Here's a outfit who has a smokeless "nicotine" tobacco product or candy tobacco, that they are marketing. B&W is behind this one. Definitly a concerted effort to provide "tobacco" as the nicotine delivery system to avoid FDA regulation.
mad2
Copyright 2001 The Hartford Courant Company
THE HARTFORD COURANT
May 21, 2001 Monday, 7 SPORTS FINAL
SECTION: MAIN; Pg. A1
LENGTH: 859 words
HEADLINE: CIGALETTS: A 'SAFER' NICOTINE?;
CRITICS DERIDE PRODUCT AS 'CANDY'
BYLINE: By WILLIAM HATHAWAY; Courant Staff Writer
BODY:
What do you call pressed tobacco that is coated with mint and eucalyptus flavoring and packs the same nicotine punch as a cigarette?
Relief for harried smokers suffering from nicotine fits on flights and in restaurants, say officials of the tobacco company that wants to test market the product this summer. "Please, please, don't call it a candy," said Sara Troy Machir, a spokeswoman for Star Scientific in Chester, Va., developers of a modified tobacco product they call cigaletts. "It's 60 percent pressed tobacco."
Some people aren't swallowing that.
"It is indeed a candy, designed to lure children into beginning a lifetime of addiction," said Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut's attorney general.
Welcome to a new era of modified tobacco products that have reduced levels of some toxins and are marketed not to appeal to a Joe Camel sense of cool but as a socially acceptable way to satiate an addict's cravings.
The product -- call it hard tobacco or a pellet, says Machir -- is the size of a Tic Tac and will be marketed, with tobacco giant Brown & Williamson, in packs of 20 for $3 under the name Ariva.
Machir acknowledges the product is harmful, should be regulated and that prospective customers -- tobacco addicts -- would be better off not using it at all.
But "like it or not," Machir said, "there are millions of people who cannot, or will not, stop smoking."
Critics say products like Ariva simply candy-coat a dangerous killer as part of an insidious ploy by companies such as Brown & Williamson to prevent smokers from kicking their bad habit and hook a new generation of nicotine addicts.
"It's a very dangerous gimmick from a company that has proved itself completely devious and cunning in targeting children and deceiving the public," Blumenthal said.
A growing number of public health officials, however, are giving a cautious endorsement to so-called safer tobacco products such as Ariva and Eclipse, a "smokeless" cigarette developed by RJ Reynolds Tobacco Co. that seeks to eliminate harmful byproducts created by the burning tobacco.
They say these products, although not yet proved to be less harmful, have the potential to reduce the harm caused by tobacco, which kills about 400,000 Americans annually -- more than AIDs, alcohol, cocaine, heroin, homicide, suicide, car crashes and fires combined.
"I think most people in public health have shifted from opposition to support, provided it is stringently regulated," said Dr. Stuart Bondurant, dean emeritus at North Carolina School of Medicine.
Bondurant recently presided over a task force for the Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences to assess whether offering safer tobacco products to smokers was scientifically justified.
The task force ran up against some of the same moral and ethical arguments that have shaped the debate over providing drug addicts with clean needles to minimize the spread of disease -- a philosophy known as harm reduction, Bondurant said.
"Is it ethical to deny addicts products that would be less harmful to them because it might be misused by others?" he asked. Or "is it right for government to approve any byproduct of tobacco, which has between 20 to 30 known carcinogens, maybe more?"
As a matter of public health policy, the committee concentrated on a single, critical question, Bondurant said. Will the number of people who would be helped by having a safer alternative to cigarettes exceed the number of people harmed by having access to a new potentially dangerous and addictive product?
The Institute of Medicine answered with a cautious yes -- but only if such products are strictly regulated and tested.
Machir stresses the company makes no health claims for its product and says government regulation would help spur studies that would lead to testing of alternative tobacco products. Ariva packages will state "there is no such thing as a safe tobacco product," she said.
Ariva also will not be sold to anyone under 18, Machir added. The makers also make no claim that it will help people quit smoking. If they did, Ariva would come under the same oversight as nicotine gum and patches, which undergo government scrutiny because they are marketed as smoking cessation products.
Blumenthal said recent announcements by tobacco companies such as Star and conglomerate Philip Morris are not noble gestures -- but simply a way to seek protection against lawsuits.
Blumenthal added that his office is investigating whether Star Scientific and Brown & Williamson may be violating tobacco settlement agreements by introducing Ariva.
Tobacco products are not regulated, although there is a chance that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration could consider Ariva to be a food, and therefore subject to regulation, Blumenthal said.
Bondurant, however, said that it is clear that tobacco companies view so-called safer tobacco products as a potential market and will introduce more such products in the future.
"The fact is these products are here, they are going to be here, and how to manage their presence among us is no longer a hypothetical question," Bondurant said.
LOAD-DATE: May 21, 2001 |
