In a piece published by Bloomberg, Joe Nocera has described as ‘truly maddening’ the fact that most countries refuse to acknowledge the reduced-harm potential of Swedish snus.
Nocera starts his piece with the ‘astonishing’ fact that the number of daily smokers in Sweden is five percent, when the medical journal, The Lancet, defines as ‘tobacco-free’ a country with a smoking rate of lower than five percent.
He traces the massive switch that has seen Swedish smokers turn to snus and the almost-total risk-reduction that that has implied. When smokers were offered a nicotine fix without the carcinogens that came with smoking those smokers embraced that solution, he said.
What was truly maddening was that despite the powerful evidence provided by Sweden, most countries refused to acknowledge it.
‘Most tobacco-control advocates in the West continue to push the idea that quitting all forms of tobacco and nicotine is the safest policy – which is true, though it is a classic example of the perfect being the enemy of the good,’ he said.
‘And they continue to harbor a deep suspicion of alternative nicotine products.
‘Their understandable animus towards Big Tobacco has clouded their ability to see that replacing one kind of tobacco product (combustible cigarettes) with another (snus) can save lives.’
Nocera’s piece is at: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-08/sweden-figured-out-how-to-stop-people-from-smoking.