Shaky Foundation - Without a pillar of harm reduction, tobacco control will fail to live up to its potential.

[Bill Godshall]

An excellent new tobacco Reporter article on tobacco harm reduction products and policies as they pertain to the FCTC.

Shaky Foundation, excellent article on tobacco harm reduction products and policies - Vapers Forum

I still cannot upload attachments to ECF, so I posted it at VF. If someone (who hasn't reached their attachment posting limit) could repost it on ECF, that would be appreciated.

 

[beebopnjazz]

Here ya go!

View attachment Cameron - Harm Reduction - Shaky foundation - TRJune12.pdf

 

[Stubby]

Here ya go!

View attachment 106927

Thanks for the link.

After reading through it the mistake that jumps out is the confusion about natural nicotine verses synthetic nicotine. The author appears to be under the assumption that pharmaceutical products use synthetic nicotine, which is false. I don't know of any product that uses synthetic nicotine, including nicotine gum and patches.

 

[Vocalek]

I noticed that, too.

 

[Bill Godshall]

The only sentence in the article (that I could find) referencing synthetic nicotine didn't state (or in my mind imply) that NRT products contain nicotine, but rather it suggestively stated.

"The spectrum of research could be cast wide to include even the health risks between natural nicotine versus synthetic nicotine, ....."

Although no NRT or tobacco products now use synthetic nicotine, this may be feasable in the future, and as such, could be studied in the future.

It was the sentence in the article right before that one that I found perplexing (and inaccurate) because it stated.

"It is amazing yet true, that it is not possible in human health history to know the relative risks of one tobacco product or nicotine delivery product over another in any reliable way - - including both tobacco and pharmaceutical nicotine products."

Lots of existing scientific and empirical evidence consistently indicate that daily cigarette smoking poses at least 100 times greater mortality risks than smokefree tobacco/nicotine products marketed in the US and Sweden (including NRT, e-cigarettes, dissolvables, snus and other smokeless tobacco products).

On a continuum of harm from 1 to 100 where NRT is 1 and cigarettes are 100, all smokefree tobacco/nicotine products marketed in the US and Sweden appear to be below 2.

While it would be nice to know if e-cigarettes are less hazardous than dissolvables, snus, Skoal and/or Copenhagen (or vice versa), we already know that all of these products are exponentially less hazardous than cigarettes, which is enough for the FDA to truthfully inform the public about these vastly different risks and to allow smokefree tobacco products to truthfully claim they are less hazardous than cigarettes.

And this information is clearly adequate to justify the repeal of nationwide bans on sales of e-cigarettes, snus and other smokefree tobacco products.

 

[Fiamma]

E-cigarettes are another significant smokeless tobacco product available in many parts of the world, and they are predominantly made in China. An e-cigarette uses heat to vaporize a liquid solution (such as propylene glycol) containing synthetic nicotine into an aerosol, which is inhaled.

Synthetic nic in E Cig Juice? I don't think so.

 

[Vocalek]

Fiamma: It would have worked if you had placed the forward slash inside of the left bracket to close the quote. EXAMPLE: [/quote] INSTEAD OF: /

Try editing it.

 

[Bill Godshall]

Thanks for pointing out that other sentence.

Oh well, most folks in tobacco industry know surprisingly little about NRT or e-cigarettes.

But they're learning more.

 

[Stosh]

Thanks for the great article, guess we all have our favorite takeaway....

But if people understand the risks and, despite all the social
conditioning, still choose to indulge in risky behavior, should they
not have information about minimizing the risk—i.e., safe sex and
using condoms?

But it's still not 100% proven safe with FDA studies, you just have to quit!!

 

[Spazmelda]

The only sentence in the article (that I could find) referencing synthetic nicotine didn't state (or in my mind imply) that NRT products contain nicotine, but rather it suggestively stated.



Although no NRT or tobacco products now use synthetic nicotine, this may be feasable in the future, and as such, could be studied in the future.

but there was this statement:

Each Considaret contains natural tobacco nicotine (as opposed to synthetic nicotine, like that used in most pharmaceutical nicotine replacement therapies)...

Ignoring that misunderstanding, it was a really nice and thought provoking article.

I especially liked this part:

The effect has been not only the denial of the right to choice, or theright to information on which to base choice, but also the denial ofthe right to advance scientific knowledge to develop the informa-tion on which to understand and base risk decisions. The effect hasalso been, rightly or wrongly, to position the tobacco industry andpharmaceutical industry unequally in law by endorsing one prod-uct category over another without a clear regulatory frameworkfor products delivering nicotine to consumers.

That nicely puts into words a frustration that's always going through my head when I think of these issues. The tobacco companies are really in a catch 22 here. The mistrust generated by their actions decades ago and the resulting government policies have made it very difficult for them to develop and market harm reduction products. (I should mention that the health agencies were also complicit in the low tar/light cigarette disaster, having produced their own data to support that these products were safer, and encouraging consumers to switch, so it wasn't just BT involved.)

Partly in the spirit of not wanting to be 'fooled again', FDA has proposed these ridiculous and prohibitively expensive proof hoops a producer will have have to jump through before they can make any claim to reduced harm. I think some sort of evidence is a logical requirement, but I think this can be accomplished in a much more logical and cost effective manner than what they are proposing.