Vice President Mike Pence, the man now leading the nation's response to public health threat from the coronavirus outbreak, once wrote "smoking doesn't kill."

President Donald Trump on Wednesday tapped Pence to work with the CDC, NIH and other government agencies to coordinate U.S. response to the outbreak.

But Pence's statement on smoking — made during his 2001 run for a congressional seat — could come back to haunt him.

"Despite the hysteria from the political class and the media, smoking doesn't kill," Pence wrote in an opinion piece posted on his congressional campaign website in March 2001.

"In fact, 2 out of every 3 smokers does not die from a smoking related illness and 9 out of ten smokers do not contract lung cancer," Pence wrote. "This is not to say that smoking is good for you. News flash: smoking is not good for you."

In the op-ed, Pence also urged people to quit smoking.

Critics, including U.S. Senators, used the op-ed to criticize Pence's new role. Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, hammered Pence's stance on smoking and the 2015 HIV outbreak. "We need competence & science driving our response--that's not the VP's record."

"Mike Pence is for conversion therapy. Mike Pence said smoking didn’t cause cancer. Mike Pence doesn’t believe climate science. Mike Pence questioned whether or not condoms worked," Sen. Brian Shatz, a Democrat from Hawaii, tweeted Wednesday. "So (cringe emoji)."

Pence, in his piece, never claimed smoking did not cause cancer. He wrote that: "9 out of ten smokers do not contract lung cancer."

Pence's office did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on his current views on smoking.

Pence's actions on smoking

Pence, in the 2001 piece, touted his conservative beliefs while arguing against proposals to create new government agencies to manage money from a settlement with tobacco makers.

"The relevant question is, what is more harmful to the nation, second hand smoke or back handed big government disguised in do-gooder healthcare rhetoric," Pence wrote.

The Trump administration last month banned fruit- and mint-flavored e-cigarettes and vaping products, while allowing the flavors in other tank-based smoking systems.

The new rules were more limited than the administration's sweeping ban on vaping products announced in September. Officials at the time cited studies that found an alarming number of teenagers were vaping.

"Our efforts have always been how do we balance?" U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said in a story published Jan. 2 in USA Today.

"How do we make sure products remain available for adults who are using them to get off or stay off combustible tobacco ... but also keep the most attractive products or flavors away from kids?"

Pence in 2009 voted against the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which imposed new warning labels and gave the Food and Drug Administration the power to regulate tobacco.

As Indiana's governor, Pence opposed a plan to fund road repairs through a tax hike on tobacco and gasoline.

"Governor Pence believes the last place to look when we have the best credit rating and $2 billion in reserves is in the pocketbooks of hardworking Hoosiers,” Pence's then-spokeswoman Kara Brooks said in January 2016.

Pence signed the funding bill in March 2016 after lawmakers stripped out new taxes on fuel and cigarettes.

The science on smoking

The statistics Pence relied on have changed in the two decades since he wrote this piece. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control now attributes about one-in-five deaths annually to smoking.

It was not clear Thursday whether Pence has changed his opinion on smoking as health data and statistics have changed.

According to the CDC, smoking is the leading cause of preventable death.

The CDC blames cigarette smoking for more than 480,000 deaths per year in the United States. More than 41,000 of those deaths were result of secondhand smoke.

A 2016 report by the Richard M. Fairbanks School of Health at Indiana University, Purdue University-Indianapolis.described tobacco as an epidemic in Indiana and Marion County.

The IUPUI study found:

more than 11,000 Hoosiers die prematurely each year from cigarette smoking;

more than 1,400 Hoosier nonsmokers die annually from exposure to secondhand smoke;

about 5,700 children under 18 start smoking each year in Indiana;

about 15% of Hoosier women smoked while pregnant in 2014.

"High rates of maternal smoking are likely one driver of Indiana’s disproportionately higher rates of infant mortality and underweight births when compared to the nation as a whole," according to the IUPUI study.

Contact IndyStar reporter Vic Ryckaert at 317-444-2701 or vic.ryckaert@indystar.com. Follow him on Twitter: @VicRyc.