United States to drastically reduce nicotine content in cigarettes to reduce premature deaths: Reports
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The United States is set to announce a new policy requiring cigarette producers to reduce nicotine to non-addictive levels, a move that would deal a powerful blow to the tobacco industry, as reported by AFP on Tuesday.
If successful, the policy could save millions of lives by the end of the century, and shape a future where cigarettes are no longer responsible for addiction and debilitating diseases.
Nicotine is the "feel good" chemical that hooks millions to tobacco products. Thousands of other chemicals contained in tobacco and its smoke are responsible for diseases such as cancer, heart disease, stroke, lung diseases, diabetes and more.
Though smoking is less prevalent in the United States than in Europe and has been declining for years, it is still responsible for 480,000 deaths a year in the country, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Some 13.7 per cent of all US adults are current cigarette smokers, according to CDC data.
Reducing the nicotine content of cigarettes has been a topic under discussion for years among US authorities.
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Former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb announced in 2017 that he wanted to move forward on the issue and funded a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2018 that found "reduced-nicotine cigarettes versus standard-nicotine cigarettes reduced nicotine exposure and dependence and the number of cigarettes smoked," as reported by AFP.
The FDA found that if the policy were enacted in 2020, it would prevent eight million premature deaths from tobacco by 2100.
The total economic cost of smoking is more than $300 billion a year, according to the CDC, including more than $225 billion in direct medical care for adults, and more than $156 billion in lost productivity due to premature death and exposure to secondhand smoke.
(with inputs from agencies)
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