"HARM REDUCTION" IS URGED TO QUIT SMOKING

Two University of Alabama at Birmingham professors are urging a "harm
reduction" program similar to a Swedish approach to help cut down on smoking.

In a recent press release Brad Rodu, DDS, UAB School of Medicine and Philip
Cole, MD, Dr.PH, UAB Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health
say smokers should switch to using smokeless tobacco products.

They cite a report issued by the prestigious British Royal College of
Physicians, which acknowledged smokeless tobacco products are safer than
cigarettes. "The report states, as a way of using nicotine, the consumption
of non-combustible (smokeless) tobacco is on the order of 10-1,000 times
less hazardous than smoking, depending on the product," said Rodu and Cole.
They say some tobacco control advocates here in the US wish to deny smokers
this life-saving information."

Doctors Rodu and Cole argue that some are prohibitionists when it comes to
tobacco and urge complete abstinence. But, they say, "Inveterate smokers
are irreversibly addicted to nicotine and can not quit" and 7,200
Alabamians die each year from diseases caused by smoking. "Prohibitionists
control the American anti-smoking campaign, and they are not inclined to
help inveterate smokers," say the UAB doctors who agree eliminating
children's access to tobacco is important but "the 10 million Americans who
will die from their habit over the next two decades are not now children.
They are adults."

"Prohibitionists offer these inveterate smokers only behavior therapy and
the temporary use of expensive replacement products (e.g. gum and patches)
that provide an insufficient dose of nicotine to allow smokers to quit
permanently. This tired quit-or-die tactic has a long record of
overwhelming failure," say the reseaerchers.

They say their research shows that, "By this measure (lung cancer rates)
the campaign (to stop smoking) has made little progress in helping the
nation's 20 million inveterate smokers to quit. They (prohibitionists)
vigorously oppose telling smokers about other effective sources of nicotine
delivery such as smokeless tobacco, which is 98 percent safer than smoking.
They ignore the evidence from Sweden where, over the past century, men have
smoked less and used more smokeless tobacco than in any other Western
country. The result: Swedish men have the lowest rates of lung cancer -
indeed, of all smoking-related deaths - in the developed world. Smoking
carries twice the risk for mouth cancer as smokeless use, so Swedish men
even have low rates of this disease as well."

"Our research indicates that if all American smokers had instead used
smokeless tobacco, the annual tobacco-related mortality in this country
would be only two percent of the current figures. That's saving about
430,000 lives per year across the country and 7,000 in Alabama," they said.
The report has stirred controversy among groups who say complete abstinence
is the only way to stop smoking.

About Wayne Ruple

Cleburne News editor Wayne Ruple is a native of Ashville. Before coming to
Heflin, he worked for three years as a computer systems manager in
Birmingham. Ruple has worked for The Sand Mountain Reporter in Albertville,
and was the editor of The Independent in Robertsdale. He has also worked
for the Shades Valley Sun, the St. Clair News-Aegis and The Daily Home in
Talladega.