American Lung Association in Wisconsin is Lying About Health Effects of Smoking

It used to be that the tobacco industry lied to the public in order to downplay the severe health effects of cigarette smoking. Today, it is the Wisconsin branch of the American Lung Association (ALA) that is lying about the risks of smoking.

According to the director of tobacco control and public policy for the ALA in Wisconsin: "there’s still a perception that e-cigarettes are less harmful than regular cigarettes and so for some kids who never would have tried smoking cigarettes they get the idea this might be a safer alternative."

Clearly, the ALA is telling the public that kids are actually mistaken and that e-cigarettes are no less harmful than regular cigarettes. Of course, this also means that cigarettes are no more dangerous than e-cigarettes.

The Rest of the Story

The truth is that e-cigarettes are much safer than regular cigarettes. Dr. Stan Glantz - a highly respected, long-time scientist in the anti-tobacco movement - has stated unequivocally that e-cigarettes are safer than regular cigarettes and that if a smoker switches to e-cigarettes exclusively, they will experience an improvement in their health. Dr. Glantz may quibble with some of us who support harm reduction in terms of the exact magnitude of the risk differential, but there is no credible scientific doubt that vaping is safer than smoking.

Even the cigarette companies are not lying to the public about this point. In fact, they readily admit that their cigarettes are much more dangerous than regular cigarettes and they are even making efforts to market e-cigarettes as a less hazardous alternative.

So why is the American Lung Association picking up where the historical fraud and deception of the tobacco industry ended?

Like the ALA, I do not want youth to be taking up vaping. However, unlike the ALA, I don't condone lying to our nation's youth in order to try to deter them from vaping. Especially since the ultimate effect of downplaying the health hazards of smoking is that it will produce less deterrence to youth smoking. If kids think that smoking is only as bad as inhaling cherry vapes and blowing a few vape rings, then their appreciation of the serious health hazards of smoking will be undermined, which of course will lead to more kids smoking.

As Alan Selk said eloquently in his comment to the article in which the ALA was quoted:

"Donna Wininsky's statement that there is still a perception that e-cigarettes are less harmful than regular statements is a pretty bizarre statement, considering that e-cigarettes are in fact significantly less harmful then regular cigarettes. All the real evidence points to that fact. It has also been shown that about 80% of kids who are using e-cigs are not using nicotine. They are simply playing with the vapor. A great majority of the youth who are using nicotine are using it as a substitute (and a much less harmful one) for smoking. ... "

"As far as health goes there is only one number that matters, and that is how many people are inhaling smoke from cigarettes. Those numbers are at historic lows among youth and adults. There is good evidence that the reason for the drop is because people are switching to low risk alternatives. That is a very positive news. (in the UK, where e-cigs are endorsed by the health establishment as a viable harm reduction tool, and people are generally better informed as to the relative risk of smoking verses vaping, 50% of people who take up vaping end up completely quitting cigarettes)."

"I would like to know why, instead of encouraging people to switch to a far less harmful alternative to cigarettes, the American Lung Association of Wisconsin is misinforming the people of Wisconsin on the relative risk of vaping verses smoking. They are in fact killing people with there misinformation campaign."

The ALA is not only wrong in its assessment of the relative health effects of vaping compared to smoking, but it is also wrong in suggesting that e-cigarette use among youth in Wisconsin is a problem because it leads to cigarette use. The evidence from Wisconsin suggests exactly the opposite. According to the state's Youth Tobacco Survey, while e-cigarette use among high school students in Wisconsin continued to increase substantially from 7.9% in 2014 to 13.3% in 2016, smoking prevalence declined by 24%, from 10.7% to 8.1%. These data are not consistent with the assertion that e-cigarettes are serving as a gateway to smoking among Wisconsin youth. In fact, they suggest the opposite. As Alan Selk correctly argues, e-cigarettes appear to be serving as a deterrent to smoking as a culture of vaping replaces, rather than reinforces, a culture of smoking.

New CDC Data Should Put to Rest the Contention that E-Cigarettes are a Gateway to Youth Smoking

New data released moments ago by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) should put to rest the contention that electronic cigarettes are a gateway to smoking among youth. These new data show that the prevalence of smoking among high school students was cut in half in just five years - from 2011 to 2016 - at the same time as the use of e-cigarettes among these very same students increased dramatically from 1.5% to a peak of 16.0% in 2015.

There is more good news from the CDC. Not only has youth smoking declined at an unprecedented pace in the last five years, but for the first time, the prevalence of youth use of e-cigarettes has also declined, dropping from 16.0% in 2015 to 11.3% in 2016 (among high school students). Use of cigarettes among high school students continued to fall between 2015 and 2016, dropping from 9.3% to 8.0%.

The Rest of the Story

This is great news because it reveals that smoking is truly becoming unpopular among youth. The rate of decline in youth smoking is unprecedented. This despite the rapid rise in e-cigarette experimentation. These data are simply not consistent with the hypothesis that vaping is going to re-normalize smoking and that e-cigarettes are a gateway to youth smoking.

The drop in e-cigarette use is also reassuring because it suggests that vaping is largely a social phenomenon that involves experimentation and that the addictive potential of these products is quite low. It also suggests that the popularity of youth vaping has peaked and that concerns about vaping taking over and leading to nicotine addiction among a huge proportion of youth are not warranted.

If anything, the real concern at this point is whether the decline in e-cigarette use might actually slow the unprecedented declines we have seen in youth smoking.