wall street journal article on smokeless tobacco

[CES]

The article had a prominent location in the print edition. It's fairly balanced and they did the research.


Effects of Smokeless Tobacco Products Overblown - WSJ.com

 

[CJsKee]

Very nice article, CES...thanks. I wish more would spend some time doing the research before blasting that crap that the anti's spew all over the media!

 

[Vocalek]

Looks like the author backed Connely into a corner:

But the study didn't note that smokeless products—categorized as chewing tobacco—caused just three major incidents, which are defined as life-threatening, disabling or disfiguring, and no deaths from 2005 to 2008. "It's a first cut," says study co-author Gregory Connolly, a professor at Harvard University's school of public health. "It's a very simple study."

Too bad the author didn't press a little harder on this issue:

If researchers could be assured smokers really would quit, they would get behind it. "If we can get everybody to switch to smokeless, great," says Prof. Connolly. "That would be wonderful."

But he and others doubt that will happen. They point to surveys showing that smoking rates are higher among smokeless-tobacco users than among the rest of the population.

Well, duh! Maybe if Connelly and his henchmen stopped promoting the idea that smokeless and smoked are equally harmful, more people might completely switch to smokeless.

This is from Brad Rodu's Tobacco Truth blog:

Although over a million ST users are former smokers, we also found that there were about three million smokers who were former ST users. This is the bad news, because these men have gone from very low risk ST to high risk cigarettes. This reflects the fact that most American smokers are not aware of the large difference in risk between ST use and smoking.

In both 2000 and 2005, every-day smokers who also used ST every day consumed significantly fewer cigarettes on average than exclusive smokers (13 cigarettes per day vs. 20 cigarettes). If these dual users knew that ST products were only 1% as hazardous as cigarettes, it is possible that many would have chosen to use only ST.

Tobacco Truth: Smokeless Tobacco Use Among Men in the U.S., 2000 and 2005