Is big tobacco up to it's old tricks with biased science

March 13, 2019

under the facade of being publicly health minded by offering much less harmful alternatives such as eLiquid pods and devices? We know they have been trying to break into the ecigarette market for the past ten or so years with their string of unsuccessful devices, and now with Altrias near half acquisition of JUUL, it appears to be the case. 

In a recent study paid for by JUUL to assess rather quite lazily if their product could get you to quit smoking, the Centre for Substance Use Research, recently published a study under the title "Vaping and the Number of Cigarettes Not Now Smoked: An Additional Means of Assessing the Public Health Impact of E-cigarettes."  I mean, I get it, surveying people and counting the raw number of consumed cigarettes is a way of doing a study, but it just seems like a very nonscientific method of making and establishing a claim of fact.   

The very second sentence in the paragraph that establishes the abstract of the study states: "there is merit also in identifying the quantity of cigarettes not being smoked as a result of e-cigarette use" which comes off as just the lowest hanging of low hanging fruit.   Imagine if you were conducting a survey of people and their favorite color, and to reinforce the validity of your survey you laid out that the very fact you actually asked X number people to participate in the survey is relevant. 

Now I'll admit that comparison isn't exactly the most apt for this case, but there is something inherently rotten about funding the very research that makes your product look good, while ensuring that the study itself isn't the most rigorous or multivariate.  The study compares the quantity of cigarettes smoked in the month before starting to use the JUUL with the quantity of cigarettes smoked after three months.  They found a reduction in the quantity of cigarettes smoked on the part of 7,721 adult smokers from 2,074,664 cigarettes to 551,863.

That's it.  Granted that we are biased, but we are all about science here at Northland in an effort to promote the use of eLiquids in order to get away from combustible cigarettes, but being on the side of big tobacco and their known previously shady moves just feels slimey.  As a consumer you should always be at least a little bit skeptical about what products you are purchasing and pay attention to the profit motives of those companies that make those products are. 

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