We can’t afford to ignore science anymore. 

The World Health Organization projects that more than one billion lives may end early from smoking-related illnesses this century. They estimate that nearly seven million people die early each year from smoking-related illness alone.

The projections in India are even more devastating due to wide-spread use of a dangerous oral tobacco product called Gutka. Nearly 10 million people die early each year, while millions of others will have their lives altered dramatically from heart attacks, strokes, or cancer.

Meanwhile, leading scientists around the world are calling for medical professionals to inform patients who smoke cigarettes or use dangerous oral tobacco products about dramatically safer alternatives like nicotine vapor products, snus, or other alternative nicotine delivery systems.

Unfortunately, the voices of these leading scientists and many who successfully quit smoking are drowned out by unscientific fears, traditional beliefs, or well-funded activists.

We need to end the misinformation.

US FOOD & DRUG ADMINISTRATION (FDA)

“Our comprehensive tobacco plan to combat the ill effects of smoking was founded on a central animating principle. That what primarily causes death and disease from tobacco use isn’t the nicotine in these products. It’s the act of lighting tobacco on fire to free that drug for inhalation.

While it’s the addiction to nicotine that keeps people smoking, it’s primarily the combustion, which releases thousands of harmful constituents into the body at dangerous levels, that kills people.

This fact represents both the biggest challenge to curtailing cigarette addiction ‒ and also holds the seeds of an opportunity that’s a central construct for our actions.

E-cigarettes may present an important opportunity for adult smokers to transition off combustible tobacco products and onto nicotine delivery products that may not have the same level of risks associated with them.”

Dr. Scott Gottlieb

FDA Commissioner
September 11, 2018