FDA Can Save Lives if it Wanted to By Targeting Tobacco Addiction

SMOKESCREEN –

Jan. 25, 2021 – The Biden administration has a chance to embrace this agenda after Trump’s FDA abandoned it. Ending Covid-19 is their top priority, and rightfully so. But the new administration will hopefully recognize that combating cigarette addiction and Covid-19 go hand-in-hand and both should be pillars of their overall public health agenda. Cigarette addiction continues to take a serious toll on millions of Americans, causing about one in five deaths in the United States, or more than 480,000 deaths annually, and costs $300 billion in health care expenses each year. In New York alone, smoking kills 28,000 adults annually and costs the state more than $17 billion in health-related costs and lost productivity.

I lead a dynamic biotechnology company based right here in Western New York that has a solution to help the FDA achieve its goal of solving cigarette addiction, which remains one of the world’s largest preventable health crises.

While the country has made progress in the battle against cigarette addiction over the last decades, now is the time to enact policies that will allow us to take that fight to the next level. Specifically, requiring cigarettes to be minimally or non-addictive would put us in a strong position to help end this epidemic.