[stormcode]

It's a little surprising to me that no company has come out with a 'healthier cigarette'. They could claim to do the acid washing and all the things mentioned in the article in their advertising. Probably without actually saying their cigarettes are healthier but instead focusing on what other companies don't do (the acid wash) and the cancer causing carcinogens their competition's cigarettes contain that their own do not.

That would hook people who enjoy smoking but also enjoy not dying. Even if they are just deluding themselves. It would at least get me (former smoker) curious.

I've also always wondered if Big Tobbaco was working to cure cancer. It would make business sense. If we cured the types of cancer that smoking causes... A lot more people would probably smoke. (Obviously there are other issues like emphasima).

[version_five]

I think there's lots of regulatory and liability reasons why it's not feasible. Like they're grandfathered in to selling what they do, and nobody wants to entertain ideas of a safer thing, only prohibition.

Look at what happened with Juul. Maybe it's changed now, but they had a safer alternative and got shut down.

Also as a bit of trivia, iirc from the book "Barbarians at the gate", RJ Reynolds in the 80s was working on a safer cigarette under Ross Johnson that heated the tobacco instead of burning it. Once they got LBO'd and saddled up with debt, that got canned.

[maxbond]

> Look at what happened with Juul. Maybe it's changed now, but they had a safer alternative and got shut down.

1. They got in trouble for marketing to teenagers, not for making health claims.

2. They are a going concern, they haven't been shut down. At least not yet.

> On June 23, 2022, the FDA denied authorization for Juul to continue selling its products in the United States, and issued Marketing Denial Orders banning any further marketing or sale of the products effective immediately. That order was blocked by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. the next day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juul

Regardless, they are only one brand, there are many companies with nearly identical products.

3. I'm not an expert but from what I've read, it seems like the there's evidence they may be safer than smoking, but it seems like there isn't enough data to declare that conclusively. Additionally, if it makes tobacco consumption not accessible to a younger audience, it seems like that is going to cancel out the benefit (on a societal scale).

So, I think it's premature to declare them safer.

[joker_minmax]

American Spirit advertises themselves as tobacco without extra nicotine or other additives added. Not the same thing, but they're...trying.

And no, they're probably not trying to cure cancer in the slightest. My grandpa was studying in the 1960s and 1970s, and big tobacco tried to fight the laboratory he worked for. The important thing he taught me before he died, from his research, was that nicotine itself interferes with your blood platelets. It's unhealthy beyond the particulates and fumes that we think of as cancerous, because nicotine is fundamentally bad for the blood. That means vaping, dip, everything affects your cardiovascular system.

[pessimizer]

Natural deadly nightshade is no better than deadly nightshade with additives.

[nerdponx]

Tobacco leaves a lot more room between "unharmed" and "dead", so the analogy doesn't quite work.

[TedDoesntTalk]

What is that supposed to mean?

[rablackburn]

They have, check out IQOS. Its been huge in Japan (and other parts of asia?) for years now. It heats the cigarette but doesnt actually burn. Same as the “dry herb vapes” that get used for cannabis.

Theyve started making moves to roll out it further internationally - big tobacco has been pushing “smoke free” nicotine products for a few years now.

[jiggawatts]

That’s essentially vaping: a safer form of consuming nicotine without the smoke or other coincidental pollutants.

[FollowingTheDao]

Vaping is in no way quantitively safer than smoking tobacco. The amount of heavy metals you get in a cigarettes is just incredible. Plus you get more nicotine, which makes you more addicted.

[pessimizer]

Vaping is in every quantitative way safer than smoking tobacco, and this is agreed on by everyone with any knowledge about the subject, including people crusading against vaping.

> just incredible

Statistical reasoning here.

> Plus you get more nicotine

Nicotine wasn't giving people cancer or COPD.

What makes vaping dangerous is that the government refuses to regulate it, with the support of vaping companies and antismoking activists, the latter insisting that it would be absolutely impossible and absurd to inspect vape cartridges and set guidelines for (as a critical example) oils used to adulterate THC vapes which killed a few people and ruined a few lungs. The antismoking activists say the only way to regulate the safety of vape cartridges is to ban them, because otherwise they'd be allowing a dangerous thing.

A really murderous position to have, and a real government should ban all danger ideology. The kind of people whose grandparents thought it was a great idea to poison industrial alcohol during prohibition.

[varjag]

Addiction is an issue separate from carcinogens.

[sally_glance]

Correct, but the definition of "safer" is where we start to wobble - clinical long-term studies are expensive.

[pessimizer]

> It's a little surprising to me that no company has come out with a 'healthier cigarette'.

David Nutt was and is a big proponent of this. Instead of the moralistic hysteria about cigarettes and alcohol, there should be a big effort to create cigarettes that don't give you cancer, and alcohol that doesn't ruin your coordination, decisionmaking skills, and your liver.

That being said, we already have healthier alternatives to cigarettes in Swedish Snus and vaping. The nonprofits that won against the cigarette companies, now desperately looking for another thing to justify their salaries, attacked the alternatives, often in tacit cooperation with the cigarette companies that were also trying to suppress cigarette alternatives (until they were better positioned in those markets.)

Any healthier alternative would be attacked in proportion to how much healthier it was. The healthier nature of it would be characterized as making it too easy, or encouraging addiction. It's like when right-wingers were campaigning against the HPV vaccine because it made sex less risky.

[amelius]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10123402/

> In recent years, tobacco companies have been investing in or acquiring pharmaceutical companies, which produce medications for a myriad of diseases, including tobacco-induced conditions and diseases, and emergency medicine.

[stormcode]

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing this.

[sn41]

Well, that's one way to hedge.

[LeoPanthera]

> It's a little surprising to me that no company has come out with a 'healthier cigarette'

Isn't that a vape?

[basisword]

The experience of smoking and vaping are dramatically different. Tastes different, feels different, there’s no easy way of measuring intake and you can do it in your house so it becomes something you do more regularly as opposed to something you take a 5min break outside for every hour. its so different that after a few weeks vaping I just quit smoking cold turkey instead. Nicotine’s addictive but the other aspects of smoking and the habit itself are much more addictive (ant least for me) and vaping doesn’t replace those.

[stormcode]

In a way, yes. I vape instead of smoking. But it isn't the same. It's a different way to get nicotine, like dipping. And vaping was, AFAIK, more of a grass roots thing than a Big Tobbaco thing, at least at first. It felt like Big Tobbaco was caught kinda unawares when vaping became very popular and ended up buying a bunch of vape companies.

[hammock]

>no company has come out with a 'healthier cigarette'

It’s a tough sell, especially since smoke is now banned pretty much everywhere indoors and outdoors.

There is no shortage of “healthier nicotine devices” though: gum, vapes, Zyn, etc.

[krustyburger]

*emphysema