NEW YORK ¨C In 2006, I interviewed Matthew Myers, the president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, about reduced-harm tobacco products.
The idea that people might one day be able to get a nicotine fix without ingesting all the carcinogens derived from burning tobacco was still new. Tobacco companies were pouring millions into research labs trying to make such products a reality, but the only thing on the market was snus, the pouch tobacco product made by Swedish Match AB. Electronic cigarettes, first developed in China in 2003, hadn¡¯t yet migrated to the United States.
Myers co-founded his organization in 1996. Ever since, he¡¯s been one of the two or three most important people in the tobacco-control community, someone whose opinion matters a great deal. That¡¯s why I wanted to learn his view about the prospect that it might soon be possible to consume addictive nicotine without dying of cigarette smoke. He was wholeheartedly in favor. ¡°The challenge to me is not to eliminate smoking, but the death and disease of smoking,¡± he said.
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