Center for Tobacco Products is Lying to the Public About Youth Tobacco Use

This month, the FDA ' s Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) updated achart purporting to show trends in youth tobacco use over the past 5 years.Here are the facts (i.e., the " true " facts) displayed in the chart:1. Youth cigarette use (among high school students) dropped by a huge amount from 2011 to 2016.2. Cigar use dropped substantially from 2011 to 2016.3. Pipe use dropped substantially from 2011 to 2016.4. Smokeless tobacco use dropped slightly from 2011 to 2016.5. Hookah use was essentially the same in 2011 and 2016.Given those facts, here is the key question:What happened to overall use of tobacco among high school students during the time period 2011-2016?It doesn ' t take any fancy math or statistics to figure out that overall tobacco use among high school students must have declined substantially from 2011 to 2016. Since youth cigarette use dropped by a huge amount, cigar use dropped substantially, pipe used dropped substantially, smokeless tobacco use didn ' t change  much, and hookah use didn ' t change much, it stands to reason that overall tobacco use went down substantially. There is no way that youth tobacco use went up or even stayed the same from 2011 to 2016 because it dropped substantially for three categories of use but didn ' t change much in the other two categories.The Rest of the StoryBut that is not what the Center for Tobacco Products chose to tell the public.Here is what the Center for Tobacco Products titled the chart:The CTP chose to tell the...
Source: The Rest of the Story: Tobacco News Analysis and Commentary - Category: Addiction Source Type: blogs