Revealed: how tobacco giants are bankrolling secret pro-vaping campaign
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tobacco-industry-pro-vaping-campaign-investigation-m82dtl93s
Annoying, behind a paywall...
.. so I don't know if there's any interesting info to be gleaned.. or simply more anti-vape propaganda... (or both)
friday december 15 2023
INVESTIGATION
Revealed: how tobacco giants are bankrolling secret pro-vaping campaign
exclusive
Manufacturers have links to doctors, scientists or activists promoting e-cigarettes, an investigation has found
Billy Kenber
, Senior Investigations Reporter
Thursday December 14 2023, 9.00pm, The Times
Tobacco firms have bankrolled scientific papers playing down the risks of children vaping as part of a secretive lobbying campaign to boost e-cigarette sales and try to block public health measures aimed at protecting young people, a Times investigation reveals.
Doctors, scientists and “independent’ activist groups funded by or linked to multinational tobacco companies who sell e-cigarettes have been at the forefront of efforts to ensure Britain retains its liberal approach to vaping and doesn’t follow other countries in imposing bans, taxes or flavour restrictions.
Britain is facing an epidemic of youth vaping, with more than one in five children under 18 having tried an e-cigarette, a 30 per cent increase in a year. In October, a 12-year-old girl urged children never to start vaping — she had asthma and was a heavy vaper when she suffered a collapsed lung and was put into a coma for four days.
The government is consulting on proposals to tackle the rise in youth vaping, including potentially restricting sales of disposable vapes, increasing taxes and forcing vapes to be kept behind shop counters like cigarettes.
The investigation reveals:
• Cigarette manufacturers have funded research papers questioning the risks of youth vaping. They have then been cited as evidence in government consultation responses by tobacco-funded campaign groups.
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• Hundreds of British doctors have attended pro-vaping smoking cessation training sessions run by an NHS doctor who has taken millions in funding from Philip Morris International.
• Tobacco giant British American Tobacco helped run a “grassroots” campaign that presented itself as the voice of ordinary vapers, which has sought to influence government policy in apparent breach of global rules on tobacco lobbying.
The World Vapers’ Alliance has taken a “vape bus” around Europe pushing for pro-vaping policies
The World Vapers’ Alliance has taken a “vape bus” around Europe pushing for pro-vaping policies
WORLD VAPERS’ ALLIANCE
Beneath a logo of a raised fist defiantly clutching an electronic cigarette, the World Vapers’ Alliance (WVA) bills itself as a grassroots organisation fighting for the rights of ordinary vapers.
The organisation has toured Europe with a “vape bus”, handing out free e-cigarettes and urging users to write to MPs to push for pro-vaping policies as well as making its own attempts to influence governments.
In a recent response to a British government consultation on tackling youth vaping the WVA set out its opposition to proposals to restrict flavours and ban disposable vapes, hitting back at the suggestion e-cigarettes were damaging young people’s health.
The seven-page submission cited scientific evidence, including a paper that found most vaping use among young adults was “infrequent and unlikely to increase a person’s risk of negative health consequences”, and another that concluded “a true gateway effect in youths has not yet been demonstrated”.
However, while it presents itself as the voice of ordinary activists, saying it is dedicated to “amplify[ing] the voices of vapers worldwide and empower[ing] them to make a difference in their communities”, the WVA has secretly been funded by large tobacco companies including British American Tobacco.
It is one of several tobacco industry-linked bodies who have been working in the UK to exploit public health messaging and push a pro-vaping agenda, a Times investigation reveals.
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Tobacco industry-linked organisations have spent years playing down the risk of young people taking up e-cigarettes and challenging advertising restrictions, flavour bans and price increases — measures aimed at getting vapes out of the hands of under-age users.
The efforts appear to circumvent strict restrictions on tobacco industry efforts to influence public health policies and boost sales of e-cigarettes, which have become an important source of new customers and revenue for cigarette manufacturers.
Scientists, doctors and campaigners with links to the tobacco industry have run training sessions for UK doctors, written scientific papers with favourable results, produced educational materials used by health organisations and taken part in political consultations.
The paper WVA cited on youth vaping was bankrolled by another tobacco giant, Philip Morris International, and co-authored by Peter Lee, a long-time tobacco industry consultant.
The paper discussing the risk of vaping to adolescents was led by Riccardo Polosa, who has provided consultancy services to British American Tobacco and runs a research centre which has received millions from Philip Morris.
For decades, the tobacco industry tried to cover-up the damaging health effects of smoking conventional cigarettes.
It did so using what became known as the “tobacco industry playbook”, a deliberate strategy of funding rival scientific research to cast doubt on scientific consensus, wielding huge financial resources to lobby and intimidate governments and using front groups to disguise industry messaging as grassroots activism.
Tobacco adverts have previously used doctors to advocate for their products
Tobacco adverts have previously used doctors to advocate for their products
CAMEL
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The legacy of this deception led to a landmark global treaty, which came into effect in 2005, prohibiting tobacco industry influence in public health. As a result, tobacco companies face strict restrictions on interacting with governments and officials and being involved in efforts to educate the public on health-related activities.
Nearly two decades later, with smoking in global decline, large tobacco companies have invested heavily in e-cigarettes and other alternative nicotine products including heat-not-burn technology and nicotine pouches. As they look to attract new customers for these products, they have sought to influence public habits by funding and developing links with third party groups and independent scientists and doctors.
At the same time, they have adopted the public health language of “harm reduction”, which advocates reducing the impact of risky behaviour for those who can’t stop and used it to attempt to overturn the restrictions imposed by the global tobacco control treaty.
Sandwell General Hospital has a vape shop, to get people to switch from smoking
Sandwell General Hospital has a vape shop, to get people to switch from smoking
JOE LUCAS
Tobacco companies now present themselves as part of the solution to ending cigarette smoking, and hope this will allow them to reopen doors to influencing government policies, even as they continue to manufacture and sell billions of cigarettes.
E-cigarette campaigners are particularly focused on the UK because authorities have enthusiastically adopted pro-vaping policies, viewing it as a key tool for smokers to quit. Smoking cessation clinics hand out free vapes and some hospitals have vaping shops on their premises.
By contrast, other countries have banned flavours or made vapes a prescription-only product. The World Health Organisation opposes their use, saying they are “undoubtedly harmful” and unproven as a method of giving up cigarettes.
The UK’s approach has been criticised by some public health experts who argued that it minimised the risk of non-smokers, including young people, taking up e-cigarettes and becoming addicted to nicotine. They have warned of possible damaging health effects on vapers’ lungs and cardiovascular systems and the unknown long-term consequences of vaping.
Industry-funded science
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Cigarette manufacturers have funded dozens of scientific papers on the potential benefits of e-cigarettes and their possible health effects. These include several which challenge the conclusions of independent researchers on contentious issues, including whether youths who vape are more likely to take up smoking, something known as the “gateway effect”.
Peter Lee, an elderly British consultant living in Surrey, has worked closely with tobacco companies for decades and previously authored papers casting doubt on the link between secondhand smoke and serious diseases.
His 2019 paper, co-authored with two Philip Morris employees and funded by the company, concluded that the “gateway effect” had not been demonstrated.
It argued that even if it were proved this would only have a small impact on smoking prevalence and so the “overall population health impact of introducing e-cigarettes is still likely to be beneficial”.
Research by Professor Emily Banks from the Australian National University in 2020 “found clear evidence that non-smokers who use e-cigarettes are around three times as likely to take up conventional smoking as their peers who don’t use e-cigarettes”. Her team said the “findings support concerns that e-cigarettes are a gateway to smoking, especially among young people”.
As well as being cited by the World Vapers’ Alliance, Lee’s paper has featured in submissions by vaping enthusiasts to the European Commission and Irish health committee.
As the paper was co-authored with tobacco company employees, Lee said Philip Morris would have seen the paper and offered comments in advance of publication but “if they wanted to change a paper to say something that the data didn’t show I’d probably drop out of authorship”.
“I just argue everything on a scientific basis,” he said. “I see my life as a problem solver — I want to get to the proper answer to the problem.”
Philip Morris, which funded Lee’s work, said there was “large and growing body of independent, non-industry funded research that draws a different conclusion to Professor Emily Banks”.
Ian Fearon, another British consultant, has contested the alleged “gateway” effect in a paper funded by the tobacco company Imperial Brands, which sells MyBlu vapes. Fearon’s article, published in the journal Drug Testing & Analysis this year, concludes that there is “minimal evidence to suggest the existence of a ‘gateway’ effect to established cigarette smoking among never-smoking MyBlu users”. Imperial Brands said it had “no influence over any findings of any third-party research that we commission”.
Colourful vapes displayed next to snacks at a newsagents stand
Colourful vapes displayed next to snacks at a newsagents stand
ANDREW MCCAREN FOR THE TIMES
A sector-wide analysis by Charlotta Pisinger of the University of Copenhagen in 2019 found that papers on vaping whose authors had a financial conflict of interest were “strongly associated with industry-favourable results” arguing “e-cigarettes are harmless”.
Lee has authored several papers with tobacco industry funding, including a 2022 analysis of a large US government tobacco survey for Philip Morris which concluded that e-cigarettes did help adult smokers to quit.
Many scientific journals ban articles with tobacco industry links so Lee’s 2022 paper was instead published in an online journal called F1000 Research which allows paying users to post articles and then submit them for peer review post-publication. Two of the people who subsequently peer reviewed Lee’s article and approved it worked as consultants to the e-cigarette industry.
Even when they are published in less prestigious journals, industry-funded papers can have a significant research impact. Sarah Cooney, a former senior British American Tobacco executive, boasts in her online CV of how, while working for the tobacco company: “I shepherded the most impactful article for the e-cigarette category from pre-submission to acceptance in one of the world’s top toxicology journals.”
She continued: “This article has been cited by others [more than] 200 times, and the full-text downloaded [more than] 30,000 times.” The paper by British American Tobacco employees reported on tests on the toxicity of aerosols from e-cigarettes and compared them favourably to cigarette smoke.
