• March 28, 2024

Sweanor: Anti-vapor lobby just like ‘abstinence only’

One of the world’s leading tobacco control experts is speaking out against an overzealous public health movement more concerned with fighting big companies than improving people’s health.David Sweanor

“We had this fundamental problem that you had people that had taken an absolutist position- this is all about right and wrong, and they were more like the abstinence-only people on sex education, or on drugs or alcohol,” says expert David Sweanor in an article in the Daily Caller. “They saw any alternative product as a problem because it might potentially allow a cigarette company to morph into something else, and it’s a battle against these companies they couldn’t allow that to happen.”

Sweanor has spent more than 30 years fighting tobacco. He is an adjunct professor of law at the University of Ottawa and special lecturer with the division of epidemiology and public health at the University of Nottingham.

 “I got involved, I believe, as the first lawyer in the world to work full-time on public advocacy issues through cigarette smoking,” said Sweanor.