WASHINGTON, D.C. – The American Vaping Association, a leading advocate for the health benefits of electronic cigarettes, today called on the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to revise its recent report that asserted that e-cigarette use encourages nonsmoking teens to smoke combustible tobacco cigarettes. Gregory Conley, president of the American Vaping Association, issued the following statement:

“The recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and its accompanying press release are just plain deceptive. The American people expect better from the CDC and the paper should be retracted.

“The AVA takes issue with the CDC’s claim that non-smoking young people who use e-cigarettes are about twice as likely to say they intend to smoke conventional cigarettes within the next year compared to those who had never used e-cigarettes.

“The reported result is flawed because, unbelievably, teens who answered ‘probably not’ when asked if they intended to smoke in the future were counted as likely future smokers instead of unlikely future smokers. Even worse, the CDC failed to disclose this in its press release, which led to hundreds of news sources identifying e-cigarettes as a gateway to cigarettes.

“A growing number of studies have shown that e-cigarettes help smokers safely and effectively quit the habit and are not gateways to tobacco smoking. There is no evidence e-cigarettes are gateways to smoking, and in fact, for millions of Americans they are anti-tobacco products.”

You can learn more about AVA and vaping by visiting the AVA website.