@SenBlumenthal @SenJeffMerkley
Why are you fighting harder against smoke-free nicotine products than against combustible cigarettes, the product that actually kills more than 8 million people globally every single year and over 480,000 Americans annually? 🚬💀🪦
Cigarettes are the deadliest legal consumer product ever sold. Smoking has caused more preventable death than wars, plane crashes, natural disasters, HIV/AIDS, alcohol, illegal drugs, car accidents, and many infectious diseases combined over the past century.
Combustible cigarettes cause cancer, heart disease, COPD, stroke, vascular disease, and countless other smoking-related illnesses that destroy families and cut lives short every single day.
Yet instead of focusing their energy on eliminating combustible smoking, some lawmakers are demanding the FDA remove smoke-free alternatives that millions of adults use to move away from cigarettes.
I guess 480,000 American deaths every year means nothing to them.
The product that burns tobacco and creates toxic smoke remains fully available everywhere, while alternatives that do not involve combustion are treated like the greater threat.
No responsible person wants youth using nicotine products. But adults who smoke matter too. Their lives matter. Their health matters. Their families matter.
When you remove alternatives from the market, many people go back to smoking. That is the reality.
Public health policy should focus on reducing death and disease caused by combustible cigarettes, not eliminating lower-risk alternatives that many adults rely on to stay away from smoking.