Regulation of nicotine products criticised
Smokers should be able to switch to safer nicotine products which deliver
nicotine as quickly and conveniently as cigarettes, a Lancet opinion
piece published online last week argues (5 October 2007).
John Britton, chairman of the Tobacco Advisory Group of the Royal College
of Physicians, and Richard Edwards of the University of Otago, New Zealand,
argue that smokers addicted to nicotine have a right to choose from a
range of safe nicotine products, as well as accurate and unbiased information
to guide that choice.
“The anomalies that inhibit market competition to develop new and
better, rapid delivery, user-friendly medicinal nicotine products (eg,
inhaled
nicotine) that can compete with cigarettes for long-term use need to
be removed; and there needs to be more widespread promotion and sale
of existing or new lower-hazard products,” they say.
The scant regulation of tobacco products is in great disproportion to
their hazard, the authors argue. “By contrast,” they point
out, “medicinal nicotine products, which are the safest source
of nicotine, are generally subject to the highest levels of regulation
since they are generally classified as drugs.”
Nicotine products
should be regulated rationally in relation to one another and their
level of hazard, in a system designed to reduce the overall harm caused
by
nicotine dependence and use, they say.
Publication of the article coincides with the launch of a report
by the Tobacco Advisory Group of the Royal College of Physicians.
The report concludes that the development of new, more effective, more
acceptable
and user-friendly medicinal nicotine substitutes for smoking needs
to be considered. |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal
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