Why ignore evidence in the debate about e-cigarettes?
Industry-sponsored research can contribute to scientific knowledge. Conflicts of interest are everywhere.
Last month, a scientific journal published a peer-reviewed study with encouraging news for anyone concerned by the toll that smoking takes on people’s health.
The study in the American Journal of Health Behavior identified more than 17,000 cigarette smokers who purchased a Juul starter kit, which includes a rechargeable e-cigarette and four flavored pods. A year later, more than half said they had stopped smoking and switched to e-cigarettes, which, by nearly all accounts, cause much less harm than combustible tobacco.
“It is a startling result,” says Cheryl Healton, the dean of New York University’s School of Public Health and former president of the Truth Initiative, an anti-tobacco nonprofit. The study has limitations, she says, but its findings align with experience in the UK, where smoking has declined sharply as public health authorities encourage smokers to switch to e-cigarettes.
There’s just one problem: The study was conducted by Juul Labs.
The research, as a consequence, has been summarily dismissed by tobacco control activists.
