American Medical Association President Bruce A. Scott, M.D.,
authored an article, posted on the AMA website today, “Flavored
e-cigarettes pose dire threat to youth and public health,” that includes the
following: “Tobacco products cause cancer. Overwhelming evidence demonstrates
that multiple types of cancer are linked to tobacco products, including
e-cigarettes”
This is grossly incorrect, as Dr. Scott intentionally
conflates the risks of tobacco use with those of smoking. He provides links to another
AMA article that discusses youth
and E-cigarette and vaping associated lung injuries (EVALI), but cancer is
not mentioned there.
In today’s piece, Dr. Scott writes, “The use of tobacco
in various forms remains the nation’s leading cause of preventable death. According to the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it claims the lives of 1,300
Americans every day, or about one in every five deaths annually. As an ear,
nose and throat surgeon in Louisville for more than 30 years, I’ve seen up
close the devastating damage that cigarettes and e-cigarettes
cause—mouth and throat cancers that too often change lives forever or end
lives prematurely.” (emphasis added) The article linked here by Dr.
Scott discusses smoking only.
Conflation of tobacco and smoking is a common practice among
prohibitionists, as I have noted before (here,
here,
here),
but it is beyond the pale for the president of the AMA to treat “tobacco use”
as a synonym for “smoking”, and worse, to unequivocally claim that he has “seen
up close” that e-cigarettes cause mouth and throat cancer.
