CDC Needs to Stop Calling E-Cigarettes "Tobacco Products"

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) web site on youth e-cigarette use begins: "E-cigarettes are the most commonly used tobacco product among U.S. youth."

The CDC goes beyond this and calls the use of e-cigarettes tobacco use: "Most tobacco use, including vaping, starts and is established during adolescence."

The CDC goes beyond even that and lists as one cause of youth e-cigarette use: "Tobacco advertising that targets youth." 

Finally, the CDC concludes by stating, at the bottom of the page: "Commercial tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable disease, disability, and death in the United States." This clearly implies that e-cigarettes contribute towards preventable disease, disability, and death in the United States, since it is a form of tobacco use.

The Rest of the Story

There is absolutely no reason for the CDC to be calling electronic cigarettes a "tobacco product." They are not a tobacco product, in any common sense of the term, because they do not contain any tobacco! They are a nicotine-containing, non-tobacco product. It would be like calling a non-alcoholic beer an alcohol product because it describes itself as a beer. Or like calling a potato a tobacco product because it contains nicotine.

This is problematic not only because it is wrong but because it seriously misleads the public in a harmful and damaging way. By making people think that e-cigarettes contain tobacco, the CDC is contributing towards a huge misinformation campaign that has successfully convinced the majority of the public that vaping is just as hazardous as smoking. This, in turn, has caused damage by deterring smokers from quitting via e-cigarettes and by encouraging ex-smokers who use e-cigarettes to return to cigarette smoking. It has also led to disastrous public policies that treat e-cigarettes as essentially the same thing as tobacco cigarettes. These policies have led to a demonstrable increase in smoking (or more accurately, a decrease in smoking cessation).

The only reason why e-cigarettes should ever be called a "tobacco product" is in the very specific legal use of the term in the context of FDA regulations. E-cigarettes are defined as "tobacco products" only because of a quirk in the FDA's application of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. That quirk is in the definition of a tobacco product, which includes any nicotine-containing product. However, that is merely a legal definition. It has no bearing to reality and certainly not to scientific accuracy.

Using the term "tobacco" product is a choice that CDC is intentionally making. I believe it is a choice they are making intentionally because of their strong anti-nicotine bias. They are lumping e-cigarettes in with real tobacco cigarettes because to their ideology, there actually is no difference. The idea of anyone getting pleasure out of nicotine without being punished by developing disease is anathema to them. 

Let's now go back and analyze each of the CDC's statements in this context:

1. "E-cigarettes are the most commonly used tobacco product among U.S. youth."

No they are not. Lumping them in with actual tobacco products is misleading and I think was done on purpose in order to maintain the alarm (and donations) when youth smoking decreased to extremely low levels. Rather than celebrate this victory, they artificially eliminating the gains by considering e-cigarettes to be cigarettes, thus allowing them to claim that rates of "tobacco product use" were still very high.

2. "Most tobacco use, including vaping, starts and is established during adolescence."

Tobacco use does not include vaping. Even accepting that e-cigarettes are legally classified as a tobacco product, that doesn't mean that vaping involves tobacco use. It does not because there is no tobacco in the product. This is a worse mistake than simply calling e-cigarettes a tobacco product. For that, there is at least the excuse that it meets the legal definition. But to call vaping tobacco use cannot be justified in any way, legal or otherwise.

3. "Tobacco advertising that targets youth."

Tobacco advertising cannot influence youth to use e-cigarettes because what is being advertised is, by definition, not e-cigarettes. E-cigarette advertising potentially influences youth to try vaping but tobacco advertising certainly does not.

4. "Commercial tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable disease, disability, and death in the United States."

Yes, tobacco use is still the leading cause of preventable death in the United States; however, e-cigarettes play no role in tobacco-related morbidity and mortality.