Can we learn to love Big Tobacco?

Philip Morris International sells IQOS products that heat but do not burn tobacco.

This week, the UK government made a startling announcement about electronic cigarettes — startling, at least, to those who have absorbed the barrage of anti-vaping messaging here in the US.

The Brits said they would hand out free vaping starter kits to about 1 million people who smoke. The UK health ministry will also pay pregnant women to quit smoking cigarettes and switch to vapes.

These policies are driven by science. The evidence that vaping is much safer than smoking is overwhelming. What’s more, electronic cigarettes, along with other new-generation products that deliver nicotine without burning tobacco, help smokers to quit. They have potential life-saving benefits.

Yet here in the US, elected officials, the FDA, CDC and anti-tobacco groups have together managed to ban or restrict the sales of e-cigarettes, especially flavored vapes, while lethal combustible cigarettes remain widely available.

The thing is, the markets for these alternative nicotine products are increasingly driven by Philip Morris International, Altria and British American Tobacco, parent company of R.J. Reynolds–the global cigarette makers often derided as Big Tobacco. 

In a story at Medium, I take an in-depth look at the tobacco companies and their embrace of what’s called tobacco harm reduction — the idea that people who smoke but are unable or unwilling to quit should be offered safer ways to obtain a nicotine fix.

This is an important and mostly untold story. Here’s a link.

In the story, I argue that it’s time to rethink our attitudes towards the tobacco companies:

Neither the industry’s ignoble history nor its continued dependence on cigarettes justify efforts to block Big Tobacco’s efforts to sell less harmful products that could reduce the death and disease from smoking…The companies have shown with their deeds as well as their words that they want to persuade people to buy safer nicotine products

There’s lots more to say about this. I invite you to read my story here.