Tobacco Harm Reduction Author Urges Opposition to Tobacco Bill

In a mass email William Godshall, executive director of SmokeFree Penyslvannia and co-author of Tobacco Harm Reduction: An Alternative Strategy for Inveterate Smokers, has urged opposition to a Tobacco Bill set to enter the Senate next Tuesday. 

According to tobacco harm reduction experts like Bill Godshall the bill is likely to lead to an effective ban on alternatives to cigarettes such as electronic cigarettes and snus, a form of tobacco placed under the lip.

These alternatives are opposed by public health groups like Tobacco Free Kids, which fear they could encourage nicotine use. However, advocates maintain they are a safer option for smokers who cannot or will not quit smoking.

The email contained a copy of a letter that the director had sent to the committee members overseeing the bill. In the letter, Godshall argued that the bill was flawed because it:

Godshall went on to argue that the bill would not, as Tobacco Free Kids has argued, protect children because it prohibits the FDA from banning the sale of tobacco to high school seniors and from banning tobacco sales at stores accessible to children.

The bill is supported by America's largest tobacco company, Philip Morris, which, according to Tobacco.org, has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on research on products likely to be approved under the new FDA legislation.

If the bill does lead to a defacto ban on alternative cigarettes, and creates hardship for competing tobacco companies whose cigarettes do not pass muster under the new regulatory regime, the biggest winners under the new legislation could be Philip Morris's shareholders.