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State Controlled Tobacco

Forces International

For some time now the U.S. tobacco control movement has sought to have cigarettes regulated by the federal government’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA.)

The idea of the state regulating the contents and make up of cigarettes is abhorrent in its illiberalism but the fact is that this legislation appears likely to be passed. It can be expected as well that similar regulation of cigarettes will quickly spread across the globe. This gives us cause to examine the situation and its implications.

Firstly the legislation looks likely to pass because it is being pushed by powerful entities all of whom have traditionally followed very different agenda. The main proponents being two anti smoking Senators, Waxman and Kennedy, the U.S Institute of Medicine, various groups within the anti smoking movement and tobacco giant, Philip Morris. The real agenda is apparently not the battle for the control of nicotine but the collusion of control of the tobacco market. In a very real sense tobacco control cannot continue on its current path to inevitable self destruction in a tobacco free world. Without legislation that will effectively limit its own success, the power and huge financial rewards of tobacco control will rapidly evaporate. Seizing total control of cigarette manufacturing and marketing places tobacco control on an eternal throne.

Secondly, the proposed legislation contains two very important aspects for smokers.

It would not give the FDA a free hand in regulation of nicotine content. This means, crucially, that nicotine could not be removed from cigarettes without additional legislation. It would therefore likely be guaranteed that nicotine would remain in cigarettes at least for the next two or three decades when the bill came up for review.
It would allow the tobacco companies to market Less Hazardous Cigarettes.

The following discussion looks at each of these aspects;

Regulation of nicotine content

There has been for some time an ignorance within tobacco control as to the level of importance of nicotine in the smoking experience, with an arrogant belief that the way to force people to quit smoking is to remove the nicotine. This relies heavily upon the false conviction that nicotine is highly addictive and is the driving force behind a persons desire to smoke. In reality nothing could be further from the truth - a 'forty a day' smoker can go swimming without having to leave the pool every 15 minutes for a 'fix' and can indeed sleep for 8 hours without waking up due to lack of nicotine. Furthermore and famously, uncountable hordes of smokers worldwide have given up the habit, by far most commonly, completely on their own. Perhaps the most blatant fact that demonstrates smokers are not 'drug addicts in need of a nicotine fix' is that alternate methods of delivery of nicotine are not popular. If smokers crave nicotine why haven't they switched to these products en masse? The reason of course is that nicotine plays only a small part in the overall smoking experience.

The act of smoking is very much a sub conscious habit with nicotine providing the unique ability to heighten contrasting emotion in the user; nicotine aids serenity, and conversely it aids excitement. It is invariably the habitual process that causes a user to reach for a cigarette and the effects of nicotine on emotion that provides the satisfaction.

Most people would recognise that a couple of beers can aid relaxation and that if the alcohol content was reduced it would lead to greater consumption to achieve satisfaction. This is also true of cigarettes; as a sub conscious habit there is no sudden need for nicotine caused by reduction of the substance in the body, which is evidenced by a smokers ability to perform certain things for several hours without even the thought of a cigarette; however smoking a low nicotine cigarette will not aid relaxation any more than drinking a low alcohol beer. Likewise, as a comparison with alternate methods of delivery of nicotine, an 'alcohol patch' would never be an acceptable substitute to relaxing with a glass of lager.

The removal or reduction of nicotine in cigarettes would be counter productive because the element of satisfaction would not be achieved. It would therefore only ever lead to increased smoking and thus increased exposure to the other constituents of cigarette smoke: the exact opposite of the stated aims of tobacco control.

Less Hazardous Cigarettes

In 1979 the research towards Less Hazardous Cigarettes was effectively blocked and subsequent legislation that prevented tobacco companies from marketing cigarettes as being 'safer' removed any incentive for them to take this route independently; it would be of little use spending fortunes on development while being forbidden to tell anyone about it. Ironically, in choosing the path of abolition rather than a drive for safer cigarettes, tobacco control sealed their own fate. The knowledge of that makes it less surprising that this proposed legislation seeks to reverse those earlier decisions. Cigarettes that are "intrinsically less hazardous" being promoted on the open market would severely restrict the slide towards prohibition and thus ensure the continued existence and requirement of a tobacco control movement.

With the US Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Science publicly admitting that less hazardous cigarettes are feasible, it is clear that this would have been the chosen path back in 1979 for anyone remotely concerned for the health of the public. Dr. Gio Gori, who for many years led the research into less hazardous cigarettes and is now a fellow of the Health Policy Center in Maryland, has remained at the forefront of the battle to provide tobacco consumers with safer products. Indeed he is very much involved in the attempts to make the proposed legislation work for the protection of smokers. In his report 'Cigarette Regulation Will Not Go Up In Smoke' Dr. Gori emphasises the conclusions of the US Institute of Medicine that promoted the reintroduction of a strategy for harm reduction.

In a further report by Dr. Gori, Less Hazardous Smokes he argues the many reasons why prohibition and/or reductions in nicotine levels would not work by recognising the role of an inevitable black market and the need for products that are safer but still acceptable to the consumer. The most poignant part of his argument however is the following quote; - "having denied the development of LHC's for more than 20 years, the present implication of the Institute Of Medicine report is that a continuing opposition to LHC's would not be an ethically defensible, humane, or realistic public health policy."

The battle for the tobacco money is now refocusing as former allies and enemies shuffle for position. The hope, of course, is that the vision of acceptable consumer products of choice that are safer will become the way forward. The danger is that the greed within tobacco control will ensure a very different agenda; this is evident throughout the Institute of Medicine report that is biased entirely towards the protection and maintenance of the tobacco control movement (read more).

We can only second guess at the outcomes, but if history and human greed teaches us anything we can probably expect the following. The big players in the tobacco industry will of course benefit from markets on new products whilst lobbying the FDA for regulation to their own benefit. Tobacco control will argue that less hazardous does not mean "safe" and that they are only used to reduce the risks for "addicts unable to quit", whilst, perhaps, turning their backs on their former prohibitionist allies. Tobacco control will never set a standard for an acceptable level of safety because doing so would be their own downfall; we will therefore have a situation where the product can be made continually less hazardous without ever reaching the point of being "safe". The status quo suits almost everyone in positions of power in tobacco.

The opposition would come from the pharmaceutical industry who would be set to make billions from prohibition by the sale of highly profitable nicotine delivery devices, as well as psychotropic drugs that will become necessary to replace the well-known antidepressant effects of smoking. Those drugs and devices would be given out even more than they are now, perhaps free of charge – that is, at the expense of the collective - to smokers who would be forced to come to terms with a world deprived of tobacco through propaganda, punishment and intimidation.

In an ideal world the risks associated with smoking would be reduced to virtually nil as tobacco companies competed for market share of products they are allowed to promote with the full backing of the health authorities. In today's world of tobacco however, it is far more likely that the market will be controlled by the few and that their primary motive will still be anything but health. As much as acceptable, safer cigarettes are desirable, the knowledge of human behaviour suggests that the road towards them will be very different to the way it would have been had it been taken in 1979.