A Habit That Continues to Kill America : Dr. Kessler proposes a bold attack on nicotine--the legal drug that hooks young people
The foolproof remedy for the destructive consequences of nicotine addiction is never to smoke in the first place, and the optimum time for practicing such avoidance is in the youthful years. Why? Because studies show that most smokers start by the age of 19; odds are that a boy or girl who stay away from cigarettes until then won’t be tempted to take up smoking in later years.
Youngsters’ marked vulnerability to tobacco and the resulting health woes fairly put nicotine addiction in the category of “a pediatric disease,” says Dr. David A. Kessler, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. Many childhood diseases can be prevented by inoculations that stimulate the body’s immune system. For now, the best immunity against the health risks of nicotine addiction is to use education and example to keep kids away from tobacco.
That doesn’t always work, however, especially with teen-agers who may be attracted to smoking precisely because adults tell them it’s dangerous. Recent years, in fact, have seen a rise in smoking among the young. This is one of the things that have prompted the FDA to ponder a kind of technical fix to the problem.
Wisely, with the nation’s failed 14-year experiment with Prohibition in mind, the FDA rejects the notion of trying to ban cigarettes outright. Instead it is considering a rule to require cigarette manufacturers to gradually reduce the nicotine content of their products. In time, nicotine could be brought down to non-addictive levels. Since people continue to smoke precisely because they have become addicted to the nicotine in tobacco, removing the source of addiction presumably would take away most of smoking’s appeal. Confirmed smokers could be weaned from cigarettes slowly. More to the point, taking nicotine out of tobacco might well keep teen-agers’ experimentation with cigarettes brief and unrewarding.
Would a Republican Congress that is wary of federal regulation of private business support a government demand that cigarette makers reduce nicotine levels? Smoking or secondhand smoke contributes directly to more than 400,000 premature deaths a year in this country--including, so recent studies indicate, many cases of sudden infant death syndrome. This makes the issue above all a huge public health problem, costing the nation billions of dollars annually. Seen in that light, it ought to be clear even to the most committed foe of regulation that government intervention is not an option but a necessity.
