I think this article is a good example of conflating cause and effect. But not in a fallacious way or value-negative way: it more highlights well, I think, that there is a difficult gray area where "cause" and "effect" both are related and separated from each other, but not in an obviously clear cut way.
So he died from hypokalemia and other reasons, but the main (or only) reason for his hypokalemia was the licorice habit. I think this is a good example when it's both correct and not correct to say that the licorice "caused" the death.
Contrast with two examples on the two extremes:
Consider a situation when he had instead of licorice had ingested some obviously known poison: then I think it's a much more valid statement to say that "man dies from eating poison", because the idea of the poison and the idea of death are very close together.
Consider a different situation where the man was smoking one pack of cigarettes _per month_ or _per year_. Then it's not as obvious to say "man dies from smoking". The smoking probably contributed to the death in various complex ways.
So you could say that "man dies due from hypokalemia due to excessive licorice consumption not counterbalanced by having an otherwise healthy diet" which is possibly more nuanced, and possibly more (or less) helpful depending on what your purpose is to clarify or simplify things.
Thanks for sharing this article, I find this a good and fairly apolitical educational example that I can use when talking about complex causal relations in the future: how cause and effect can be conflated in both positive and negative ways depending on who you are talking to, what you are talking about, and what the purpose of the discussion is.
