Lung groups criticized over position statement on e-cigarettes

A position statement on e-cigarettes issued last week by a group of international lung health organizations has been strongly criticized by a leading U.S. health expert.

“Experts from the world’s leading lung organizations have released a position statement on electronic cigarettes, focusing on their potential adverse effects on human health and calling on governments to ban or restrict their use until their health impacts are better known,” according to a press note from the American College of Chest Physicians.

The position statement was issued by the Forum of International Respiratory Societies.

On his blog site, The rest of the story: Tobacco news analysis and commentary, Dr. Michael Siegel, a professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences, Boston University School of Public Health, said that in contrast to their position on e-cigarettes, the organizations did not express any problem with tobacco cigarettes remaining on the market. This was despite the fact that tobacco cigarettes each year killed millions of people worldwide, while e-cigarettes were not known to have killed a single person ever.

Siegel said the position statement had to be one of the most disgraceful moves of the year by any medical or public health group.

“Even the multinational tobacco companies do not have the gall to promote a ban on electronic cigarettes so that their deadly tobacco cigarettes will not be threatened by this potentially substantial competition,” he wrote on Friday. “In fact, the position of these supposed lung health groups is far more extreme than any Big Tobacco position, as the tobacco companies have entered the e-cigarette business and are not using their lobbying power to try to remove these products from the market.”

The full blog is at http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/disgrace-of-year-leading-lung-health.html.