The US government reportedly failed to promote the latest statistics which shows a "record low" in smoking rates - thanks in part to smokers switching to vaping.
The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released the NHIS smoking data for 2017 but hasn't released a press release to report it.
The survey indicates adult smoking record rates have dropped from 15.8 per cent in 2016 to 14.1 per cent in 2017.
Anti-smoking activist, Bill Godshall, the executive director of Smoke Free Pennsylvania, posted the report on E-cigarette Forum, explaining although the statistics were on the CDC's website, they hadn't yet publicised their findings. He went on to say the CDC only reports "bad news" and the latest statistics - thanks to many smokers making the switch to e-cigarettes and other quit methods - while available to the public, weren't publicised.
He said vapers had only been made aware of it "because I just posted the weblink, and only because a vaping activist from Australia found that weblink last week (while searching through CDC's NHIS database so he could compare the decline in smoking rates in the US vs Australia).
He continued: "If CDC was truly interested in keeping Americans informed, the agency would have issued a press release or a written report touting this new record low smoking rate. When it comes to smoking, vaping and tobacco use, CDC only reports the bad news (that is typically misrepresented in an attempt to confuse and scare).
Godshall had previously revealed that when reporting the 2016 vaping data, the CDC failed to include crucial details which would put the statistics into perspective. He also pointed out that it didn't compare the date to previous years', so the apparent drop in vaping also wasn't reported.
At the time, the results indicated as part of The National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) that the use of e-cigarettes was on the decline with 3.2% of US adults using e-cigarettes in 2016, down from 3.4% in 2015, and 3.7% in 2014.
However, Godshall pointed out at the time that it excluded "the most important "daily" vaping data" and by using "ever" and "current" usage data, especially when the latter may include a large number of experimenters, social e-cigarettes users and THC vapers, the whole report was "pretty much useless for understanding actual usage patterns of vapers and cigarette smokers.
Of the present smoking data, Godshall added: "The declining smoking rate doesn't fit their narrative very well, especially if they had to admit that one of the reasons for it is all the people like us here who've switched to vaping."
Leave a comment
This site is protected by hCaptcha and the hCaptcha Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.