[jessriedel]

Nicotine is vastly safer than tobacco. You've substituted an addiction that unambiguously kills millions of people to one that, if it is harmful, is sufficiently less so that we haven't managed to measure the effect clearly.

By all means, if you dislike being addicted to something because it interferes with life, because it's expensive, or because you're worried it will eventually be found to have modest health harms, then quit. But moving from smoking to gum gets you 90% of the benefits.