Can smokeless tobacco products satiate a smoker’s nicotine craving while simultaneously serving as a smoking cessation aid? And if so, is it conceivable that such a transition might result in net harm, paradoxical as that seems? These are the pivotal questions that Matthew Carpenter, an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Department of Medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina, aims to answer with his new year-long study on 1,250 smokers nationwide. In his upcoming research, funded primarily through the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Carpenter will provide half of the study participants with Camel Snus while the other half will not be given anything.
The goal is to determine whether snus improves smoking reduction and cessation. “The study will provide strong, clear and objective evidence to guide clinical and regulatory decision-making for this controversial area of tobacco control,” said Dr. Carpenter.
Results of a previous study in February 2010, also led by Dr. Carpenter, demonstrated that Star Scientific Inc.’s Ariva and Stonewell tobacco lozenges decreased smoking by 40 percent during a two-week study period and were effective at curbing smoking withdrawal symptoms and cravings. Despite the positive findings, Matt Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, is pessimistic about the benefits of these tobacco harm reduction products, stating, “If a smokeless product reduces the risk of disease, but results in more people using tobacco, it could result in more deaths, not fewer.”
“It is unsurprising but still disappointing that rather than acknowledge the desperate need for more effective cessation methods, Mr. Myers expresses concern — even though there is no evidentiary support for this bizarre distortion of the known epidemiology,” counters ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross.
Featured in an article for the Winston-Salem Journal, Dr. Carpenter said about the potential benefits of clean nicotine delivery systems: “A number of short-term lab studies of toxicant exposure suggest smokeless tobacco could offer reduced harm as compared to conventional cigarettes.”
In the same article, ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan is quoted as she explains why GlaxoSmithKline, a pharmaceutical company that sells nicotine-replacement therapy products, requested that the FDA take R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.’s dissolvable tobacco products out of test markets. “GSK is clearly trying to protect its own market for dissolvable tobacco,” she observes. “From a business perspective, this is understandable. But from a purely public-health point of view, if products like the orbs can help more smokers quit more effectively than other cessation products, then let them stay on the market.”