Dr.
Michael Siegel has published a blog entry criticizing a “new
article in American Journal of Medicine claim[ing] that youths who use e-cigarettes
are 5 times more likely to become cigarette smokers.” The commentary was authored by
tobacco and nicotine opponents Pamela Ling and Edward Goetzl.
Dr.
Siegel correctly notes, “the article in question fails to provide any citation
or source for its preposterous claim… Apparently, we are supposed to just take
it on faith that this is true.”
Reviewing
the Ling-Goetzl screed, I found that the authors specified that the five-fold
claim was for “tobacco-naive adolescents.”
While that claim was not attributed, the commentary’s authors did
include in their reference list one possible source: another commentary, authored by
fellow prohibitionist Jonathan Winickoff and coworkers in September’s JAMA.
Winikoff
did not provide a source for his claim either, but he hinted at it with a
reference to a 2019 article by Kaitlyn Berry,
et al., in JAMA Network Open.
Further
complicating the matter, I, along with David Abrams and Ray Niaura, had published
a critical comment
in that journal, documenting how Berry, et al.,
engineered their study to make e-cigarettes seem to increase smoking rates by 4
times (in their abstract), not 5. I also
wrote a blog entry on the
subject in February 2019 that contained this highlight:
“While
Berry, et al., and [then FDA] Commissioner Gottlieb, emphasized the 4.0%
probability of current smoking among e-cigarette first users, we found a
reverse result buried in a supplemental table: The probability of current
e-cigarette use at follow up among cigarette first users was 8.3%. This means that twice as many first-smoking teens currently
used e-cigarettes at follow-up than first-vaping teens who currently used
cigarettes.”
The critical lesson here is not about the
transgressions of Ling-Goetzl, or Winikoff, or Berry. It is how the incessant repetition of
exaggerated, distorted and sometimes falsified research dangerously distorts
public perceptions about vastly safer cigarette substitutes. It happened with smokeless tobacco; it is
happening today with vapor and nicotine pouches. Millions of smokers will die, and
prohibitionists will never be held accountable.
