Infiltrating Scientific Spaces
The tobacco industry is attempting to push its self-serving narrative and flawed research around e-cigarettes and other non-combustible tobacco products to portray itself as part of the solution. But in reality, they continue to be the main problem by selling and marketing cigarettes and e-cigarettes – particularly to youth and young adults. Their recent actions mirror those they’ve used in the past, including launching an industry-funded research group, sponsoring entire issues of prestigious research journals, and presenting at tobacco control research conferences. Industry research is biased and often misleading, and its inclusion gives them a false equivalency to unbiased tobacco control scientists. A recent example includes the makers of the popular e-cigarette JUUL, owned in part by Altria, sponsoring an entire special issue in the American Journal of Health Behavior to showcase their industry-funded research on e-cigarettes.
