Smokers may turn to vaping if FDA regulates nicotine
May spark legal, lobbying war with tobacco industry
Everyone knows cigarettes can kill. Yet 36.5 million adults in the U.S. still smoke.
So after the labels and warnings, the restaurant bans and the grisly ad campaigns, the Food and Drug Administration is exploring a radical approach to helping people quit: regulating nicotine in cigarettes. If the FDA follows through — something far from certain — the shift could prompt some to quit or, at least, switch to relatively safer products like electronic cigarettes or vaping.
Peruz Nazli, who sat on a bench near New York's Central Park with cigarette butts around her feet, said she was delighted when she heard about the agency's plans.
"It'll be easier to quit," said the 59-year-old retail worker, who started when she was 14. "People look at us different."
The FDA's initiative may upend the $130 billion American tobacco industry. It's also likely to set off a ferocious lobbying and legal war in Washington, and push the cigarette industry to develop products that rely less on burning carcinogenic tobacco and more on delivering doses of nicotine through cleaner vapor. Smoking-related illnesses cost $300 billion a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Interviews with New York smokers suggested that few had taken notice of the proposal announced last week, but many said they would be more likely to switch to new delivery devices than to smoke diluted cigarette after diluted cigarette.
Some have already made the change.
Kevin Cleare, 36, who picked up his first cigarette from a junior-high buddy when he was 13, turned to vaping three years ago on his doctor's advice.
He quit smoking cigarettes for the first time three years ago but resumed for a few months amid a stressful breakup before turning to vaping. Now he's "never going back," and vaping looks like a long-term option.
"I'm so disgusted with cigarettes — the smell, the taste," he said. "This is a fair, reasonable compromise."
Over the past decades, U.S. regulators have banned smoking in many public places, sending smokers outside or into isolated corners. The rate of adult cigarette use has declined by a quarter since 1965 to only 15 percent, according to the CDC. Teens foresee life as a pariah and turn elsewhere, with daily smoking among high school seniors down to 5.5 percent in 2015.