Smokeless Tobacco Users Are Not Dying from Diseases Associated with Smoking

American health authorities for years failed to directly compare the health effects of smoking with those of smokeless tobacco (ST) use, as it would have meant acknowledging the large difference in deaths attributable to these products. 

That changed last year, when Altria’s Michael Fisher and colleagues published the first-ever follow-up mortality study of cigarette smokers and ST users, using the U.S. Government’s national surveys and National Death Index.

My colleague Nantaporn Plurphanswat and I conducted a similar study, which was published last fall in Harm Reduction Journal.  Like Fisher et al., we analyzed data for dipping/chewing and smoking participants from the eight years of National Health Interview Surveys (NHIS), between 1987 and 2010, in which ST users were counted.  The fact that the NHIS rarely calculated ST users suggests that the government didn’t think ST use was important.

We had access to cause-of-death information from federal data through 2015.  Smokers and ST users are always compared with never users of either product using the hazard ratio (HR), which is interpreted similarly to relative risk (i.e. a multiplier).  Current and former smokers are in the top two sections of each chart, while exclusive current ST users are highlighted by open green boxes.  Squares are men 40-59 years old; circles are men 60-79 years.

The first chart above displays results for all causes of death.  Note that current smokers have double the odds of death, while former smokers’ odds are elevated around 30% (It pays to quit!)  Also note the 44% elevation among current ST users, which is explained in the second chart (click on it for a larger version) with information about specific diseases.

Smokers have elevated death rates for all diseases.  They are twice as likely to die of heart diseases and cancer, and 6-13 times of respiratory diseases.  On the other hand, current exclusive ST users do not have significant elevations for any of these diseases. 

The third chart contains results divided into two mutually exclusive and exhaustive categories, smoking-related and everything else.  It shows that ST users’ death rates are primarily elevated by other causes; this is true especially among younger ST users, circled in red.  These causes included accidents, Alzheimer’s disease, kidney diseases, suicides and drug overdoses.      

Our analysis, studying only men age 40+ years, was designed to maximize the chance of finding significant results.  All previous studies had included women, who rarely use ST, and young men, among whom death is rare; those groups do not produce relevant information.  Consider: If a researcher wants to accurately measure the rate of breast cancer, they don’t count men.  Breast cancer occurs in men, but at such a minuscule rate that it would cut the rate among women in half, making it grossly inaccurate.

In summary, our study demonstrates that exclusive ST users do not demonstrate significantly elevated mortality from any smoking-related diseases.  Younger ST users, however, had elevated deaths from all other causes.  While we were unable to determine which specific diseases were involved, our findings for other causes are consistent with a recent CDC report and a recent study in JAMA showing increased mortality among adults age 25 to 64 years, which specified  drug overdoses, suicides and organ system diseases.

 

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).

    

American Smokers’ Misperception of E-Cigarettes’ Relative Harm: A National Disgrace

Clive Bates recently commented on Americans’ perception of the relative harm of e-cigarettes versus cigarettes, as measured by the National Cancer Institute’s Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS).  After looking at numbers from 2013 and 2017 (available here), he asked:

“So what difference did four years of better products, academic studies, journal articles and commentaries, conferences and publicly funded risk communication make? Yes, it caused a deterioration in these already very bad numbers…those incorrectly believing e-cigs were just as harmful or worse than cigarettes had risen from 39.8% to 55.4%.”

These numbers, while unfortunate, pale in comparison to growing misperception among American smokers.  These are the people whose lives will be shortened if they don’t quit.  In the chart I summarize a disheartening trend.

In 2012, 38% of smokers correctly believed that vaping was safer than smoking (the green zone on the chart); the percentage increased to 57% a year later.  In contrast, about 37% and 34% of smokers thought e-cigs were equally or more harmful in those years (the red zone). 

A slight decrease in accurate perceptions (green, at 55%) was seen in 2014, while those with misperceptions grew to 41% (red).  HINTS did not survey smokers again about the comparison until 2017; at that time, accuracy dropped to 38% (green), and misperception rose to 53% (red).       

The sharp increase in misperceptions coincides with a sharp decline in smokers who vaped, from 6.3 million in 2014 to 4.1 million in 2016, according data from the CDC (here).      

This is a national disgrace, driven by hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars spent on anti-tobacco, anti-tobacco-harm-reduction research (here), with fawning complicity by the media and ill-advised endorsement by public health officials and major medical organizations.  Smokers are the unfortunate victims of this irresponsible crusade.