Fighting like rats in a sack – tobacco control 'experts' in war of words
Saturday, January 16, 2016 at 12:31 I love watching tobacco control 'experts' at odds with one another.
For years they were resolutely united and happy to spin any old rubbish if it helped 'make smoking history'.
The war on tobacco is still being fought but e-cigarettes have created a huge division within the tobacco control movement.
One side worries that e-cigarettes will 'renormalise' smoking and keep people addicted to nicotine; the other believes they are a game-changing stop smoking aid.
The latest contretemps concerns a report that reviewed 38 studies 'assessing the association between e-cigarette use and cigarette cessation among adult smokers'.
According to researchers at UC San Francisco, E-cigarettes, as used, aren’t helping smokers quit, study shows.
Co-author Stanton Glantz, America's most outspoken anti-tobacco campaigner, added:
“While there is no question that a puff on an e-cigarette is less dangerous than a puff on a conventional cigarette, the most dangerous thing about e-cigarettes is that they keep people smoking conventional cigarettes.”
Cue outrage from pro-vaping tobacco controllers. Former director of ASH Clive Bates wrote, Who will be duped by error-strewn ‘meta-analysis’ of e-cigarette studies?.
Linda Bauld, Robert West and others responded as follows: Expert reaction to meta-analysis looking at e-cigarette use and smoking cessation.
I'm inclined to agree with some of their comments but I'm also influenced by the fact that Glantz is such a one-eyed propagandist it's difficult to give credence to anything he says or writes.
The same could of course be said about some of his detractors in tobacco control and if the stench of hypocrisy hangs over this argument here's why.
For years public health campaigners have shamelessly exaggerated the effects of smoking – secondhand smoke in particular – spinning the results of research to justify further regulations on tobacco.
For example, the overwhelming majority of studies into the effects of passive smoking found no significant risk but that wasn't how it was presented to politicians, journalists and the general public.
When, in 2003, a study was published that concluded that the effects of secondhand smoke are very small, it was trashed by the anti-smoking community.
It didn't matter that it was largest study of its kind, or that the researchers, Enstrom and Kabat, were respected academics.
There have of course been studies purporting to show a substantial reduction in heart attacks following the introduction of smoking bans. On closer investigation, none of them hold water.
Glantz was responsible for several. But as Chris Snowdon pointed out yesterday on Twitter, with the exception of Michael Siegel no public health campaigner has ever queried the highly dubious 'heart attack miracle'.
It's clear that different standards are being applied to Glantz's work on smoking and vaping and that's inexcusable.
PS. If you've got time read Carl Phillips' latest post, Glantz responds to his (other) critics, helping make my point. It's long but worth the effort.
Reader Comments (5)
It's not *that* long.
The hypocrisy of junk scientists and propagandists like Bauld and Bates is astounding. Liars the lot of them - except when it suits their intentions.
I refuse to take seriously the wibble that spews forth from a man (Glantz) who has as many medical qualifications as I do - NONE.
“ … adult smokers who use e-cigarettes are actually 28 percent less likely to stop smoking cigarettes.”
Typical scaremongering from the dyed-in-the-wool capnophobes. I suspect that the actual stats might well be correct, but (as is usual with Tobacco Control), it’s being spun into an insinuation that anyone who uses e-cigarettes for a while will be back to their erstwhile smoking levels shortly afterwards.
In actual fact, I think it’s more likely that someone who has the “safety net” of an e-cigarette to use on a regular basis will be much less frightened of “giving way to temptation” on the odd occasion – perhaps when they are in the company of real smokers and feel like a real cigarette for a change – but I doubt that anyone who has, in their own mind, “made the switch” will then return “full time,” as it were, to smoking just because of those few occasions, for the simple reason that they won’t need to – they’ve got their e-cigarettes to use for the majority of the time and so won’t need to go back to smoking on a regular basis.
So, yes, from the antis point of view that’s not “giving up smoking,” because, as we all know, to the activists within Tobacco Control, even one cigarette a year will class you as a “wicked smoker.” But for those of us living in the real world (where, quite frankly, anyone like a regular vaper who has the occasional “real one” is no more of a real smoker than is someone like yourself, Simon – a regular total non-tobacco user who has the very occasional cigar), that is a very, very long way from “returning to smoking.”
Fighting like rats in a sack.
What do you mean “like”?