Carl V. Phillips
Edmonton Journal
Thursday - November 10 - 2005
I was pleased to see the mention of my work on reducing the impact of cigarettes in the November 8 edition of The Journal (“Tobacco company funds U of A prof”).
Unfortunately, that article failed to make clear my main message, which is that smoking is terribly harmful, but we have had limited success in getting people to quit, and so should consider new approaches.
The headline was particularly unfortunate, suggesting that I "endorse" the use of smokeless tobacco, completely missing the point that I only encourage the use of smokeless tobacco as a substitute for cigarettes.
Given the limited progress in reducing smoking rates over the last few decades, continuing to just tell smokers "quit or die" is not a viable strategy. The most promising alternative is a "harm reduction" strategy, encouraging smokers who will not or cannot quit using nicotine to switch to an alternative source, such as smokeless tobacco.
Neither I nor anyone else contends that smokeless tobacco or any other source of nicotine is harmless (as I was misquoted as saying in the article), but smokeless tobacco presents very little or no risk of the many life threatening diseases caused by smoking. Few smokers realize this, and so are not aware of the huge health benefits they could get from switching.
Many people think that smokeless tobacco is a major cause of oral cancer, but the leading cause of that disease, by far, is cigarettes. Smokeless tobacco might cause a small risk for oral cancer, but someone switching from cigarettes to smokeless tobacco will dramatically reduce his risk of oral cancer, to say nothing of lung diseases and other effects of smoking.
The common message that smokeless tobacco is "not a safe alternative" to smoking makes people think that the risks are similar, but they are actually so different that switching is almost as good as quitting entirely.