Tobacco Center Faculty Blog

This 45 minute lecture, prepared for the 14 FDA/NIH-sponsored TCORS, reviews why people think e-cigarettes are a sensible part of a tobacco harm-reduction strategy as originally envisioned my Michael Russell in his 1976 widely-repeated "people smoke for the nicotine but die from the tar" statement and whether the current evidence supports that hope.  Watch it here.

Pam Ling and I just published “Tobacco company strategies to identify and promote the benefits of nicotine” in Tobacco Control.  In this paper, we used previously secret tobacco industry documents to show how the tobacco companies have worked for decades to promote the myth than nicotine does not have any adverse effects and, in fact, has benefits.  We are hearing echoes of these efforts in the current discussions about nicotine, with much of this thinking implicit in the FDA’s nicotine policy.

Hopefully, as people and policymakers develop more sophisticated understanding of the industry’s role in promoting these ideas, they will move beyond this obsolete thinking.

Here is the abstract:

Background In response to a changing regulatory and consumer landscape, tobacco companies developed new strategies to promote cigarettes and smoking. We examined one of these strategies: to fund and conduct scientific research related to potential benefits of nicotine, and to use their findings to promote nicotine.