The American College of Physicians (ACP) has signed on to the anti-harm-reduction crusade sweeping the country. Well, sweeping the official public health groups and politicians and academic centers, anyway: everyone who might stand to benefit from cigarette taxes or Big Pharma large$$e wants these potentially life-saving devices to just shut up and go away.
Smokers desperate to quit are not buying into the alarmist mythology perpetrated by the officials: sales of e-cigs and vapor products continue to increase significantly, but are no longer skyrocketing: some smokers are being deceived successfully by the CDC and its minions and the fraction of smokers who believe they might be helpful in quitting are not as great as they were a year ago.
According to the ACP s Position Statement: Electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS), which include electronic cigarettes, are growing in popularity, but their safety and efficacy as a smoking cessation aid are not well understood. Some argue that they have the potential to reduce tobacco-related morbidity and mortality and could be a useful tool for reducing tobacco-related harm. Others express concern that the health effects of ENDS use are unknown, that they may appeal to young people, and that they may encourage dual use of ENDS and traditional tobacco products.
The organization s final recommendations include these 3 key points:
1--The American College of Physicians recommends that characterizing flavors should be banned from all tobacco products, including ENDS;
2--reiterates its support for taxing tobacco products, including ENDS devices and nicotine liquids, to discourage use among children and adolescents; local governments should be permitted to establish higher tax rates for ENDS and related products than state levels; and
3--supports legislative or regulatory efforts to restrict promotion, advertising, and marketing for ENDS products in the same manner as for combustible cigarettes, including a prohibition on television advertising.
I have been following the controversy over e-cigs/vapor products engendered by corrupt agencies and politicians. While this, another plank in the anti-harm reduction, anti-public health platform widespread (if not all-encompassing) among our supposed public-health authorities, is no surprise, I find it particularly disappointing, being a board-certified internist. Note the hyper-regulatory, hyper-precautionary tone these pompous bureaucrats posing as public-health guardians employ, warning about hypothetical risks of a few GRAS chemicals in water vapor. What they fail to acknowledge is the problem reduced-harm products are designed to ameliorate: almost a half million dead smokers each year, 42 million daily smokers who want to quit smoking, but cannot. So these leaders are worried about possible ill effects a decade or more down the road? And they pretend not to know that adults prefer flavored ecigs and vapes, while kids are experimenting with them only, as teen smoking rates plummet. Further, a brief perusal of the U.S.Constitution would reveal in the very First Amendment, that banning advertising of these non-tobacco products would be a non-starter.
And then there s those delicious taxes they seem to be slobbering over shamelessly! As is uniform among the med-sci journals, here s their disclosure statement: Financial support for the development of this guideline comes exclusively from the ACP operating budget. Sure it does! But where does that budget come from, folks? Well, we here at ACSH did a modicum of research, and discovered that just from Big Pharma, around seven millions dollars of support came ACP s way last year! Now, that s not much for GSK, Pfizer, Novartis and J&J, is it? But wouldn t a neutral observer surmise that it warrants a brief mention in a conflict-of-interest sort of way? We sure do. The ACP should be ashamed of abandoning its public health mission to kowtow to its funders by helping to keep smokers smoking, and dying.