"We don’t worry that e-cigarettes increase the number of fatal car accidents, diminish motivation and cognition, or impair academic achievement. The drugs throu

"We don’t worry that e-cigarettes increase the number of fatal car accidents, diminish motivation and cognition, or impair academic achievement. The drugs through the gateway that we worry about with e-cigarettes are Marlboros, not opioids." The casual manner in which Gladwell dismisses the danger of tobacco is jarring. Each year, tobacco is responsible for at least five times as many deaths as opioids are in the United States (480k vs 70-90k) [0][1]. Globally, tobacco kills more than 7 million people each year [2]. Although Gladwell has dismissed claims that he has shilled for the tobacco industry [3][4], his trivialization of the dangers of tobacco do not support that position. Nevertheless, that does not undermine the argument that caution should be exercised with THC and other cannabinoids. It was prohibitively difficult in the past to do research on the compounds [5], so we should exercise humility when making definitive claims about them without further investigation. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/tobacco_related_mortality/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/heal... [1] https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/o... [2] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tobacco https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tobacco [3] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/08/malcolm-gladwell-smoking_n_7757624.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/08/malcolm-gladwell-s... [4] https://shameproject.com/profile/malcolm-gladwell-2/ https://shameproject.com/profile/malcolm-gladwell-2/ [5] https://www.newsweek.com/why-its-hard-do-marijuana-research-69753 https://www.newsweek.com/why-its-hard-do-marijuana-research-...