You might want to point out that "
tobacco is the leading cause of preventable illness and death in the United States" is cleverly worded propaganda.
If you saw, "Beverages kill some 75,000 Americans each year," you'd know that's not quite right. We know that drinking beverages containing alcohol cause some number of deaths, but not beverages in general. We know that soda, coffee, milk, water, etc. are not very deadly at all.
But if, say, the food industry wanted to convince consumers to substitute foods that have a high liquid content such as tomatoes and melons for the drinking of beverages, all it would take is a strong propaganda campaign making beverages appear to be very hazardous to health.
Likewise, it isn't
tobacco in general that is the "leading cause of preventable illness and death in the United States." It is one very-specific way of consuming tobacco that causes 99% plus of those illnesses and deaths: cigarette smoking. Modern western smokeless tobacco products are very low-risk, in the neighborhood of 1% of the risks of smoking. And since e-cigarettes contain far fewer chemicals than traditional cigarettes and are not combusted, they would need to contain
excessive amounts of very toxic chemicals and/or carcinogens to pose any non-trivial health risk.
We saw another type of propaganda used against e-cigarettes when the FDA announced finding carcinogens and toxic chemicals in the products, but withheld the fact that the quantities detected were far below the levels that have been linked to causing illnesses.
The tobacco control cartel has been using the words "smoking," tobacco," and even "nicotine" interchangeably for several years. The goal is to mislead the public into believing that all forms of tobacco carry similar levels of health risk, and that goes for the chemical nicotine, as well. Lately, "vapor" has joined the ranks of abused terminology by inclusion in prohibitions against exhaling smoke.
So far it seems to be working very well. Let's start resisting the propaganda and setting the record straight. Let's choose our words very carefully with a goal of extreme specificity. If we are writing about combusted tobacco cigarettes, let's refuse to substitute the word "tobacco." And let's stop saying that we "smoke" e-cigarettes. It misleads people into believing that the products produce smoke.
