Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Rest of the Story Reaches Consensus on Corrective Statements for CDC and Anti-Smoking Groups

According to an article at CSPnet.com: "The nation's tobacco companies and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) have reached an agreement on publishing corrective statements that say the companies lied about the dangers of smoking and requires them to disclose smoking's health effects, said an Associated Press report."

The article reports that: "Under the agreement with the DOJ, each of the companies must publish full-page ads in the Sunday editions of 35 newspapers and on the newspapers' websites, as well as air prime-time TV spots on CBS, ABC or NBC five times per week for a year. The companies also must publish the statements on their websites and affix them to a certain number of cigarette packs three times per year for two years."

"Each corrective ad is to be prefaced by a statement that a federal court has concluded that the defendant tobacco companies 'deliberately deceived the American public.' Among the required statements are that smoking kills more people than murder, AIDS, suicide, drugs, car crashes and alcohol combined, and that 'secondhand smoke kills over 38,000 Americans a year.'"

The Rest of the Story

At the same time that the tobacco companies and the U.S. Department of Justice reached a consensus on the location of the tobacco industry corrective statements, the Rest of the Story has reached a consensus on the text and location of a set of corrective statements it is ordering that CDC and several anti-smoking groups and advocates make, in the wake of last year's revelation that they lied about the dangers of electronic cigarettes.

The consensus, which was reached over the weekend, requires public corrective statements from the CDC, the Mayo Clinic, Dr. Stan Glantz, and the University of Kentucky Cancer Center.

The required text for the corrective statements and their required placement is as follows:

For CDC:

The Rest of the Story has ruled that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has lied to the American public by telling them that studies have demonstrated electronic cigarettes are a gateway to a lifetime addiction to smoking, and has ordered the CDC to make this statement. Here is the truth:

• We lied to you when we told you that "many kids are starting out with e-cigarettes and then going on to smoke conventional cigarettes."
 
• The truth is that the study we relied upon did not measure the time course of electronic cigarette and cigarette use. Thus, it could not determine whether the kids who were using both cigarettes and electronic cigarettes had initiated with smoking or with electronic cigarettes.

• The only study to examine this question found that e-cigarettes are not a gateway to smoking.

• There is no evidence at the current time that kids are starting out with e-cigarettes and then going on to smoke conventional cigarettes.

Placement:

1. Medscape - where the original interview with Dr. Frieden appears
2. The 52 media outlets that carried the story and quoted Dr. Frieden as stating that electronic cigarettes are "condemning many kids to struggling with a lifelong addiction to nicotine."
3. CDC web site

For the Mayo Clinic:

The Rest of the Story has ruled that the Mayo Clinic has lied to the American public by telling them that absolutely no studies have examined the health effects of electronic cigarettes and that doctors have no way of assessing the impact of this product, and has ordered the Mayo Clinic to make this statement. Here is the truth:

• We lied to you when we told you that "No studies have been done to examine the safety of e-cigarettes."
 
• The truth is that there are at least 10 published studies that examined the health effects of electronic cigarettes. And this doesn't even include the more than 20 studies in which the chemical constituents of electronic cigarette liquids or vapor have been analyzed using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry.

• We also lied to you when we told you that "with nicotine inhalers you receive only nicotine."

• The truth is that nicotine inhalers deliver to users the following chemicals:

  • Formaldehyde
  • Acetaldehyde
  • o-methylbenzene
  • Cadmium
  • Nickel
  • Lead

  • Placement:

    1. Mayo Clinic web site
    2. Mayo Clinic Proceedings

    For Stan Glantz:

    The Rest of the Story has ruled that I lied to the American public by telling them that studies have demonstrated electronic cigarette experimentation leads to nicotine addiction among nonsmokers who try these products, and has ordered me to make this statement. Here is the truth:

    • I lied to you when I told you that in the Choi and Forster study, "e-cigarettes were a pathway to renewed or new nicotine addiction."
     
    • The truth is that the study only measured ever use of electronic cigarettes, not current use, regular use, or addiction to nicotine. Thus, it could not determine whether the kids who had tried electronic cigarettes ever used them again. So it could not tell if these kids were addicted to nicotine. They may have simply tried an electronic cigarette and not vaped again.

    • I also lied to you when I told you that my own study demonstrated that electronic cigarettes are "a new route to smoking addiction for adolescents." The study was a cross-sectional one, so I could not draw that conclusion. And I admitted it in the article itself. But that's not what I told you.

    Placement:

    1. Stan Glantz blog
    2. Stan Glantz announcement list
    3. UCSF web site

    For the University of Kentucky Cancer Center:

    The Rest of the Story has ruled that we lied to the American public by telling them that electronic cigarettes are every bit as harmful as smoking, and has ordered us to make this statement. Here is the truth:

    • We lied to you when we told you that electronic cigarettes may be "every bit as dangerous" as tobacco cigarettes.
     
    • The truth is that there is abundant evidence that electronic cigarettes are much safer than regular cigarettes. Even the tobacco industry itself acknowledges that smoking is more hazardous than vaping. 

    Placement:

    1. University of Kentucky Cancer Center web site
    2. Letter to all Kentucky state legislators

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