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“We have every reason to believe the hazard posed by electronic cigarettes would be much lower than 1% of that posed by (tobacco) cigarettes. The testing guidelines in the current tobacco act (circulating through Congress) would represent a ban on electronic cigarettes, (yet) if we get all tobacco smokers to switch from regular cigarettes (to electronic cigarettes), we would eventually reduce the US death toll from more than 400,000 a year to less than 4,000, maybe as low as 400.”

* Joel Niztkin, MD, MPH, DPA, FACPM, Chair, Tobacco Control Task Force, American
Association of Public Health Physicians

“The vast majority of the harm caused by smoking is from the method of nicotine delivery rather than from the nicotine itself. There would be a parallel problem if people got caffeine from smoking tea leaves rather than making an infusion of these leaves in hot water. It is clear to far-sighted researchers that there are huge gains to be made from dealing with the delivery system.”

* David Sweanor, BA, JD, Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa

“Nicotine is probably the second most used drug after caffeine.” Amazingly, no one thinks of caffeine as a harmful drug. Nor should they. “The possible dangers of nicotine are dwarfed by the dangers associated with tobacco. Pure nicotine has not been associated with the risk of cancer.”

* The International Harm Reduction Association

“The standard for lower-risk products for use by current smokers should be the hazard posed by (tobacco) cigarettes, not a pharmaceutical safety standard.”

* Joel Niztkin, MD, MPH, DPA, FACPM, Chair, Tobacco Control Task Force, American Association of Public Health Physicians

“Telling smokers they may not use electronic cigarettes until they’re approved by the FDA is like telling a floundering swimmer not to climb aboard a raft because it might have a leak.”

* Jacob Sullum, senior editor at Reason magazine, nationally syndicated columnist
and author of the critically-acclaimed book For Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of Public Health (Free Press, 1998).

“If the FDA would act within its own historical context it should recognize that when faced with an epidemic it should be focusing on the greatest possible reduction in deaths rather than looking at alternatives to cigarettes as if cigarettes themselves did not exist. Had the FDA acted like this in 1938 we’d likely still not have antibiotics, and had they acted this way during the various vaccination campaigns smallpox would likely still be around.”

* David Sweanor, BA, JD, Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa

“Huge disparities and inconsistencies exist between the tobacco and nicotine product regulations. Combustible tobacco products are the least regulated and nicotine products are the most highly regulated. Given the huge differences in the proven or likely hazards of these products to individual and public health, this represents
a substantial and illogical regulatory imbalance. The regulation of nicotine products needs to be radically overhauled to encourage the use of less harmful products.”

* Royal College of Physicians

“If one could entertain the unrealistic assumption that all tobacco users would switch to clean nicotine tomorrow, we would see an immediate effect (for the better) on cardiovascular disorders, and a delayed effect on respiratory and cancer disease.”

* The International Harm Reduction Association

“Smokefree Pennsylvania strongly urges the FDA to consider the enormous public health disaster the agency would create by banning electronic cigarettes. Denying 45 million (tobacco) cigarette smokers access to this exponentially less hazardous alternative would result in millions of preventable deaths among smokers and millions of nonsmokers continuing to be exposed to tobacco smoke pollution. It is absurd to even contemplate protecting the deadliest nicotine products (tobacco cigarettes) from market competition by these less hazardous nicotine products.”

* William T. Godshall, MPH, Executive Director, Smokefree Pennsylvania

“It would wrong to characterize those on a moral quest as being public health advocates, and this is true whether looking at abstinence-only campaigns on sex, on alcohol, on illicit drugs or on nicotine. Campaigns based on making better people rather than making people better are driven by moral concerns rather than public health concerns.”

* David Sweanor, BA, JD, Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa

“There are no grounds to suspect appreciable long-term adverse effects on health from the long-term use of NRT (nicotine replacement therapy). The use of NRT is many orders of magnitude safer than (tobacco) smoking.”

“Although stopping tobacco use is the ideal outcome for individual and public health, this is difficult to achieve. Harm reduction approaches in public health are sometimes criticized for condoning the activity they are trying to make safer. The Royal College of Physicians takes no position on the morality of smoking. However, since smoking (tobacco) is dangerous to health, and is hard to give up, the College wants to see a range of effective methods to smokers quit or to reduce the harm they sustain.”

* Royal College of Physicians

“Oddly, though there has been much focus on issues such as where the product could be used, how it was taxed, limits on advertising, controls on places of sale, packaging requirements … there has been little to nothing being done about the product itself.”

“If we recognize that the needs of smokers can be met in a way that does not necessarily result in the untimely death of roughly half of long term users maybe we can move society conceptually to the point that nicotine delivery can go through the same metamorphosis as we’ve seen with auto safety, telecommunications, sanitation, pharmaceuticals, food preparation standards, alcoholic beverages and a myriad of other goods and services. The market could be transformed through a virtuous circle of increasing consumer awareness and ever-less-hazardous alternatives to cigarettes.”

* David Sweanor, BA, JD, Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa