Call It Whatever You Want — Tobacco Harm Reduction Saves Smokers’ Lives

The U.S. desperately needs tobacco harm reduction, starting
with reducing the harm from the pronouncements of federal officials.  Case in point: FDA Commissioner Robert Califf’s
April 11 tobacco testimony before the House Oversight Committee.

Dr. Califf made so many false statements that I penned a
response for Real
Clear Health. Following are some additional observations related to his
testimony.

Readers know that I don’t tolerate doctors who claim they saw
many people die from the ravages of tobacco, when those patients actually died
from the smoke!  Similarly, I can’t let
the federal official in charge of regulating tobacco get away with mislabeling
it in the same fashion as the World Health Organization and the National
Cancer Institute.

Dr. Califf wrongly claimed that harm reduction is an
industry term.  My late colleague Dr.
Philip Cole and I used that term in an
article published by the American Council on Science and Health in 1995.  The Institute of Medicine, hardly a tobacco
industry tool, titled a 2001 report, “Clearing the Smoke: Assessing the Science
Base for Tobacco Harm Reduction (here).”

For 30 years, I’ve been saying, without challenge, “Nicotine,
when consumed without the harmful constituents of cigarette smoke, is no more
harmful than caffeine.”

Fifteen years ago Britain’s Royal College of Physicians, one
of the world’s oldest and most prestigious medical societies, agreed with me,
finding, “…that smokers smoke predominantly for nicotine, that nicotine itself
is not especially hazardous, and that if nicotine could be provided in a form
that is acceptable and effective as a cigarette substitute, millions of lives
could be saved.”

Dr. Califf should stop supporting the cigarette industry by
trashing vastly safer cigarette substitutes.  That’s called tobacco harm escalation.