What if the federal
government told you that cars are as dangerous as motorcycles? Well, you would be living – and dying – in TobaccoWorld. Read my commentary that appeared in the
Washington Examiner (here) and is
reprinted below.
________________________________
Motorcycles
are more dangerous than cars. We know this because a government agency, the
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, routinely provides data that
confirms it.
For
example, the NHSTA
reports
there were 0.85 auto-related deaths for every 100 million miles Americans drove
in 2014. By contrast, the death rate for motorcycles was 22.96 for every 100
million miles, making motorcycles 27 times deadlier than cars.
What
if the government ignored this difference in risk and assumed the motorcycle
death rate applied to all vehicles? In other words, what if all vehicle
manufacturers had to be governed by motorcycle regulations and what if
insurance premiums for car owners were pegged at the much higher rates for
motorcycles?
The
effect of such irrationality would be intolerable, with cars priced out of
reach, companies put out of business and consumers left without choice.
Policymakers would never inflict such pain on the American driving public – at
least, not on purpose.
But
that's just the sort of irrationality being imposed on the nation’s consumers
of smoke-free tobacco products, with tragic consequences. Federal agencies
routinely conflate the risks of using smoke-free tobacco products with the
risks of smoking, despite decades of
scientific studies demonstrating that smoke-free products are vastly
safer
than cigarettes.
Smokeless
tobacco products are required by the Food and Drug Administration to carry
demonstrably inaccurate and misleading safety
warnings.
Companies that attempt to challenge those messages are held to the unnecessary
and financially crippling standard of proving that their products would have
virtually no health impact on the population.
Even
when a company did provide irrefutable
proof
to change the warning labels in 2011, the FDA took four years to deny its citizen’s
petition.
Another company’s formal
application
from 2014 remains in FDA limbo.
The
FDA ignores extensive evidence from federal surveys of the role e-cigarettes
are playing in helping smokers to quit—including some 2.5
million successes—while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
withholds evidence that smokeless
tobacco is safer.
The
Affordable Care Act permits health insurers to charge higher premiums for any
recreational nicotine use, not just smoking. Most life insurance
companies also fail to recognize established risk differences, as they charge
higher premiums for users of all nicotine products, even medicines.
No
one confuses motorcycles with cars, just as no one, other than government
officials, confuses cigarettes with e-cigarettes or cans of moist snuff. The
risk differential between combustible and smoke-free tobacco products is proven
and profound. It’s time to tell the public the truth, and to regulate
accordingly.
