Yesterday The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released another set of numbers (and lies) claiming to prove their gateway theory:
http://goo.gl/BYdvtj. Their numbers, they say, shows that the number of teens that has tried e-cigarettes have tripled from 2011 to 2013 and here comes their punchline:
Among non-smoking youth who had ever used e-cigarettes, 43.9 percent
said they intended to smoke conventional cigarettes within the next
year, compared with 21.5 percent of those who had never used
e-cigarettes.
"The increasing number of young people who use e-cigarettes should be a
concern for parents and the public health community, especially since
youth e-cigarette users were nearly twice as likely to have intentions
to smoke conventional cigarettes compared with youth who had never
tried e-cigarettes."
This is the conclusion drawn from those numbers by Rebecca Bunnell, Sc.D., M.Ed., Associate Director for Science in
CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health and the lead author of the study.
So the CDC have concluded once again that their numbers prove the gateway theory... but in fact it does no such thing. The problem is that they conclude that the e-cigarette use is the reason why these people wants to try cigarettes, but their numbers say nothing about this. It's not possible to know this, at least when you haven't asked the participants that question. In fact, a more plausible explanation is that people who would have tried out cigarettes in any case is also much more likely to try out e-cigarettes. Of course the numbers can't prove this either, but in my eyes it's the more plausible explanation of the two. The CDCs own numbers even supports this as they show that teen smoking rates is declining:
http://spinfuel.com/vaping-news/cdc-finally-tells-the-truth/
Let's for a minute assume that the explanation I proposed is the correct one. As a former smoker and current vaper I know that going back to cigarettes is just not something I'm very likely to do, unless forced by regulation. The reason is that cigarettes gives me nothing more, in fact it gives me a lot less, than vaping. Cigarettes tastes, well, like shit compared to vaping, and in addition to this I, and I bet most American teens, know how bad cigarettes are for my health.
There is just no good reason to start smoking if you've tried vaping.
Now let's assume the CDC theory is correct, and teens want to try out cigarettes because of their e-cigarette experiments, even if their own numbers shows that this is highly unlikely. Well the paragraph above is still valid. In fact a vaper who has never smoked cigarettes is even more likely to think cigarettes are inferior to e-cigarettes... by far.
The CDC wants you to believe their numbers support their pre-defined conclusion and their gateway theory. This is not true. Their numbers however are not useless, they might very well give us indications of another, more plausible theory. I give you "The firewall theory": Vaping acts as a firewall that stops teens from taking up the deadly habit of cigarette smoking.
I'm far more worried about the 21.5 of the teens that have never tried vaping but still wants to try out cigarettes, than I am about the 43.9% of vapers that wants to try. And so should the CDC be, but they're not... because their boss has already decided that he hates e-cigarettes (http://goo.gl/MR0txR).
CDC's latest study released on Thursday this week (November 13th) shows that current e-cigarette use have doubled among middle school students and trippled among high school students from 2011/12 to 2013. During the same period smoking rates have been pretty heavily reduced. Dr. Siegel has taken the time to find the relevant numbers in the study and as usual given us the rest of the story on his blog:
