The U.S. Food and Drug Administration scientists and experts gathered tobacco policy for the study of potential health risks and benefits of soluble tobacco products.
The Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee is meeting this week and advocates from Pennsylvania and New Jersey are among those lining up to make their pitch to the FDA panel.
Soluble, which are made from finely ground tobacco, are not new, but they drew attention to the new last year, when RJ Reynolds and Philip Morris introduced new flavors and varieties in several cities across the country. Some health officials and lawmakers have called flavored melt in your mouth and tongue the balls band “nicotine candy” and complained to the FDA.
Rutgers University law student Gregory Conley was a smoker for eight years, but leave in August. 24-year-old used electronic cigarettes - another smokeless product - quit smoking, and he says, soluble suppress cravings, when he was in his class. He loves tobacco dip a toothpick and says they give him satisfying tingle nicotine hit with mint or Java.
“You just put it in your mouth and hold it as if you were holding a straw between his teeth,” Conley said.
He volunteers, legal director of policy for the consumer advocates for smoke-free alternative to the Association and gave testimony during the meeting of the FDA this week. Conley says the electronic cigarette, smokeless and other soluble alternatives are powerful tools to help smokers avoid the most toxic aspects of cigarettes.
The FDA’s review is to provide soluble in 2009, family smoking prevention and tobacco control law. Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said that the advisers will weigh the scientific and report on the health of the population not only at individual smokers.
“The law recognizes the FDA, even if the product is less harmful if it is sold in a way that its main appeal to young people, the end result will be more people become addicted to tobacco,” Myers said.
“The FDA law recognizes that even if the product is less harmful, if it’s marketed in a way that its primary appeal is to young people, the net result will be more people becoming addicted to tobacco,” Myers said.
“What we have seen that colorful way that the solvent have been promoted and say that they have generated has led many people to believe that these products are less harmful - before there was a review of FDA”, Myers said.
Now the government regulates, as well as other soluble smokeless tobacco. They are stocked behind the counter in the store and have the same health warnings on tobacco, as well as chewing. They read “Smokeless tobacco is addictive” and “This product is not a safe alternative to cigarettes.”
A group of U.S. lawmakers want more stringent rules for soluble. Some public health groups say the products should be removed from store shelves until
the FDA has weighed in on the science. Other supporters are sometimes called “reductionisms harm,” they say smokeless products can reduce disease, disability and death caused by smoking.
Jennifer Ibrahim, assistant professor in the Department of Public Health at Temple University, says - done correctly - Harm reduction is a good idea. “I think everyone in the business of giving up smoking is realistic that people can not quit cold turkey, but you do not want to send the wrong message: that nicotine is safe at any level, because it is not,” she said.
“It is absolutely true, nothing is absolutely safe,” said Conley, but he says, smokers die while health officials wait for final proof.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reference one of the five deaths each year from tobacco use, about 440 thousand people. Smoking costs America $ 193 billion per year is estimated for 2000 to 2004. About half of that economic value of direct health care costs, and half of lost productivity.
Tobacco companies can not promote soluble as quit smoking help, but there are a lot of online chatter from individual users, who report that they gave up cigarettes or cigars with soluble.
“To be fair, they are very similar to smoking cessation products that have been on the market for a very long time - a diamond or gum for people who are trying to get out of tobacco,” said psychologist Anna Tobia, director of the smoking cessation program at the Hospital of the University Thomas Jefferson in Philadelphia.
Some people fear that the products are called “harm reduction” will actually lead to more health problems. Supporters say the soluble may help smokers to “escape” from nicotine addiction to cigarettes. Opponents say it is not clear how consumers actually use the products and who uses them. Will young people try to soluble develop a taste for nicotine, and then move on to smoking? May keep people hooked soluble, when some ex-smokers would - eventually - to become nicotine free?
Kenneth Warner, the health economist at the University Of Michigan School Of Public Health, says there is no reason to be skeptical about the intention of the tobacco companies in the soluble and are concerned that new products will do.
“The public health community got bamboozled” in the past, he said. When the tobacco makers began selling low-tar nicotine cigarettes, Warner says they were marketed as “mild, mellow,” and safer than regular cigarettes — and it turned out they weren’t.
The FDA advisers are in the marsh to a long discussion, which appears developing and changing ideas about what’s acceptable and what is safe. Health policy expert Jennifer Ibrahim says electronic cigarettes and melt-in-mouth tobacco but the latest in a long line of new products aimed at smokers and people who are trying to kick the habit.
Many are waiting for the FDA to answer the question: Do dissolvable pose a greater or lesser risk to population health?
“I will not let their children about electronic cigarettes, because I just do not know what to VAPS [water vapor] that comes out of them. When some people, although exposure to secondhand smoke was safe and it is clear that this is not true”, Ibrahim said. “I’m not going to subject myself or my family to things that are 10, 15 years later, we say,” Oh, yes, it’s not good for you. ”
“We will do everything to make our patients better and to get them to reduce the number of cigarettes they smoke,” said quit smoking expert Anna Tobia.”If it is a good first step, and - perhaps - if they see that they can cope with less nicotine, it would be wonderful.”
Many are waiting for FDA, to answer the question: how are soluble in a particular health risk?
