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Meddling Kids Unmask Ecig Lies

The surgeon general’s report didn’t last a week as latest figures reveal teen smoking rates continue to fall.

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The report is filled with claims about harm, while there are no real facts about any harm caused by e-cigarettes to anyone (user or bystander),” wrote Konstantinos Farsalinos. “The statements about harmful and potentially harmful compounds are nothing more than emotional statements with no real content in terms of realistic risk.”

Murthy’s report was slated from all angles (bar those in receipt of Big Pharma money or cash for prevention programs). Then, as if things couldn’t get worse, the government destroyed its own position with data contained in the Monitoring The Future survey.

Welcoming the findings, the White House Office of National Drug Policy’s director, Michael Botticelli said: “It is encouraging to see more young people making healthy choices not to use illicit substances. We must continue to do all we can to support young people through evidence-based prevention efforts as well as treatment for those who may develop substance use disorders. And now that Congress has acted on the President's request to provide $1 billion in new funding for prevention and treatment, we will have significant new resources to do this.”

Vaping has been around for long enough for there to be concrete data showing a pathway from electronic cigarettes to smoking tobacco cigarettes – and then on to heavy tobacco use. Murthy claims it is there but his statements look absurd and laughable against a backdrop of yet further falls in teen smoking.

On top of this, Murthy was claiming certain flavours are marketed in such a way that the industry is targeting the nation’s children. Quite how he balances that with the survey’s findings (that the number of 15/16yr-olds who disapprove of vaping has grown from 59% to 65%) is anybody’s guess.

Jacob Sullum, writing on the Reason blog, says such findings “confound the e-cigarette alarmists”. He points at the desperation of anti-vape campaigners that they’re desperate to cling to their unsupportable fears. Richard Miech, one of the researchers involved, being a case in point. They discovered most teen vapers do not use nicotine – so now Miech claims that vaping might lead to friends who encourage them to smoke!

Michael Siegel comments: “At this point, it is clear that whatever the risks of youth vaping may be, one of them is not the risk of progressing to smoking. If this hypothesis were true, we would simply not be seeing the historic declines in youth smoking that are occurring. Quite clearly, smoking continues to be de-normalised, not re-normalised as anti-tobacco groups and many health agencies have claimed.”

“It appears that a culture of vaping is largely replacing a culture of smoking. If anything, it appears that the advent of e-cigarettes has accelerated the de-normalisation of smoking by largely replacing it....Vaping appears not to be making smoking more cool, as claimed by the Surgeon General, the CDC, and anti-tobacco groups, but to be making smoking less cool. It also appears that there has been a plateau and now a decline in the rising fad of youth vaping, which should help ease the concerns of anti-tobacco groups that an entire generation of kids is going to be addicted to nicotine.”

Dave Cross avatar

Dave Cross

Journalist at POTV
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Dave 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 vape companies to develop content for their websites.

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