Your post raises uncomfortable and important questions without easy answers.

Not that you wanted more examples of the phenomenon you describe, but I can’t resist offering this troubling one pertaining to Canada, carefully described and analyzed by Clive Bates in 2020.

[Apparently Substack doesn’t allow links in comments (?) but hopefully findable by folks by searching for this title: “Canada takes a wrong turn after a flawed paper induces moral panic about youth vaping and smoking”]