Here is Nitzkin's biography from the end of the article:
INTRODUCTION TO DR. NITZKIN AND DISCLAIMER
Dr. Joel L. Nitzkin is senior fellow in
tobacco policy for the R Street Institute. Dr. Nitzkin is a public health physician, board certified in pre- ventive medicine as his medical specialty. He has been a local health director, a state health director and president of two national public health organizations.
Since the mid-1990s, Dr. Nitzkin has been in the private practice of public health as a health policy consultant. In this capacity, he has taken on a number of research and teaching assignments for federal, state and local public health agencies; assisted with accreditation of a managed care organization; and done substantial expert witness work related to communicable disease control, quality of health care, and
tobacco control.
In 2007, while serving as co-chair of the Tobacco Control Task Force of the American Association of Public Health Physicians, Dr. Nitzkin played a lead role in exploring policy options for reducing tobacco- attributable illness, death and property damage in the United States. It was this effort that focused his attention on tobacco harm reduction as a potential life-saving measure and on other problematic aspects of current American tobacco control policy.
The views expressed in this policy study are entirely those of Dr. Nitzkin. They do not reflect position statements formally adopted by AAPHP, R Street or any other organization he is affiliated with.
Dr. Nitzkin has never received financial support from any tobacco, e-cigarette or pharmaceutical enterprise. His affiliation with R Street is based on shared concerns about the direction of federal tobacco policy since adoption of the FDA tobacco law. R Street Institute is a Washington-DC based think tank that respects the role of govern- ment in regulating industry to protect health and the environment, but strongly opposes undue governmental interference with market forces. R Street designated tobacco harm reduction as one of their priority issues after FDA attempted to remove e-cigarettes from the market by declaring them to be an unapproved drug-device combina- tion subject to the provisions of the drug law.
Additional bibliographic references dealing with these and other issues are available on request from Dr. Nitzkin at
jln@jln-md.com .
