Tales of the unexpected

The headline over a blog by a prominent US health campaigner yesterday read: Alaska Health Department airs first pro-smoking television ad since 1970.

But, if you’re in the cigarette business, you shouldn’t get too excited until you read on.

Dr. Michael Siegel, a professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at Boston University School of Public Health, was making the point that the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services had started running a television spot that ‘undoubtedly promotes smoking by strongly discouraging smokers who might otherwise quit from using electronic cigarettes’.

‘The commercial will likely also cause ex-smokers who have quit via electronic cigarettes to return to cigarette smoking,’ Siegel writes.

‘Worst of all, the commercial lies to the public by attributing to electronic cigarette diseases for which there is no evidence of an association with vaping.’

The blog is at: http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/alaska-health-department-airs-first-pro.html.

Meanwhile, another blog by Siegel announces the winners of the ‘2014 Anti-Smoking Myth of the Year Award’, a category for which competition was extremely strong.

See: http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/2014-anti-smoking-myth-of-year-award.html.