Washington Post Attack on E-Cigarettes Deserves Emergency Room Treatment

 

Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician and Washington Post columnist, attacked tobacco harm reduction in a Post column last week, “The New Nicotine Product Replacing e‑Cigarettes to Addict Teens” (paywalled).  It dealt mainly with Zyn nicotine pouches, but it touched on the gamut of safer cigarette substitutes. 

Matt Holman, Ph.D., Chief Scientific and Regulatory Strategy Officer at U.S. Philip Morris International, has responded (here) with an accurate point-by-point rebuttal of Dr. Wen’s numerous misstatements. 

I’d like to focus on one especially egregious statement in Wen’s article: “Mitch Zeller, former director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, explained that as much as 70 percent of people who vape continue to smoke. He showed me industry data from two years ago that showed 84 percent of adult pouch users kept up cigarette use.”

I was astonished that Zeller would cite 70 percent, when he can readily access updated information from the gold standard CDC National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). In this chart of the smoking status of 17.8 million vapers estimated from the 2024 NHIS, the highest percentage were former smokers, while only 26 percent were current smokers.

While dual use is a transition period for many smokers, dual use has another, more ominous driver: misinformation from federal agencies and major medical organizations.  For example, Matt Holman noted: “under the helm of Mr. Zeller, [the FDA Center for Tobacco Products] authorized more than 2,800 cigarette products to be marketed while only authorizing 30 novel smoke-free products (heated tobacco products, Swedish snus, and vapes). These actions resulting in 100 times more authorizations for combusted tobacco than novel smoke-free products are in direct opposition of CTP’s stated mission ‘To protect the public health of the U.S. population from tobacco-related death and disease...’”

Additionally, in 2018, CTP director Zeller launched the FDA Real Cost E-Cigarette Campaign, which is a misinformation circus.  It ostensibly targets kids, but I calculated – using the FDA’s formula – that this campaign also dissuaded hundreds of thousands of smokers from switching to safer vape products (here).

The Washington Post should run a major correction for Dr. Wen’s article.

More Good News From the 2022 NHIS… But You Won’t Hear It from U.S. Health Authorities

 

Following on my post last week discussing dramatic improvement in vaping and smoking rates from the 2022 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), today I present additional positive news from that survey.

The CDC last year counted 14.9 million current vapers, representing a 64% increase in just two years.  Importantly, 6.1 million vapers, or 41%, are former smokers.  This is the fourth NHIS survey in a row with 40+% of vapers having stepped away from the fire.  Can we prove that all of them used vapes to quit?  Of course not, but former means smoke-free, and it doesn’t matter how they quit, or how they stay that way. 

Following last week’s format, the next chart shows the number of current vapers according to smoking status and age.  The pattern here is crystal clear.  Young adults age 18 to 24 are not quitting smoking in high numbers by vaping, but 2.8 million, or 65%, of current vapers in that age group never smoked.  That is just as important, because never smoking is healthier than former smoking, regardless of vaping.  For all older age groups, the percentage of former smokers is around 50% or higher, which is vitally important since those are the ages when smoking-related diseases start kicking in, killing smokers.

 

The entire American health establishment, including the CDC and FDA, are obsessed with teen vaping.  A Google search for adult e-cigarette use in 2022 yields no results.  In other words, health authorities are turning blind eyes toward the nearly 15 million adults who enjoy nicotine and tobacco with little or no risk, as smoking inexorably – though still too slowly – declines.    

Imagine how fast sales and use of combustible cigarettes would disappear if public health leaders simply told smokers the tobacco truth – that vaping is 95% safer than smoking.

 

CDC 2019 Smoking & Vaping Data

 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released data from the 2019 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS).  After a short delay, during which I caused the agency to correct an error in their release (here), I can now present the latest figures on smoking and vaping.  Like last year, our government has had the 2019 data for months but has not released any findings.

The prevalence of current smoking was 13.6%, which was not a significant change from 2018 (13.7%); that’s 34.1 million.  Twenty-two percent of Americans were former smokers, the same as the year before. 

Prevalence of current vaping increased from 3.2% in 2018, to 4.3% in 2019.  That translates to about 10.82 million American adult vapers in 2019, up from 8.07 million the year before.  That is the second annual increase and it represents the largest number of vapers since the CDC started tracking e-cigarette use in 2014.

The 10.82 million adult vapers includes 4 million current vapers who are also current smokers.  Think about this: If America’s public health leaders abandoned their war on vaping and instead adopted their British counterparts’ practice of speaking honestly about vastly safer vaping, these 4 million smokers might become completely smoke-free. That would result in an unprecedented smoking decline of 11.7%.    

Despite the misinformation campaign against smoke-free substitutes, the number of current vapers who were former smokers increased from 3.04 million in 2018, to 4.27 million in 2019.  That is over one million more than the year before, and the highest number since tracking started. 

Note that there were 2.55 million never smokers who vaped in 2019, up from 1.71 million the year before.  In addition, the age profile shifted, becoming a little older.  In 2018, over two-thirds of this group were 18-24 years old, dropping to 58 percent in 2019.  About one quarter were 25-34 years old, and ten percent were 35-44 years old. 

Tobacco and nicotine prohibitionists in government and elsewhere continue to portray vaping as dangerous and evil.  Despite this, the number of Americans using this vastly safer smoke-free nicotine delivery system continues to grow, but much too slowly.  The disgraceful and unethical campaign against these products continues to bias smokers against safer options.