Yesterday, I reported that Parents Against Vaping E-Cigarettes (PAVE) is essentially lying on its website about the prevalence of daily e-cigarette use among youth. The site claims that "More than 1 in 4 youth use e-cigarettes daily." Using data from the 2024 National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS), I showed that the actual proportion of youth who use e-cigarettes daily is 1.6%, meaning that PAVE is exaggerating this statistic by a factor of 16. I had assumed that this was just a one-time error and that PAVE was just misreporting data from the 2024 National Youth Tobacco Survey. But how wrong I w ..read more

If I seriously thought that one-fourth of today's youth were vaping e-cigarettes daily, I would be quite alarmed. Daily use suggests possible addiction and so if 25% of all youth were vaping daily, we would be talking about 6.25 million middle-school and high-school students who are vaping every day. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of every day youth e-cigarette users are not just vaping nicotine, but they are also using THC vapes, mostly off the black market. So if this statistic were true, it would drastically change my assessment of the relative benefits of electronic cigarettes for adu ..read more

While public health agencies and anti-tobacco groups have made youth vaping nearly the sole focus of their adolescent health agendas over the past decade, far more serious substance abuse threats to the health of teens and young adults are escaping attention and wreaking greater havoc on the current generation of young people.  For example, a new article just published in the American Journal of Medicine reveals that over the past two decades, the death rate from alcohol in the United States has doubled. The largest increase in the death rate from alcohol was among young people ages 25-34 ..read more

I've only been back at this for one day and the very first new article that I came across makes the preposterous claim that use of e-cigarettes increases by 5-fold the initiation of cigarette smoking among youth. The article, published as a commentary in the American Journal of Medicine, states as follows: "E-cigarette use by adolescents increases by up to 5-fold their initiation of tobacco cigarette smoking." The Rest of the Story It is difficult to believe that anyone could look at the actual data on the prevalence of youth cigarette smoking in 2024 and make the claim that vaping by youth le ..read more

After the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, I took an almost complete break from blogging about tobacco policy to concentrate on some other public health topics. Now that more than 4 years have passed, I decided to take a look at the websites of some of the major national health organizations to see whether they have started to accurately communicate the facts about vaping and smoking. I figured that during the past 4 years there has been so much definitive science about the relative risks of vaping and smoking, the cause of EVALI, the question of whether youth vaping is a gateway to smoking, an ..read more

The claim by opponents of e-cigarettes that vaping is a gateway to smoking and will increase the long-term hazards of tobacco product use have now been completely debunked by longitudinal trend data demonstrating that the truth is the exact opposite. The results of a Gallup poll conducted last month revealed that adult smoking prevalence has reached an all-time low (11%) and that the decline in smoking has been driven largely by a dramatic drop in smoking among young adults. The prevalence of smoking among adults ages 18-29 was only 6%. The Rest of the Story What caused this dramatic decline i ..read more

Background In 2004, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services created an interagency committee to direct federal efforts to reduce underage drinking. The committee, which is called the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking (ICCPUD), is led by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and includes agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Surgeon General, and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), which is part of the National Institutes of Health ..read more

Just over one month ago, I reported that the National Academies had appointed to their newly formed expert committee to review the health effects of alcohol two scientists who were principal investigators of a research grant funded by the alcohol industry to the tune of $67 million (Dr. Eric Rimm and Dr. Kenneth Mukamal). After New York Times reporter Roni Rabin exposed these conflicts of interest in an article, the National Academies announced that it had pulled both Dr. Rimm and Dr. Mukamal from the panel and would replace them. The National Academies recently announced the replacement panel ..read more

I have always thought of the National Academies (full name is the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine [NASEM]) as being a highly reputable, impartial entity that objectively reviews scientific issues by appointing panelists who do not have conflicts of interest with industry that could create the appearance of bias. The National Academies has a detailed policy that disallows panel members who have a conflict of interest by virtue of funding by industries whose interests could be affected by the results of the panel review. Well, that view of the National Academies has jus ..read more

In submitted to the FDA in response to the Center for Tobacco Products' (CTP) draft strategic plan, the American Lung Association expressed its opposition to one of the strategic goals, which was to "inform adults who smoke about the relative risks of tobacco products." This goal primarily expressed the desire of the CTP to inform smokers that electronic cigarettes are much safer than real cigarettes and therefore may be considered as a safer alternative for smokers who are unable to quit using other cessation methods. The American Lung Association does not approve of this goal, writing: "Remo ..read more