Tobacco use is not smoking

A US public health expert has said that the dozens of tobacco experts who had contributed to a recent 700-page report by the World Health Organization and the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) had failed to distinguish between tobacco and smoke.

University of Louisville professor Brad Rodu, writing on his blog rodutobaccotruth, said that this was especially disappointing since one of the two editors, University of Illinois at Chicago professor Frank Chaloupka, had previously acknowledged the difference.

Rodu listed the report’s summary conclusions, which, he pointed out, were mainly about smoking and not tobacco.

‘The sham synonym tactic reflects the anti-tobacco posture of the report’s sponsors, NCI and WHO,’ Rodu said.

‘Officials at those organizations supplied two prefaces, totaling 2,700 words. “Tobacco” appears 128 times, while “smoke” is used only 14 times.

‘Decades of scientific studies document that tobacco is not synonymous with smoke.

‘The deliberate conflation of terms by anti-tobacco forces would not be tolerated in any other serious scientific or medical debate.’