In their ongoing campaign to stifle the truthful communication of risks (hypothetical) and benefits (not yet documented but theoretically huge) regarding the innovative low-risk nicotine devices, e-cigarettes and vapor products, the NYTimes has reached new heights today. Working hand-in-glove with the public health officials, NGOs and politicians whose craving for cigarette tax money and/or big pharma largesse outweigh their ethics, the Times editorialists published an essay misleadingly titled The Perils of Smokeless Tobacco. Upon reading it, however, the major topic turns out to be e-cigarettes and harm reduction. (This is not entirely a bad thing: at least the Times editors are aware of the fact lost upon so many other experts that e-cigs emit no smoke, although they are still having trouble with the word tobacco, also not present in e-cigs).
As has been omnipresent in the media since the recently-released National Youth Tobacco Survey by the CDC, the editorial expresses deep concern about the rise in e-cig use by teens. As has been similarly ignored, these writers also fail to address these salient facts: 1-survey use includes any use over the 30 days prior to the survey, even once; 2-teen smoking declined by amounts and to levels not seen since the surveys were first done forty years ago. Smoking, we should strive to remember, is the actual health problem killing us by the hundreds of thousands; e-cigs likely represent a way out of smoking, while there is zero evidence that vaping is a gateway towards smoking.
(The smokeless tobacco editorial barely alludes to an actual smokeless tobacco product: the snus miracle in Sweden and now Norway by which Swedish males have switched en masse to snus ing rather than smoking, with remarkable health benefits. The editors force themselves to acknowledge at least this: The manufacturer, Swedish Match, says that snus have largely replaced smoking in Sweden, and that tobacco-related cancer rates have plummeted. Yes, the company does say that but so do all the authoritative epidemiological studies, even the official health sites of the EU).
Not content with their own editors agenda-driven commentary, The Times has also chosen to publish an op-ed by two well-known opponents of harm reduction: former FDA Commissioner David Kessler and CTFK s Matt Myers. (To anyone who still trusts Dr. Kessler s opinions, allow us to once again recommend ACSH Trustee and plastic surgeon Jack Fisher s excellent documentation of the silicone breast implant travesty carried on mainly by that same Kessler, in Fisher s recently-published book, Silicone on Trial). We d prefer not to address this op-ed in detail, as the authors focus on the same data referred to above, the NYTS. They devote a few more words to calling for bans on flavors in vapor products, asserting against their own evidence! that e-cigs are seducing young folks into smoking as part of a Big Tobacco plot to addict them to nicotine via vaping. Too ridiculous for specific response here.
The amount of Orwellian double-think and hypocrisy continues to mount each day. The spokesmen for the CDC and its minions continue to lie and mislead, slicing and dicing their own data to assert that the trends say the opposite of what they clearly do say. Oh well. Some day, truth will triumph and these officially-sanctioned liars will reap their just rewards.