Tobacco, Nicotine, and Alternative Product Regulation in the 21st Century

For decades there has been a global health epidemic of tobacco use, the majority of which is caused by the deadly toxic, combustible cigarette. With the recent acquisition of regulatory authority over tobacco by the US Food and Drug Administration the discussions on how a spectrum of products should be regulated has taken on a new focus--- one that will be driven by science. Today, there is an expanding number of newer tobacco, nicotine, and alternative products which have varying degrees of risks but which have the potential for moving smokers away from the use of cigarettes to using lower risk alternative. It is no longer feasible (and really never was) to make the claim that all products containing tobacco are equally dangerous. The risk of a product depends on how those products are grown, cured, processed, manufactured and most importantly used. This talk will focus on how science will shape how all of these products should be regulated in the future including bringing all of the products under the same regulatory umbrella and regulating the products based on risk and on intended use. It will also focus on how these significantly lower risk products can reduce the global tobacco epidemic.