The Latest Lie “They” Want You To Believe

Usually we look to physicians and health departments to provide us with accurate information about health risks. However, in the case of electronic cigarettes, physicians and health departments are disseminating false and misleading information. They are being joined by policy makers. All have fallen for the lies that CDC and the FDA have been spreading as part of their campaigns of deception regarding e-cigarettes.

Today, I provide one example of the misinformation being spread by each of these groups. The examples are all taken from two days: April 28th and 29th, 2015 (last Wednesday). This is just a small, two-day snapshot of the degree to which these groups are lying to and misleading the public. Imagine if we catalogued the lies over a one-month or one-year period. It is easy to see why these campaigns of deception are harming the public’s health, undermining the public’s appreciation of the severe hazards of smoking, and sacrificing the integrity of anti-nicotine groups that are abandoning science for ideology.

In an April 29 commentary by two physicians, published in MedPageToday, two professors from the UC Davis School of Medicine tell the public that the goal of the electronic cigarette industry is to “renormalize” smoking. They write:

“We risk losing hard-won ground in the battle on smoking through the so-called ‘renormalization’ of smoking that may attend the uncritical acceptance of e-cigarettes, and that is a stated goal of the e-cigarette industry.”

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The goal of every one of the independent electronic cigarette companies is to get as many smokers as they can to switch as completely as they can from smoking to vaping. Thus, the clearly stated goal of the electronic industry is actually to denormalize smoking. The three cigarette companies that market e-cigarettes have stated that their goal is to build a new market segment as nicotine use shifts from cigarette smoking to non-combustible nicotine products over the upcoming decades.

So it is simply not true that the stated goal of the e-cigarette industry is to renormalize smoking. The very act of promoting these products as an alternative to real cigarettes means that the e-cigarette companies are acting to denormalize smoking. In fact, Craig Weiss, the CEO of one of the largest independent e-cigarette companies (NJOY), has stated that the value proposition of his company is to make cigarette smoking obsolete. That’s a far cry from renormalizing smoking.

The reason why these physicians, and so many anti-smoking groups and advocates, argue that vaping will normalize smoking, is that they think seeing vapers going through motions that look like smoking will make smoking look glamorous. That’s a ridiculous argument. It’s like stating that bottled water companies are renormalizing drinking because people are going to see people going through the motions of drinking and that will make drinking alcohol look glamorous. People are not stupid. The can recognize the difference between vaping and smoking. What vaping will normalize is vaping, not smoking.