Are pharmaceutical nicotine products less harmful than ST?
They may be a bit less or a bit more harmful. Either way, the difference is almost certainly very small, so if someone can use one of them as a substitute for smoking, it really does not matter which. Some nicotine prohibitionists pretend to support harm reduction, but say that smokers should only use pharmaceutical products as a reduced-harm alternative (knowing that available products are unsatisfying and expensive). Other anti-tobacco advocates simply claim that pharmaceutical products are less harmful than smokeless tobacco. They are misleading you. We say this not because their claim is wrong, but because there is no evidence one way or another, and they are lying when they imply there is. Researchers simply have not had the opportunity to study the health of long-term users of NRTs, like they have long-term ST users (or smokers). In contrast to the evidence that any risks from ST are small, claims about risks from NRTs are speculation. Indeed, the best reason to believe that the
