As a physician – one who has dedicated his career to treating lung diseases – it has become clear to me that asking a smoker to quit, gradually cut back, or instructing smokers on the use of more traditional nicotine-replacement therapies, like nicotine gum or patches, is not as simple or as effective as it sounds.
Hence, the availability and acceptability of safer tobacco and nicotine products may be critical to successfully helping adult smokers move away from traditional cigarettes.
In 2017, the FDA announced in the New England Journal of Medicine that its approach to reducing the toll of disease caused by smoking would be grounded in “the continuum of risk for nicotine-containing products.” The “foundational understanding” underpinning this approach is that nicotine per se in tobacco products is “not directly responsible for the tobacco-caused cancer, lung disease, and heart disease that kill hundreds of thousands of Americans each year.”
Accordingly, the FDA authorized the marketing of more than a dozen tobacco products (snus, tobacco-heating products, and even very-low nicotine cigarettes) as modified-risk products with many containing flavors such as mint or menthol. All of these products are now on the chopping block in Maine.
Mark Farber – The Maine Wire – 2022-03-28.