Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Speaking of health risks

Want to reduce health risks from tobacco? Drop advertising bans and let companies compete with each other to find ways to deliver nicotine without the cancer-causing tars. Nicotine, by itself, is about as dangerous as caffeine.

We would get some serious harm reduction as smokers switched to safer cigarettes or smokeless tobacco. In Sweden only 15% of men smoke (a lot of them use snus), and male lung cancer rates are the lowest in Europe. How do we get this? First, make it perfectly clear that the FTC will only attack advertising claims that lack a reasonable basis while permitting substantiated claims about filter technology, smokeless tobacco, health effects and the like. And second, the public health experts have to get out of the way when tobacco firms raucously compete to create safer products and persuade smokers to use them. It is time to start undoing 25 years of public health failure.

Of course, if the goal of public health policy is to make people feel guilty about smoking (or smug about not smoking), and to transfer money from tobacco companies to the public coffers, then we can't call it a "failure".

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