Nicotine / THR - Statements from Experts

The following experts are speaking out in support of adult use of Tobacco Harm Reduction (THR) products to help people quit smoking and to prevent relapse so smoking.

Kenneth Warner

File:Kenneth Warner.jpg

University of Michigan

Less Dangerous
Kenneth Warner, a University of Michigan scholar, says harm from tobacco is far greater than from vaping. A founding board member of the Truth Initiative — the nonprofit public-health organization committed to ending tobacco use — Warner has also been the president of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco, the senior scientific editor of the 25th-anniversary Surgeon General’s report on smoking and health, and the dean of the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health. Warner and a colleague, David Mendez, built a computer model that tracks the U.S. adult population’s smoking status and smoking-related deaths. When they ran data about vaping through the model, they found that under all but the very worst-case assumptions, the benefits of e-cigarettes, which can help smokers quit, exceed their costs in terms of lives saved.

Warner says the campaigns against e-cigarettes are a mistake. The harm from tobacco is far greater than from vaping: “Michael Bloomberg did some great things for public health, but he is way off base on this.”

He is the author of: How to Think—Not Feel—about Tobacco Harm Reduction

Steven Schroeder

File:Steven Schroeder.jpg

E-cigarette Summit 2020

Steven A. Schroeder, MD was president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation from 1990 to 2002 and led the philanthropy’s $700 million tobacco-control campaign. He formerly chaired the American Legacy Foundation (now Truth Initiative), which named the Schroeder Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies in his honor. He is the Professor of Health at UCSF. Dr. Warner says much of the energy and money aimed at opposing e-cigarettes has come at the expense of curbing the use of smoked tobacco, which remains the leading cause of preventable death in the United States.

“On the face of it, it’s ludicrous that we would ban e-cigarettes, but permit the sale of tobacco and cannabis. It’s really smart politics but dubious public health.” Some of the people who smoke that could benefit from e-cigarettes "are the downtrodden. The homeless, the H.I.V. positive, substance abusers, prisoners, who have no constituency politically.” said Dr. Warner when interviewed about bans on vapor products.

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The Truth Initiative, too, once embraced harm reduction. Its former board chairman, Tom Miller, Iowa’s long-serving attorney general, still argues that e-cigarettes are a “means to saving millions of lives.” Cheryl Healton, its former CEO, and David Abrams, formerly executive director of the Schroeder National Institute of Tobacco Research and Policy Studies, which is housed at the Truth Initiative, are harm-reduction advocates. So is Steven Schroeder, for whom the institute is named. Found here

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