Pennsylvania Dental Association's Health Advice Decidedly Unhealthy, Says Renowned Tobacco Expert

Main Category: Smoking / Quit Smoking
Article Date: 02 Sep 2006 - 0:00 PDT

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The following is a statement by Dr. Brad Rodu, oral pathologist and professor of medicine at the University of Louisville and an endowed chair in tobacco harm reduction research:

"The Pennsylvania Dental Association (PDA) and its spokesman, dentist David Tecosky, turned a blind eye to scientific facts and the medical credo 'First, do no harm' with their August 29 press release on smokeless tobacco ('Tobacco: Smokeless Does Not Equal Harmless').

"The PDA was wrong to imply that smokeless tobacco is just as dangerous as cigarettes. In fact, smokeless does not cause lung cancer, heart disease or emphysema. A 2004 National Cancer Institute-funded study concluded that '[smokeless] products pose a substantially lower risk to the user than do conventional cigarettes. This finding raises ethical questions concerning whether it is inappropriate and misleading for government officials or public health experts to characterize [smokeless] products as comparably dangerous with cigarette smoking.'

"The PDA was wrong to state that 'smokeless tobacco consumers actually have a higher risk of developing oral cancer than cigarette smokers.' The exact opposite is true: smokeless users have less than one-half the oral cancer risk of smokers (American Journal of the Medical Sciences). And a recent study from the American Cancer Society (in the journal Cancer Causes and Control) showed no oral cancer risk among smokeless users.

"The PDA was wrong to compare nicotine absorption levels in smokeless products and cigarettes. That exercise is irrelevant, since nicotine isn't the culprit in smokers' deaths. It's the smoke that causes the bulk of tobacco-related disease and death. The fact is that nicotine can be used as safely as caffeine, another widely consumed addictive drug.

"That is why the growing consensus among health professionals is that smokers should switch (permanently, if necessary) to smoke-free sources of nicotine, including smokeless tobacco products.

"The PDA's statements are irresponsible and dangerous because they could lead smokeless users to switch to cigarettes. The PDA is continuing a tobacco prohibitionist tradition of denying smokers lifesaving information about safer tobacco products. They do this in the supposed cause of protecting children.

"Tobacco initiation by young people should be stopped in its tracks, but the relative safety of smokeless isn't a children's issue. The 8 million Americans who will die from smoking-related illness in the next 20 years are not children today; they are adults, 35 years and older. Preventing youth access to tobacco is vitally important, but that effort should never be used as a smokescreen to condemn smoking parents and grandparents to premature death.

"If the Pennsylvania Dental Association intends to uphold its mission - 'to serve the public, improve their health, [and] promote the art and science of dentistry' -- it should immediately retract its ill-advised press release and acknowledge the facts about a very real and valuable tobacco harm reduction strategy, namely, saving smokers' lives by switching them to significantly less harmful smokeless tobacco products."

For more information on tobacco harm reduction, visit http://www.SmokersOnly.org.

Dr. Brad Rodu
http://www.SmokersOnly.org