E-cig claim half-baked

A US public health expert has said that the Surgeon General is continuing to lie about tobacco in electronic cigarettes.

Dr. Michael Siegel, a professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences, Boston University School of Public Health, was referring to an article published earlier this month in JAMA Pediatrics.

In it, the Surgeon General had claimed that electronic cigarettes were “now the most commonly used form of tobacco among youth in the United States, surpassing cigarettes, chewing tobacco, cigars, and hookah”.

Writing on his Rest of the Story blog, Siegel said the article referred to electronic cigarettes as a form of tobacco and to vaping as a “form of tobacco use”.

‘There’s just one problem with the Surgeon General’s claim that vaping is a form of tobacco use: it’s not true,’ he said.

Siegel went on to say that even if the Surgeon General wrongly believed that consuming any product that contained nicotine was a form of tobacco use, then he was still lying to the public.

‘Under that definition, e-cigarettes are not the most commonly used form of tobacco among youth,’ Siegel pointed out. ‘Potatoes are.’

The full story is at: http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/surgeon-general-continues-to-lie-about.html.