Nicotine is bad for your health, but it also depends on the way (and not just the quantity) with which it is taken. There would in fact be, and the scientific community is beginning to find evidence of this thesis, more or less harmful ways of assuming the substance contained in traditional cigarettes filled with tobacco. Even if the long-term consequences are not yet known, it is therefore possible to say that some products are "modified risk". This came from the keynote speech at the Food and Drug Law Institute's (FDLI) annual conference, delivered via video conference by Mitchell Zeller, director of the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Tobacco Products.
"The FDA is trying to be honest in its messages," explained Zeller, whose agency approved the marketing of Iqos, the Philip Morris system which heats tobacco without burning it and Snus, chewable tobacco, as "modified risk products". “We know – continued the director – that there is a 'continuum' in the risk, and that there are more or less harmful ways of releasing nicotine into the body”. During the event, the need to inform the public more about the characteristics of the different devices that release nicotine often emerged. “We know that it is not nicotine that kills, but there is a lot of disinformation – observed for example David Sweanor, of the University of Ottawa -. There are countries that have managed to change their market, consumers know how to change their habits if they have the right information".
Precisely on this theme, a study has recently been published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, with Sweanor among the authors. Analyzing the sales data of traditional cigarettes and so-called "heat not burn" devices (such as Iqos) in Japan it has emerged that cigarettes have dropped by 38% between 2011 and 2019, but with an acceleration after 2016, while that of tobacco in general fell by 19%. "The acceleration - concludes the study - corresponds to the introduction on the market and the growth in sales of devices that heat tobacco". The hypothesis that the alternatives could help to abandon traditional cigarettes has also been welcomed by the British authorities. Public Health England, for example, has also included the 'shift' from cigarettes to non-combustible products in its messages 'Stoptober' campaign, which every year urges to stop for at least a month.
