Addiction Researchers Condemn Oz Statement
Eleven top international addiction scientists have denounced a statement made about vaping and electronic cigarettes by Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council
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by Dave Cross
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The NHMRC statement, published in June 2022, aims to provide “public health advice on the safety and impacts of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) based on review of the current evidence.”
This critique of the NHMRC statement, published in the scientific journal Addiction, argues that the statement does not accurately summarise the current evidence on e-cigarettes. In fact, it selectively cites evidence in support of a 2017 statement rather than objectively analysing and incorporating new research. The critique also argues that the NHMRC statement relies heavily on a flawed analysis by the National Centre for Epidemiology and Public Health at the Australian National University.
The authors of the critique cite the following weaknesses of the NHMRC statement:
- It exaggerates the risks of vaping and fails to compare them with smoking.
- It incorrectly claims that adolescent vaping causes subsequent smoking.
- It ignores evidence of the benefits of vaping in helping smokers quit.
- It ignores evidence that vaping is likely already having a positive effect on public health.
- It misapplies the precautionary principle, which requires policy makers to compare the risks of introducing a product with the risks of delaying its introduction.
The eleven experts say the National Health and Medical Research Council has ignored “evidence-based reports by the UK Royal College of Physicians, Public Health England and the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, all of which arrived at very different conclusions on the risks and benefits of e-cigarettes”.
According to lead author Dr Colin Mendelsohn, “Many leading international scientists in the field hold more supportive views than the NHMRC on the potential of e-cigarettes as a strategy to improve public health. In particular, invoking the precautionary principle to prevent the use of much less harmful smoke-free products is unjustified in the face of the massive public health burden of smoking.”
In summary, argue the authors of this critique, the NHMRC statement confuses association with causation, adopts a double standard by uncritically accepting evidence of harms while being highly sceptical of evidence of benefits, and inappropriately applies the precautionary principle.
References:
- National Health and Medical Research Council. CEO Statement Summary: Electronic Cigarettes. Canberra: National Health and Medical Research Council; 2022. [accessed 30 Jan 2023] – https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/health-advice/all-topics/electronic-cigarettes/ceo-statement-summary
- A critique of the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council CEO statement on electronic cigarettes - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/add.16143
Photo Credit:
Australia map from Stasyan117, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
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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