Re: Will the harm reduction message cause more people to use tobacco?

General

Will the harm reduction message cause more people to use tobacco?

Anonymous 06-01-2006, 1:22 PM
Young people are going to read this and say that it is ok to chew because it is safer. This word is very dangerious. Look at then problems the word light came into on smoking products. Nicotine is not healthy, the ingrediants in chew are not healthy, do people's lips, throat and gums just fall off for no reason? Stop justifing a habit and fess up to being an addict and quit.

Re: Will the harm reduction message cause more people to use tobacco?

admin 06-02-2006, 2:14 PM
If you are a smoker who managed to quit without any help, good for you. Some people aren't able to quit on their own and require some sort of aid, and that just might be smokeless tobacco. As our FAQ pages explain, smokeless tobacco is much much safer than smoking so if someone is having a hard time quitting smoking, switching over is a good step to take.

As far as young people taking up smokeless tobacco because someone says it is safer, you then have to ask, why do so many young people take up smoking when no one has anything good to say about it? Though we don't want anyone to start using tobacco who isn't already, if those people who would've become smokers became smokeless tobacco users instead, they would be the healthier for it.

Re: Will the harm reduction message cause more people to use tobacco?

Alfred Aung M.D. 06-02-2006, 3:49 PM
It sounds to me like you are referring to cancers of the Head and Neck. No cancer will cause body parts to "fall off''; it is usually the surgeon's knife that removes them in an attempt to get rid of the cancer. This is a good example demonstrating the extent of the misconceptions that are prevalent in the general population. These misconceptions are understandable given the flood of alarming images and rhetoric in the media from anti-tobacco groups (often despite the utter lack of evidence). When such associations seem intuitively logical (tobacco in the mouth and mouth cancer and oral disfigurement) it is tempting for the casual observer to make the connection. The urge to lay the blame becomes even more tempting. Yet the evidence has shown that 3/4 of all oral cancer in North America is due to smoking. This is the fact that continues to be hidden by the anti-tobacco zealots.

Re: Will the harm reduction message cause more people to use tobacco?

Carl V. Phillips 06-06-2006, 4:04 PM

The assertion that telling the truth about comparative risks will lead to more smokers, because smokeless tobacco is a "gateway" to smoking is a common one. Thank you for bringing this up and giving us a chance to answer it. We have added a new FAQ entry at http://www.tobaccoharmreduction.org/faq/nicotine.htm#44 that deals with this point. As for nicotine being unhealthy, we already address that in the FAQ.

The just fess up and quit attitude is exactly the one we seek to challenge. Why, exactly, should we insist that someone just quit (particularly someone who has tried and failed to quit), when we can offer them an alternative that is almost as good as quitting? It is extremely difficult to justify that as a policy, and it is clearly unethical to actively hide the information that there is an alternative.

Carl V Phillips

Re: Will the harm reduction message cause more people to use tobacco?

Anonymous 06-19-2006, 8:00 AM

Well, this promises to be a really nice forum and a melting point of ideas. I am exited about it.

Incontrovertible evidence point to tobacco smoking as the cause of major cancers including that of the head and neck. While it may seem logical to the lay person, the theory of biologic plausibility excludes chewed to bacco products from the etiology of some cancers in this region.

What the tobacco harm reduction advocates are doing is to get people who are already being exposed to smoking tobacco products to have alternatives while quitting is on the long term. This I believe this is scientifically and morally correct.

We cant continue to watch people to use what we are sure WILL harm them because we are afraid to encourage them to take up an alternative that MIGHT harm them.

I want to encourage all researchers and advocates of tobacco harm reduction to keep up the fight.

For non-commercial use contact webmaster