In opening paragraphs of the article, it asks:
In countless discussions about smokings devastation, people ask me: If
tobacco harm reduction is a viable quit-smoking option with huge public health benefits, why dont U.S. medical schools advocate this concept? Why are you almost alone among American university professors in openly endorsing tobacco harm reduction?
And the primary answer that is provided is:
Few researchers will jeopardize grants of that size by doing or saying anything that conflicts with NIH dogma.
as well as:
This prohibitionist mindset produces NIH-funded researchers who are hostile to tobacco harm reduction; the rest are cowed into silence.
Can't say I disagree with these responses, and in fact appreciate them. The article could have alternatively been titled, "When Modern Science Stops Being Scientific."
But I do think there is something else clearly going on that this article doesn't touch upon, or if it does, seems to be in step with opposition (by claiming that smoking is devastating). The other thing that appears to be going on, but is rarely brought up in serious debate on this topic is that perhaps the dogma around smoking is actually packed with a bunch of lies, and that smoking isn't as devastating as claimed. Disagreement with that, even in this type of thread, could lead to dismissiveness or utter lack of anyone's ability to back up the meme "smoking kills." Instead, the brainwashing is so complete that of course we must agree that smoking is horrible and then pit vaping (or some other alternative) against that to hopefully score brownie points in the political arena. How's that working out for the vaping community?
