For decades, Big Tobacco diminished how much it harmed its customers. After all, cigarettes kill about half of lifelong smokers, so the industry needs to hide the deadly truth.
Big Tobacco’s lies were exposed each time but now the tobacco industry has gone even further. It’s not just downplaying the risks. It’s claiming that nicotine actually has benefits.
Yes, you heard that right. The CEO of Philip Morris International’s U.S. business told Axios this year that nicotine is “misunderstood” and provides “cognitive benefits.”
This comment is part of Philip Morris’s charm offensive for Zyn, the oral nicotine pouches that are now the tip of this tobacco company’s marketing spear.
The fact is that nicotine pouches can deliver more nicotine than cigarettes. And because they’re so discreet, nicotine pouches are often used all day, whether that’s at work or in class.
It’s also a fact that nicotine is harmful, no matter how it enters the body.
The American Heart Association states: “Nicotine is a dangerous and highly addictive chemical. It can cause an increase in blood pressure, heart rate, flow of blood to the heart and a narrowing of the arteries (vessels that carry blood). Nicotine may also contribute to the hardening of the arterial walls, which in turn, may lead to a heart attack.”
Nicotine, which was used as an insecticide until it was banned by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has many other negative health impacts, “including impaired immunologic response, increased risk of kidney disease, adverse reproductive effects in both males and females and predisposition to diabetes,” according to Gina Moore, PharmD, MBA, senior associate dean for the Skaggs School of Pharmacy at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.
Nicotine is “misunderstood”? Let’s reject the latest Big Tobacco lie.
As the old saying goes, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.