The American Cancer Society’s new position statement offering
a “bold new framework” for eliminating combustible tobacco use in the U.S. (here)
contains a demonstrably invalid statement: “Cigarette smoking is the leading
cause of cancer mortality in the United States (1), accounting for as much as 98% of all tobacco-related deaths (2) [emphasis added].
The problem with the highlighted phrase is that no estimate
of “all tobacco-related deaths” in the U.S. has ever been produced by the government,
academia or health organizations. The percentage
of deaths attributable to smoking, while undoubtedly large, is simply not
known.
In reference 2 above, ACS attributes the false assertion to
a New England Journal of Medicine article by tobacco researchers Michael Fiore,
Steven Schroeder and Timothy Baker (here). That article made virtually the same statement
and cited a citizen petition submitted to the FDA in 2010 by Dr. Joel Nitzkin
on behalf of the Tobacco Control Task Force of the American Association of
Public Health Physicians (here).
Careful review of the Nitzkin filing reveals
nothing to support the ACS or NEJM claim.
This falsehood can be corrected. With some effort, the very small number of
deaths from smokeless use and cigar/pipe smoking can be estimated from large
federal datasets. Government researchers
and the ACS have the resources and should make this a priority, in order to
provide a scientific foundation for FDA tobacco regulation.
Fabrication, or repetition of false statements, particularly
by trusted authorities, organizations, and public figures, can result in widespread
acceptance of myth as truth. Such cavalier inattention to fact is not
acceptable in scientific discourse or public health policymaking, where actual
lives are at stake (here).
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