Tobacco harm reductionists have grown used to operating under fire as they seek access to safer nicotine products to help people quit smoking. On top of the regular cycle of scaremongering media stories and flawed or incomplete research making headlines, their opponents have often come at them with personal attacks, smears and intimidation.
The strategy, as many have reflected, appears to be that if you can’t win the argument, try to discredit the messenger.
It’s little wonder, then, that in the runup to COP11—the crucial, global tobacco control meeting that’s taking place behind closed doors in Geneva from November 17-22—such attacks seem to have escalated.
On November 11, the Examination, a publication funded by anti-vaping billionaire Michael Bloomberg, published a lengthy exposé about Dr. Konstantinos Farsalinos, a tobacco harm reduction (THR) researcher. It reported that in 2018, Farsalinos accepted a consulting fee and travel expenses from the vape company Juul, and that he failed to disclose this in his subsequent research publications.
Farsalinos should have disclosed the payment, as he himself has acknowledged. At the same time, the revelation does not refute his extensive past research, none of which has involved Juul products. Farsalinos has been a prominent voice calling for access to THR, and the timing of the Examination’s takedown seems unlikely to be coincidental.
Glantz described the letter as an example of “aggressive lobbying” by “the tobacco industry and its allies.”
In another recent example of a different kind, Dr. Stanton Glantz—a retired professor of medicine known for his strident anti-vape views, some of whose research purporting to show vaping-related harms has been retracted—decided to take aim at Clive Bates, a leading British THR advocate.
Glantz used his blog to attack a letter Bates had written, which called on delegates at COP11, the gathering of parties to the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, to support THR.
“I wrote a short evidence-based letter pointing out to WHO FCTC COP11 delegates that the big untapped idea in tobacco control is to make continuing nicotine use far safer than smoking, which is the dominant mode of nicotine use by far,” Bates told Filter.
In a post titled, “E-Cigarettes increase harm to smokers, so should not be treated as a harm reduction strategy,” Glantz described the letter as an example of “aggressive lobbying” by “the tobacco industry and its allies,” seeking to “convince delegates … to embrace e-cigarettes and other so-called smoke free tobacco products as part of tobacco control.”
Safer nicotine products are smoke-free; there is no “so-called” about it—though certain COP participants are angling to obscure this distinction, by adopting a ludicrous redefinition of “smoke” to include vapor.
Glantz went on to claim in his post that “a large scientific literature” shows that “e-cigarettes increase rather than reduce harm.” He did not respond to Filter’s request for comment.
Bates called Glantz’s post “offensive nonsense.”
“I saw the letter as a modest effort to communicate a big idea that could save millions of lives,” he said. “I could go through the litany of flaws in Glantz’s reasoning, but he has shown no interest in engaging or working out what is right.”
“If Clive is lobbying for the tobacco industry, he’s doing a really poor job!”
Dr. Michael Siegel is a professor of public health and community medicine at the Tufts University School of Medicine. His research in tobacco control spans 32 years, and he once counted Glantz as a teacher and mentor. He took to his own blog to express his dismay, writing: “I find this ad hominem attack disturbing because it’s completely unnecessary, untrue, malicious, and arguably defamatory. There’s no room for that kind of nonsense in public health.”
Contrary to Glantz’s implication, “Clive was transparent in the letter and noted that he has ‘no conflicts of interest regarding tobacco, nicotine, or pharmaceutical industries,” Siegel wrote.
He noted that Bates’s past career includes six years leading the charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH UK), working to counteract and restrict tobacco marketing and encourage cigarette tax increases. Bates also set up the Counterfactual, a site dedicated to eradicating smoking with the help of safer nicotine products.
“Notably, an international effort to promote e-cigarettes as a substitute for tobacco would harm the tobacco industry, because it would divert people away from tobacco products and toward non-tobacco products that are much safer,” Siegel told Filter. “So if Clive is lobbying for the tobacco industry, he’s doing a really poor job!”
“Rather than being factual, this appears to be a smear on someone who has been working for decades to reduce the morbidity from tobacco-related diseases,” Siegel said of Glantz’s attack.
But he added that he was not shocked, because it’s now such a common tactic used by those who do not tolerate THR perspectives, even if the current environment represents a new low.
“Attacking the tobacco industry is one thing, but we should not be attacking people within the tobacco control movement simply because they interpret the science differently,” he said.
One way to combat this kind of smearing, Siegel continued, is to call it out whenever it occurs, to send the message that it is unacceptable.
“His defamation of leading scientists suggests he can’t win on the merits and knows it. And so he shoots the messenger, which is the lowest art form of the propagandist.”
Glantz is known for his wider campaign to discredit safer nicotine products and the science that contradicts his positions. But Cliff Douglas, a veteran tobacco control expert and former CEO of Global Action to End Smoking, said he “ironically” found Glantz’s personal attacks “rather reassuring.”
“His defamation of leading scientists suggests he can’t win on the merits and knows it,” Douglas told Filter. “And so he shoots the messenger, which is the lowest art form of the propagandist.”
Glantz’s claim that vaping increases, rather than decreases, the harms of smoking is a “complete mischaracterization of the scientific evidence,” Siegel said.
Vapes are far less harmful than cigarettes, and when millions of people have switched, many of their lives will have been saved. Research shows, for instance, that people who switch completely from smoking to vaping experience an immediate and substantial improvement in their respiratory health, while reducing their risk of cancer.
“There is no basis in science or experience for claiming that vapes and cigarettes have equivalent risk or that vapes don’t displace smoking,” Bates said. “It doesn’t matter who is saying it, it is just not true, even if many people wish it was.”
Douglas, who has known Glantz for 40 years, urged him to stop pushing his misrepresentations. “He should also immediately apologize to all the fine men and women whose professionalism he has impugned.”
“As for his scientific errors, some of which have been documented by teams of experts,” Douglas concluded, “advocacy groups and others, including the WHO, who have relied on such work in support of their war against THR, should acknowledge the problem and accordingly reassess their policy positions.”
Photograph by Filip.vidinovski via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 4.0
The Influence Foundation, which operates Filter, has previously received grants from both Juul and Global Action to End Smoking. Filter‘s Editorial Independence Policy applies.
