The focus of the two-day conference at the Williamsburg Inn was “harm reduction,” a controversial idea that not all tobacco products are as deadly as commonly believed and that products can be developed that are far less risky.
NIH State-of-the-Science Conference on Tobacco Use:
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Natcher Conference Center – NIH
June 12-14, 2006
Prevention, Cessation and Control
Natcher Conference Center – NIH
June 12-14, 2006
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Tobacco critics speak out
Conference opens discussion between the industry and its foes
Conference opens discussion between the industry and its foes
May 10, 2006
BY JOHN REID BLACKWELL
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
BY JOHN REID BLACKWELL
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Thomas Eissenberg admitted he was reticent. So did Scott Ballin.
Eissenberg, an associate professor of psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University, and Ballin, a tobacco- and health-policy consultant, are no cheerleaders for the tobacco industry. They are critics.
Yet they took a bold step this week that many tobacco-control advocates would not even consider. They spoke at a conference in Williamsburg hosted by the Tobacco Merchants Association, a trade group for tobacco makers, distributors and retailers.
For Ballin and Eissenberg, it was an attempt to foster discussion between the industry and its foes on issues such as government regulation of tobacco products. An effort to find common ground, they said, seems more urgent as tobacco companies introduce a growing list of products. Consumers could see some of those products as safer alternatives to cigarettes. Tobacco foes want independent scientists to investigate whether they are safer.
The focus of the two-day conference at the Williamsburg Inn was “harm reduction,” a controversial idea that not all tobacco products are as deadly as commonly believed and that products can be developed that are far less risky.
Eissenberg, who has studied the potential health effects of novel products such as Philip Morris USA’s Accord smoking device, attended the meeting to appeal for more industry-financed studies of the health effects of such products and to propose a process by which products could be evaluated by scientists.
“I’m glad they are willing to listen,” he said of the industry representatives at the meeting. Yet the decision to speak made him nervous for two reasons. “There’s the nervousness about the reaction here,” he said. “And the nervousness about the reaction in the public-health community that I was here.”
Eissenberg already has made his views known. In an editorial published in the journal Tobacco Control in January, he argued for “rigorous and objective” industry-financed scientific evaluation of “potentially reduced-exposure” tobacco products. While many researchers are unwilling to accept money from the tobacco industry, Eissenberg argued that new products need to be evaluated and that industry funding can play a role as long as the research is public and not manipulated.
In recent years, tobacco companies have introduced several smokeless tobacco products marketed as alternatives to cigarettes, and smoking devices or cigarette filters that purport to reduce some harmful constituents in smoke.
Cigarette makers Philip Morris USA and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. recently announced plans to test market their own smokeless tobacco brands. The companies have made no health claims about the products, but they are intended as alternatives for smokers. Philip Morris USA is building a research center in downtown Richmond partly to study ways of reducing the harm caused by tobacco products.
Ballin, who has lobbied Congress to give the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco products, urged industry representatives at the meeting to accept regulation as a way of moving the debate forward. “The current status quo is unacceptable,” he said.
Harm reduction will work, Ballin said, only if the industry does not manipulate science for profit and if health advocates are willing to concede that some tobacco products are less risky than others.
“Harm reduction is not about lobbyists, lawyers and public relations spin doctors,” he said. “Harm reduction is about science and using that science responsibly to lower risks caused by tobacco.”
Some of the tobacco industry representatives at the meeting had a message of their own: Regulation is fine as long as the goal is not to regulate the industry out of existence.
Jim Starkey, chairman of the Tobacco Merchants Association, suggested that tobacco-control advocates and industry representatives should work together to develop a framework for regulation.
“I think the industry is willing to accept regulation, but only if it is written by the stakeholders and then jointly submitted to Congress,” rather than being formulated by Congress, said Starkey, who recently retired as an executive at the Richmond-based tobacco leaf merchant Universal Corp.
Contact staff writer John Reid Blackwell at jblackwell@timesdispatch.com or (804) 775-8123.
