Federally Funded Authors Promote Misperceptions of Smoke-Free Tobacco Products

In their recent journal article, “U.S. adult perceptions of the harmfulness of tobacco products” (abstract here), a group of researchers from the FDA, other federal agencies, Canadian and American universities suppress important information about safer tobacco products. 

G.T. Fong and 11 co-authors used federal funds to analyze the FDA Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Survey with respect to perceptions of eight non-cigarette tobacco products’ relative harms.  While their roughly 5,000-word treatise included three large tables, one figure, two supplemental tables, and 40 references, they included not a word about how these perceptions match up with reality.  The only time they used the word “misperception” was to suggest that Americans who view non-cigarette products as less harmful should be educated with “new information”.

The authors found that “40.7% of adults believed that electronic cigarettes were less harmful than cigarettes.” In their view, “These results point to the potential value of enhancing knowledge, within the U.S. population, of the harm of tobacco products to prevent tobacco use and to encourage tobacco users to quit, through providing new information about the harms that may not be widely known and/or through countering misperceptions that may exist.”

Readers of this blog know that numerous published studies document that smokeless tobacco use is vastly safer than smoking, and that the British Royal College of Physicians affirms that vaping is at least 95% less hazardous than smoking. 

It is appalling that 12 government-funded researchers have published a lengthy screed without acknowledging that smoke-free products are less harmful. 

Pediatrics Journal Wants to Rectify Teen “Inaccurate Beliefs” About Smoke-Free Tobacco Hazards

In the journal Pediatrics, University of Vermont’s Maria Parker, Ph.D., and 11 coauthors from four other institutions report that “Youth [age 12-17 years] who believed that noncombustible tobacco products posed ‘no or little harm’ at [wave 1 of the FDA Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health Study, PATH] were more likely to have tried those products at wave 2.” (here)

This finding is not particularly surprising.  It shows that, despite a relentless campaign against vastly safer smoke-free tobacco products, some youth recognize the truth: It’s the smoke that’s harmful.  Dr. Parker found that 85% of youth thought cigarettes conferred “a lot of harm,” while only 27% thought the same of e-cigarettes.  On the other hand, only 51% thought e-cigarettes were less harmful than cigarettes, 44% assessed them as equally harmful, and 5% believed them to be more harmful.

Skewing their findings against smoke-free products, Parker et. al. used “ever trying” the products between survey waves as their outcomes.  This is much less meaningful than “currently using”, which was not reported and might have produced negligible results.  

The take-away from the article is that youth who [correctly] believe that smoke-free tobacco products are less harmful than cigarettes are more likely to try the former.  Parker et al. imply that trying can be prevented by disabusing teens of their “inaccurate beliefs.”

Even though the study's findings are inconsequential, its 12 authors use them to justify aggressive intervention by authorities “across local, state, and national levels…to convey accurate information on and address inaccurate beliefs about the absolute and relative harms of tobacco products in an effort to reduce youth tobacco use.”  They highlight the FDA’s Real Cost Campaign, which conveys “accurate information” by depicting e-cigarette worms invading teen brains and bodies (here). 
Speaking of real costs, this study was supported by $62.3 million in NIH grants.    

The article’s recommendation was endorsed by the journal’s editor (here), who previously acted contrary to editorial standards for professional medical journals after publishing a flawed e-cigarette gateway study (here and here).

    

Miscounting Teen Perceptions of E-Cigarettes

The journal Pediatrics recently published a report based on the 2012 and 2014 National Youth Tobacco Surveys (here).  Stephen Amrock and coauthors from the Oregon Health Sciences University found that 51 percent of middle and high school students believed that e-cigarettes were less hazardous than cigarettes. 

Given the tsunami of e-cigarette misinformation generated by some in the public health community, it is downright impressive that even this many youths know the truth about these products.  Still, only 13 percent correctly believed that chew, dip or snus posed less danger than cigarettes.  

The media, in keeping with its general anti-tobacco, anti-e-cigarette bias, sensationalized the Pediatrics report with a negative spin. A HealthDay article on October 25 (here) featured three false statements:

• Headline: “3 in 4 Teens Think E-Cigarettes Safer Than Tobacco: Survey”

• Opening line: “Close to three-quarters of American teenagers believe e-cigarettes are less harmful or addictive than real cigarettes, a new study finds.”

• Paragraph 8: “...Amrock and his colleagues found that 73 percent of teens believed e-cigarettes were less harmful than cigarettes.”

All of the above are demonstrably false, as they transformed the 51 percent response rate to 73 percent.  Amrock himself misstated the 13 percent for smokeless tobacco as 20 percent.  How did this happen?

The “3 in 4” or 73 percent result was generated only after Amrock excluded 27 percent of students who reported that they “don't know enough” about e-cigarettes and 4 percent who were unaware of the products.  This is shown in Table 1 of the article. 

It was improper to omit these students in order to make the result almost one-half higher.  Amrock and his colleagues went on to use the altered figure as the principal finding in their abstract, and the media followed suit.  The altered figure was also prominent in an October 17 blog by the journal’s editor-in-chief, Dr. Lewis First (here).     

Only 13 percent of American students know that smokeless tobacco is safer than cigarettes and only 50 percent know the truth about e-cigarettes – a sorry commentary on education, the performance of our public health institutions and the credibility of some in the research community.