Juul identified “thought leaders” and rated collaborators in 2018

The Juul documents that have been released so far contain an interesting document that lists people Juul considered “thought leaders” as of February 9, 2018. The spreadsheet contains several pages that suggest how Juul came up with this list.

Another April 13, 2018 spreadsheet lists Juul’s “ratings of collaborators”:

StatNews did a strong story on Dave Abrams and Ray Niaura’s undisclosed links with Juul, including allowing Juul to review a draft of their influential 2018 article in Annual Review of Public Health that argued that “a reframing of societal nicotine use through the lens of harm minimization is an extraordinary opportunity to enhance the impact of tobacco control efforts.” According to the StatNews story, Annual Reviews is considering retracting the article. Given how heavily e-cigarette companies and advocates use this paper tom promote the myth that e-cigarettes are “95% safer” than cigarettes, the journal should hold tough and retract it.

Of course, what the actual evidence shows in that, in terms of disease outcomes, for cardiovascular disease, stroke and metabolic dysfunction e-cigarette risks are indistinguishable from cigarettes and for respiratory and oral disease, while lower than smoking, they are not a lot lower.