health if smokers use them in addition to cigarettes instead of quitting or if they re-glamorize tobacco use among young people and attract non-smokers.”
It runs at odds with the comments surrounding research from Georgia State’s School of Public Health. Doctor Michael Eriksen, dean of the institution, said: “Our public health messages should accurately convey to cigarette smokers that switching completely to e-cigarettes would reduce their risks even if e-cigarettes are addictive and not risk-free.”
The study stated: “The findings underscore the urgent need to convey accurate information to the public, especially adult smokers, about the available scientific evidence of the harm of e-cigarettes compared to combustible cigarettes.
Accurate information certainly isn’t going to come from the CDC or the FDA any time soon.
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.
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