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- Published on: 22 August 2017
- Published on: 22 August 2017Misinterpretation of prevalence estimates from Japan
NOT PEER REVIEWED In the second column of this article, the author describes findings from a survey in Japan (Tabuchi et al, 2016, reference 15). However, there is a misinterpretation of Tabuchi et al’s table 2 which leads to wrong percentages for having tried heat not burn products in Caputi’s article. The figures 8.4% and 7.8% are not the percentages who had ever tried these products in the population but instead percentages out of those respondents who had ever tried an e-cigarette or a heat not burn product.
The actual figures for the population are therefore about 0.6% for iQOS (8.4% of 6.6%) and 0.5% for Ploom (7.8% of 6.6%).
Further information on the ever use of different products by age, gender and smoking status (about 1% of 15-19 year olds had tried each of the two heat not burn products), is found in supplementary table 3 of Tabuchi et al.
Conflict of Interest:
None declared.