The FDA panel, which will meet later this week, will hear from advocates and protesters of the dissolvable tobacco products.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has recently scrutinized new “dissolvable” tobacco products marketed by tobacco companies. These products come in a variety of flavours, and are marketed as “tobacco that dissolves in your mouth and provides a smoke-free, spit-free alternative to cigarettes, moist snuff and snus“.
The FDA panel, which will meet later this week, will hear from advocates and protesters of the dissolvable tobacco products. Advocates of the product claim that it has helped them to quit or step-down from smoking, “I had tried with the traditional methods, and found them completely unhelpful: the patch and the gum and the lozenge.” Protesters, however, fear that the dissolvable “nicotine candies” will get young people hooked on the flavour of tobacco, eventually moving on to cigarette smoking.
“The one extreme are the folks who believe that no product containing nicotine or tobacco should be permitted on the market unless it has undergone review,” Keithe Warner, a health economist at the University of Michigan says. “The other extreme is to say that any product that superficially appears to be significantly less risky than cigarette smoking should be permitted on the market to allow consumers to have a less hazardous option.”
What do you think about dissolvable nicotine? Could this product potentially help people quit smoking?
2 Responses
I find it interesting that proponents of dissolveable tobacco have argued that this product has helped them to quit smoking, as the makers of these products, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co, have stated that this is not the intended use of their product. In fact, these products are meant to provide adult smokers with a means to enjoy tobacco in areas where cigarette smoking is prohibited. Therefore, I view these products as potentially enabling the habits of current smokers; they seem to provide a dangerous loophole to the current smoking legislation that is meant to not only protect the public from harmful second-hand smoke, but also discourage current smokers by limiting their opportunities to “light up.”
The potential risk that these dissolveable tobacco products pose to our youth should also not be taken too lightly. Sampling these products, which look dangerously similar to Tic-Tacs or M&Ms – could lead children down a path of addiction that would inevitably to cigarette smoking.
With all this controversy it will be interesting to see how these FDA talks play out.
CPhAQuitAdmin Reply:
January 24th, 2012 at 9:23 am
Hi juliadenomme,
I agree with your statement that this is a dangeous product that could potentially lead children and young adults to start smoking. However, do you think this product may offer an opportunity to those who are current smokers to limit the exposure of second hand smoke to others?
I have to wonder if there will be any regulation on the amount of nicotine present in the dissolvable tobacco products. If this were the case, would it be similar to the nicotine lozenge that is currently available on the market?