[h=1]CASAA: U.S. Government Officials Create False Crisis, Mislead Public About E-Cigarettes[/h]
WASHINGTON, Sept. 30, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The U.S. faces several unresolved public policy crises including a federal government shutdown, and yet officials are trying to create a problem where none exists. Some U.S. Senators and state attorneys general, as well as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), have launched a bad-faith campaign against electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes), the low-risk alternative to smoking. E-cigarettes are being used almost exclusively by adult smokers and former smokers in order to quit or reduce their smoking habit. Nevertheless, these officials are irresponsibly misleading the public into believing that e-cigarettes pose an extraordinary danger to youth when there is absolutely no evidence to support that claim.
The government attacks began with the CDC releasing statistics that showed that a relatively small number of students had tried e-cigarettes, most of whom were already smokers. The CDC's reporting of these results was described as "misleading, to put it charitably" by Carl V. Phillips, PhD, Scientific Director of the Consumer Advocates for Smoke-free Alternatives Association (CASAA), an all-volunteer consumer group dedicated to protecting access to low-risk alternatives to smoking. "Obviously kids experiment with forbidden and often hazardous behaviors, from dangerous driving to illicit drugs. Of all the experimenting they do, these low-risk products are hardly the one to worry about. The results showed only that a few kids had tried one puff from an e-cigarette, not that any had become habitual users, let alone that it was causing any of them to engage in the actual risky behavior, smoking."
Yet this is exactly what CDC implied. With no evidence to support the claim in the data and no reason to believe it was true, CDC touted its results as implying that the availability of e-cigarettes to adult smokers was somehow causing young people to smoke. This launched a flurry of misleading claims and demands for banning this public health miracle. This includes senators demanding e-cigarette manufacturers respond to questions in what long-time anti-smoking campaigner, Bill Godshall, Executive Director of Smokefree Pennsylvania, observed were "typical 'gotcha' questions, designed so that any answer can be used in anti-e-cigarette propaganda." Phillips further commented that the questions were "disturbingly reminiscent of the Senate's McCarthy-era witch-hunts."
