Why is Dr. Glantz Calling a Letter from an Independent Public Health Practitioner an "Aggressive Lobbying Effort" by the Tobacco Industry?

Yesterday, I discussed what I believe is a mischaracterization by Dr. Stan Glantz of the scientific evidence on the relative risks of smoking vs. vaping as well as an inappropriate attack on independent scientists who happen to favor harm reduction in tobacco control. When I read the piece, I noted that Dr. Glantz accused the tobacco industry of organizing an "aggressive lobbying campaign" to "convince delegates to the 11th Conference of the Parties for The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control to embrace e-cigarettes and other so-called smoke free tobacco products as part of tobacco control." I failed to click on the link because I assumed that this was a true statement. Why would Dr. Glantz call it an aggressive lobbying effort by Big Tobacco if it weren't?

After reading comments from some colleagues, I went ahead and clicked on the link to discover what this big lobbying effort of the tobacco industry consisted of. To my surprise, I found out that this "aggressive lobbying effort" by the "tobacco industry" consisted merely of a letter from one of my colleagues -- Clive Bates -- who has no affiliation with the tobacco industry, urging the delegates to the convention to embrace the idea of promoting electronic cigarettes as a safer alternative to smoking. Clive was transparent in the letter and noted that he has "no conflicts of interest regarding tobacco, nicotine, or pharmaceutical industries."

The Rest of the Story

In retrospect, the claim that this letter represents an aggressive lobbying effort by the tobacco industry turns out to be false. It is a letter from one person who has no affiliation with the tobacco industry. It appears that this is an attempt to malign the character and intent of Clive, who is a colleague of Dr. Glantz's in the effort to reduce morbidity and mortality associated with tobacco use. 

For six years, Clive headed up Action on Smoking and Health UK. While with ASH, Clive worked to counteract and restrict tobacco marketing, promoted tobacco product and packaging regulation, cigarette tax increases, reduction of tobacco smuggling, and smoke-free places, and he worked to increase the availability of treatment for addiction and to advance harm reduction in the tobacco control movement. He also "worked on development of the WHO's first international treaty - the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control."

There is nothing in Clive's career to even suggest that he has done anything other than to fight Big Tobacco. In fact, the tobacco industry did lobby aggressively against the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which Clive promoted. 

Notably, an international effort to promote e-cigarettes as a substitute for tobacco would harm the tobacco industry because it would divert people away from tobacco products and toward non-tobacco products that are much safer. The sale of tobacco would decline, not increase. So if Clive is lobbying for the tobacco industry, he's doing a really poor job!

I find this ad hominem attack disturbing because it's completely unnecessary, untrue, malicious, and arguably defamatory. There's no room for that kind of nonsense in public health. If the facts in support of Stan's position are so weak that he has to resort to character assassination in order to promote his viewpoint, then it doesn't say a lot for the strength of his arguments.

Sadly, I have been the target of defamatory attacks like this several times in my career. Ironically, the most vicious attacks against my character came not from the tobacco industry but from some of my closest colleagues in the tobacco control movement. For example, one of my colleagues - with whom I published a paper expounding the dangers of secondhand smoke - publicly accused me of being a paid hack of the e-cigarette industry. (After I questioned him about why he made this statement, he sent me an email asking whether or not I have taken e-cigarette money, to which I responded: "Shouldn't you have asked me that question before you publicly smeared me in front of an auditorium-full of people?" Incidentally, this is the same researcher who also publicly claimed that e-cigarettes cause popcorn lung.)

We are living at a time when civil discourse is under attack. While there is certainly a place for exposing corporate lobbying that is harming the public's health, making false accusations weakens our credibility. And issuing such attacks against private individuals chills much-needed civil discourse among public health practitioners about a very important scientific question that affects millions of lives.