Covering Their Butts

Consider snus (Swedish-style smokeless tobacco), which under the new law will continue to carry a warning that it "is not a safe alternative to cigarettes." Although that's literally true, since nothing is 100 percent safe, there's no question that snus is far less hazardous than cigarettes. Yet the FDA is now empowered to prevent manufacturers from saying so, lest consumers make an informed decision to use smokeless tobacco rather than abstaining completely.

Such censorship would sacrifice the lives of current smokers for the sake of a tobacco-free future. Likewise the mandated reductions in nicotine content authorized by the law, which would be aimed at making cigarettes less attractive to nonsmokers.

The predictable result of reducing nicotine content is that people will smoke more to get the dose to which they are accustomed. They will take more puffs, inhale more deeply, hold the smoke longer or consume more cigarettes. Consequently, they will be exposed to higher levels of toxins and carcinogens.

The authors of the law are familiar with such compensatory behavior. It's the reason they decided to prohibit the use of misleading cigarette terms such as "light," "mild" and "low tar," which are based on yields delivered to smoking machines rather than people.

Yet the attempt to mandate less addictive cigarettes would be even more dangerous than the industry's practice of reducing nicotine and tar yields simultaneously, since it would increase the tar-to-nicotine ratio. Somehow we're supposed to believe that the government's involvement transforms a life-endangering fraud into a life-saving public health intervention.

Since FDA regulation is apt to make cigarettes more hazardous while impeding competition from safer alternatives, you can begin to see why mentioning it might give consumers the wrong impression. I won't tell them if you don't.