The Five Great Tobacco Control Conspiracies

Read enough tobacco control content, and one could be forgiven for thinking they were thumbing through the pages of the National Enquirer. From the University of Bath Tobacco Control Research Group mistaking criticism of their shoddy work for targeted online abuse to the deranged propaganda about vapes and pouches, it’s fair to say that conspiracy theories are alive and well in the space.

Let’s take a look at the top five wacky theories that just won’t go away.

#1. EVALI

E-cigarette, or vaping product, use-associated lung injury (EVALI) is one of those conspiracy theories that persists because people badly want it to be true. During the outbreak of cases in 2019, almost 3000 people were hospitalized and, tragically, 68 people died.

For people with preexisting biases against vaping, EVALI was a justification for their hunches.

But there was one big problem. EVALI was not caused by vaping nicotine. Instead, it was because of illegal THC vapes loaded with vitamin E acetate.

News stations and websites pumped out EVALI misinformation. The corrections — where there were any — were far quieter. As you can see from the graphic below, many current smokers were totally hoodwinked into thinking vapes were more harmful than lethal cigarettes. Ironically, the consequence of this anti-science propaganda will probably cost more lives than the original outbreak.

To this day, EVALI truthers still push this agitprop, hoping that you won’t bother with the two-minutes of research required to dismantle their reckless, ignorant game.

#2. Vaping is a gateway to smoking

Human history is littered with moral panics. While the Satanic Panic in the US in the 1980s and ’90s has been given a modern-day revamp by QAnon types, the previous version had its own unique flavour.

Proponents of this theory feared that alternative cultural movements, like heavy metal music and Dungeons and Dragons, were corrupting the youth and subtly recruiting them to Satanic cults.

While employing discredited psychological practices is not beyond our modern-day tobacco control purists, even they might balk at something as cheap as the recovered memory therapy used as evidence of Satanic abuse rituals.

Fake doctors, like the head of the WHO, use a similar pattern when they float the thoroughly debunked and discredited idea that vaping is a gateway to smoking. Like the oddballs who didn’t like D&D or metal, they’re happy to use kids as pawns in their weird theatre.

#3. Nicotine causes cancer

RFK Jnr’s appointment to the Trump cabinet has revived the vaccines cause autism canard. While the scientific consensus isn’t always right, it’s worth noting that Andrew Wakefield, the kook behind the claim, is barred from practicing medicine in the UK.

Nicotine’s association with tobacco is enough for some people to think that nicotine causes cancer. Like those sleep-deprived maniacs with interconnected red strings on a corkboard, the concept of cause and effect has been mangled to a pulp in service of the narrative.

The same lunatics that push these conspiracy theories are generally silent about NRT like gum. That tells you all they need to know about cancer and nicotine.

#4. Popcorn lung

Conspiracy theories don’t get much more theoretical than the popcorn lung hoax. Despite the fact that vaping has never caused popcorn lung, the presence of diacetyl in some e-liquids led to rampant media and online speculation that has passed into received wisdom.

There are millions of vapers around the world. None of them have gotten popcorn lung because the amount of diacetyl in the vapour is so low. Interestingly, the chemical is also found in cigarettes, where, again, it hasn’t caused popcorn lung.

When people bring up popcorn lung as a vaping talking point, they should know that others are hearing the equivalent of “the communists put fluoride in the water to make us docile.”

#5. Vapes and nicotine are targeting kids

There are 5.6 million vapers in the UK. There are around 5.4m 11-17-year-olds in the UK. Per ASH, 4.2% of teens vape more than once a week. In other words, roughly 226,800 teens vape regularly, giving a combined adult and teen vaping market of 5.9 million people.

Let’s use the car industry to illustrate a point. I couldn’t find fresh figures, but UK data suggest that only 10% of 17-year-olds in the UK had full driving licences. Imagine you were in charge of selling cars, and you went after the only people who couldn’t really afford your product, of which only a tiny percentage are regular buyers. Oh yeah, and imagine it was also illegal to market or sell to this demographic, too. Your campaign would be disastrous. So why would anyone think the same approach would work for harm-reduction products?

Despite the facts, the lie that vapes deliberately target kids is echoed everywhere, quite often by people who should know better. People really believe that vape manufacturers are risking it all on a hypothetically profitable market of teens despite having a dedicated adult market standing there with notes in their hands.

This teen advertising market is like the subliminal messaging conspiracy theories of the 20th century. It’s all invisible to the observer, so these marketing campaigns must be happening subconsciously. Conveniently, their inaccessible nature also makes it hard to detect these secret messages, unless you’re a paranoid tobacco control maniac who is primed to see them everywhere they look.

Final thoughts

Conspiracy theories are a kind of creative storytelling. To me, it seems that they are a way to map order and meaning over the chaos and messiness of our world. Squint your eyes and some of these stories are vaguely plausible, but most of them have the internal consistency of an off-the-hoof story recited by a 5-year-old.

Everyone should believe what they want. But when the majority of the public believes stuff equivalent to the Moon Landing was faked, then I think we have a problem.