Nicotine is largely harmless, but cigarettes are lethal. It’s not surprising that Britain’s Royal College of Physicians wants to curb — kerb? — smoking, but it is surprising that they’re willing to promote safer forms of tobacco:
This week, the Marlboro cigarette empire Altria bought the USA’s biggest maker of chewing tobacco, UST, for $10.4bn (£5.8bn). The deal confirms the tobacco industry’s interest in diversifying out of cigarettes into “smokeless” products. UST makes Skoal — tea bag-like pouches of tobacco that are held between the cheek and gum, allowing nicotine to be absorbed.British American Tobacco is also investing heavily in the search for safer ways to deliver nicotine. BAT paid £2bn to take control of the Swedish company ST, which makes Snus — also pouches of tobacco for sucking.
Evidence suggests that sucking a pouch of tobacco is 90 per cent less harmful than inhaling cigarette smoke. But the products are banned in the EU on the grounds that they are, er, carcinogenic, and that to replace one carcinogen with another, albeit one less lethal, is unwise.
“Nicotine is the closest we are likely to get to the perfect drug”:
Its effects are diverse; it stimulates, calms and enhances feelings of pleasure, but has few side effects. Its great advantage over other drugs is that its effects are mild. It is pleasurable only within a narrow range of concentrations in the blood. That is what makes it safe.Only the instrument of its delivery — the cigarette — is lethal. A device that delivers nicotine quickly, efficiently and safely could earn a fortune. But regulations on the sale of medicinal nicotine are so tight that they keep prices high — seven days’ worth of nicotine patches costs £17 — and the development of innovative products low.
Professor John Britton, consultant respiratory physician and chief author of the RCP report, said: “The ideal product would be a nicotine inhaler like an asthma inhaler, that delivered a hit of nicotine as close as possible to the experience of smoking a cigarette.
“But the companies [makers of nicotine gum and patches] don’t want to do it and the regulatory restrictions make it difficult to get it on to the market. There is no competition. That is why we need a Nicotine Regulatory Authority.”
The anomaly in the existing law is glaring. Tobacco companies are permitted to sell nicotine to the public in the form of (lethal) cigarettes, yet it is illegal to sell alternative nicotine products without a licence.