medium.com
Why do opponents of vaping want to suppress or dismiss science?
Marc Gunther
1 minute
We need to learn more, not less, about e-cigarettes.
Marc Gunther
2 days ago·6 min read
“Woman Vaping on Electronic Cigarette” by Vaping360 is licensed under CC BY 2.0
E-cigarettes have fractured the tobacco-control community. Some researchers argue that vaping nicotine saves lives by helping smokers quit. Others say that e-cigarettes are dangerous, especially for young people. The debate is by no means settled.
So you’d think that all involved would welcome more science. Sadly, that’s not so.
Consider, for example, what happened after a debate about conflicts of interest in tobacco science, part of a seminar series organized by academics.
One one side: Joanna Cohen, the Bloomberg Professor of Disease Prevention at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. She argued that journals such as Tobacco Control, where she is an editor, are right in refusing to publish research sponsored by the industry. What’s more, she said, those who work in the industry, including at e-cigarette company Juul, should be prohibited from attending scientific conferences.
“Scientists do not want their journals or their scientific societies to be used in the service of an industry that continues to perpetuate the most deadly disease epidemic of our time,” Cohen said.
On the other side: Kenneth Michael Cummings, a professor at the Medical University of South Carolina. Cummings, a veteran of the tobacco wars who has testified in court against cigarette companies, nevertheless does not believe that they should be barred from journals or scientific meetings.
“Science ought to be judged on its merits. Period,” Cummings said. “Censorship is not the way to go.” Companies that make reduced-risk products like e-cigarettes could be part of the solution to the public health threat posed by combustible tobacco. he said.
Watching online, I thought Cummings got the better of the debate. Cohen, evidently, felt the same way — because a week or so later, she sent an email to Matthew Myers, the president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, an ardent opponent of all things tobacco, including e-cigarettes:
Good morning Matt. I hope you and your family are well.
I’m looking for an expert who can help me effectively respond to arguments about not allowing tobacco company research in journals, and not allowing tobacco company employees to attend scientific conferences. Those in favor of tobacco company publishing/conference attendance are calling the above policies “censorship” and they talk about “open science” (quite powerful on the face of it).
I thought you may be aware of people/companies who are very good at crafting message framing that resonates well (and who don’t work for tobacco companies!). Or, if you can recommend who I might ask, that would be greatly appreciated too!
All the best,
Joanna
Do you see the problem here?
“The aim of suppressing science”
The professor who opposes conflicts of interest turns for help — specifically, help finding a PR consultant — to an advocate who is leading the war against vaping. Perhaps coincidentally, Cohen, Johns Hopkins and Tobacco-Free Kids all get funding from Michael Bloomberg and his foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, which gave Tobacco-Free Kids a three-year, $160m grant to oppose vaping in 2019 . Bloomberg and the foundation have donated more than $3 billion to Hopkins, which named its public health school after him.
Clive Bates, a British advocate for reduced-harm nicotine products, including e-cigarettes, said the email exchange “illustrates an interesting collaborative operation between a venerable academic institution and an activist operation, both Bloomberg funded, with the aim of suppressing science from sources they do not like.”
The collaboration is interesting, but is it objectionable? Perhaps not. Both camps in the contentious debate about vaping coordinate efforts behind the scenes. Cohen, a respected tobacco researcher, is not known as a hard-line opponent of vaping. “The research (about vaping) is limited and it’s a moving target,” she told me, when we spoke back earlier this year. She declined to talk with me about her email.
What is objectionable is that Cohen and Tobacco-Free Kids want to reject or discredit science that could shed light on the debate about how to regulate e-cigarettes.
To be sure, tobacco companies have a disgraceful record of distorting science, lying to the public and marketing to kids. They continue to sell vast quantities of deadly cigarettes — about $700 billion worth this year. One in five adults in the world smokes tobacco, according to Our World in Data.
On the other hand, the good news — for public health, if not for the industry — is that smoking rates are falling almost everywhere. Some of that decline surely is due to the rise of vaping. So tobacco companies, including Altria, which is the biggest shareholder in Juul, R.J. Reynolds and British American Tobacco, are investing in e-cigarettes for sound business reasons: They see alternative nicotine-delivery products as a way to offset the declines in their revenues and profits from combustible tobacco. Strange as it seems, their interests may be aligned with those who care about public health.
Industry research should be read skeptically, of course, but it can help researchers and regulators understand how to move smokers off combustibles and onto less harmful products— a goal embraced by the FDA. One peer-reviewed study from Juul, for example, found that more than half of 17,000 cigarette smokers who bought a Juul starter kit had stopped smoking a year later and switched to vapes. [See Why ignore evidence in the debate about e-cigarettes?]
Instead of responding to that finding with curiosity, Matt Myers of Tobacco-Free Kids dismissed it, saying that “research funded by tobacco companies cannot be treated as a credible source of science of evidence” because of the industry’s history of lying. But the Juul study was submitted to the FDA as part of its application to remain on the market; getting caught misleading regulators could mean the end of Juul.
Meanwhile, Myers says nothing, at least in public, when shoddy science is deployed to support the anti-vaping cause. To the contrary — the longtime anti-tobacco crusader Stanton Glantz remained a go-to scientist for Tobacco-Free Kids and Parents Against Vaping E-Cigarettes (PAVE) even after some of his research into vaping was retracted and refuted. [See The tainted science of Stanton Glantz.] The journal Tobacco Control, where Joanna Cohen is an editor, continues to publish work by Glantz of highly questionable value.
Unintended consequences
More broadly, Tobacco-Free Kids and PAVE have taken the their crusade against e-cigarettes into the political arena rather than leave regulation to the FDA. Tobacco-Free Kids lobbies for state and local bans on flavored e-cigarettes, like one recently passed in Washington, D.C. (Deadly cigarettes remain on the market.) PAVE is running a campaign called Back to School, Not Back to Juul, urging parents to demand that the FDA ban all flavored cigarettes. Neither Tobacco-Free Kids nor PAVE — which was started and funded by well-to-do parents in Manhattan and Silicon Valley alarmed by youth vaping — display any interest in the fate of adult smokers, or in the millions of former adult smokers who have kicked the habit with the help of flavored vapes. For the new prohibitionists, it’s always about the kids and only about the kids.
Nor do they seem perturbed by the growing evidence — see this study from Abigail Friedman of Yale and this one from a group of economists including Michael Pesko of Georgia State — that policies that ban vaping or impose steeper taxes on e-cigarettes lead more people to smoke.
“Unfortunately, we’re seeing some recent data suggesting that where there have been severe restrictions placed on e-cigarettes, flavor bans and that sort of thing, smoking rates are going back up,” says Raymond Niaura, a professor at the NYU public health school who specializes in tobacco issues. “Is this what the tobacco control community wants?”
For the moment, the future of e-cigarettes rests with the FDA and its Center for Tobacco Products, which is led by Mitch Zeller, a respected veteran of the tobacco wars. The regulators have been tasked with trying to settle the thorny question of whether e-cigarettes are “appropriate for the protection of public health.” More than 500 staff members have spent years studying the issue, weighing the risks of e-cigs to young people against their benefits to adult smokers. The agency is expected to decide next month whether e-cigarettes can remain on the market.
Soon enough, we’ll see how the new prohibitionists respond.
***
Disclosure: Readers have asked if I have sought or accepted money or other benefits from tobacco or e-cigarette companies. I have not and will not. Like many scientists who study vaping, I come to the topic with a point of view but try to remain open to new evidence. I’m writing about tobacco policy because I think it’s important and deserves more attention. I invite you to subscribe to my work by entering your email below.
