American Medical Association President Bruce A. Scott, M.D., authored an article, posted on the AMA website today, “Flavored e-cigarettes pose dire threat to youth and public health,” that includes the following: “Tobacco products cause cancer. Overwhelming evidence demonstrates that multiple types of cancer are linked to tobacco products, including e-cigarettes”
This is grossly incorrect, as Dr. Scott intentionally conflates the risks of tobacco use with those of smoking. He provides links to another AMA article that discusses youth and E-cigarette and vaping associated lung injuries (EVALI), but cancer is not mentioned there.
In today’s piece, Dr. Scott writes, “The use of tobacco in various forms remains the nation’s leading cause of preventable death. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it claims the lives of 1,300 Americans every day, or about one in every five deaths annually. As an ear, nose and throat surgeon in Louisville for more than 30 years, I’ve seen up close the devastating damage that cigarettes and e-cigarettes cause—mouth and throat cancers that too often change lives forever or end lives prematurely.” (emphasis added) The article linked here by Dr. Scott discusses smoking only.
Conflation of tobacco and smoking is a common practice among prohibitionists, as I have noted before (here, here, here), but it is beyond the pale for the president of the AMA to treat “tobacco use” as a synonym for “smoking”, and worse, to unequivocally claim that he has “seen up close” that e-cigarettes cause mouth and throat cancer.
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