E cigarettes, NRT, and Distraction

The Wall Street Journal reports that tobacco giant Reynolds American International is involved in talks to purchase Niconovum the Swedish manufacturer of Nicotine Replacement Therapy products. NRT is of course a popular method for tobacco cessation. At first blush this seems a truly strange union. Is RJR trying to sabotage tobacco cessation efforts? Or is this simply revealing what we have known all along about tobacco marketing? It is nicotine dependent.

"We are, then in the business of selling nicotine, an addictive drug effective in the relief of stress mechanisms." RJR July 17, 1963. Bates 1802.05

And if we suspect Niconovum’s/RJR’s nicotine products why then should we not be suspicious of others that profit from the sale of nicotine like Pfizer et al. Is it because we question RJR’s intent and not the drug companies that have made a huge business out of cessation products?

E cigarettes are being promoted as smoking cessation devices by everyone except the E cigarette companies. That classification would give the FDA more authority to regulate the devices, the nicotine. More than anecdotal evidence is required to show that nicotine delivery in this fashion is harmless or effective.

The best evidence that E cigarettes pose no competitive threat is demonstrated by a lack of opposition from the tobacco cartel. If tobacco companies thought nicotine vapor threatened their profit, we’d know because they would swoop down and buy the tiny businesses that are producing these vaporizers. And they may yet just as RJR is eyeballing NRT manufacturer Niconovum. In the meanwhile big tobacco is content to let E cigarettes play the spoiler for the myth of a safe cigarette. The poor will never get their fix as cheaply as the traditional cigarette and the few who can afford to switch to taking their nicotine in a vapor will reaffirm nicotine addiction as a normal part of the day. But at the end of the day as long as it contains nicotine big tobacco has nothing to lose.

Spit and other tobacco products

Any doubt that the future of the tobacco cartel as a dealer in the drug nicotine took a hit when Phillip Morris purchased the South African operations of Swedish Match.  Swedish Match is the maker of the Swedish snus, the oral tobacco that is being held up as an alternative to smoking.  This follows in recent years Altria’s  acquisition of  U S Smokeless Tobacco, the maker of Skoal and Copenhagen, and RJ Reynolds purchase of Conwood, the second largest spit tobacco producer.  Worse yet, these tobacco products are ingested into the body without expelling the detritus.

These multi national corporate shifts are the result of growing clean air legislation around the world and an alarming trend in both the public health and the tobacco industry to pursue a harm reduction motif.  This is in addition to claiming spit tobacco as an aid to smoking cessation despite SAMSHA research showing that 88% of smokers who tried smokeless tobacco were still smoking 6 months later.

Renowned advocate Dr. Heinz Ginzel has equated the harm reduction movement as akin to negotiating with Hitler on the beaches of Normandy to see how the tobacco companies can stay in business.  Given the recent successes of the tobacco cartel in the U.S. Congress it's perhaps more like negotiating with the industry while paddling away from Dunkirk.

Heres a nice little interview  with Dr. Joel Nitzkin, chair of the Tobacco Control Task Force of the American Association of Public Health Physicians at Democracy Now.