According to AFP, the United States is ready to publish a new regulation forcing cigarette manufacturers to lower nicotine to non-addictive levels, a move that would deliver a significant blow to the tobacco industry. If effective, the strategy might save millions of lives by the end of the century, paving the way for a future in which cigarettes are not to blame for addiction and severe diseases.
Nicotine is the ‘feel good’ molecule that entices millions of people to use tobacco products. Thousands of additional chemicals in tobacco and tobacco smoke are linked to diseases such as cancer, heart disease, stroke, lung disease, diabetes, and others. Despite the fact that smoking is less widespread in the United States than in Europe and has been dropping for years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that it is still responsible for 480,000 fatalities in the country each year (CDC).
According to CDC data, 13.7% of all US adults now smoke cigarettes. For years, US officials have been debating how to reduce the nicotine content in cigarettes. Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb stated in 2017 that he wanted to move forward on the issue and funded a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2018 that found ‘reduced-nicotine cigarettes versus standard-nicotine cigarettes reduced nicotine exposure and dependence, as well as the number of cigarettes smoked,’ according to AFP.
The FDA determined that enacting the policy in 2020 would prevent eight million premature deaths from tobacco by 2100. According to the CDC, the total economic cost of smoking is more than $300 billion per year, including more than $225 billion in direct medical care for adults and more than $156 billion in lost productivity due to premature death and exposure to secondhand smoke.
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