Tobacco Use and Health

• Cigarette smoking is a leading preventable cause of death. Quitting cigarette smoking significantly decreases the risk for lung cancer, heart disease, chronic bronchitis, emphysema and other serious diseases and conditions.
• Cigarette smokers who want to quit should do so, and all smokers should have access to information about the benefits of quitting and effective cessation products that may help them.
• No tobacco product has been shown to be safe or risk-free, but the type of tobacco product used, how long it is used, and the frequency and amount of use significantly affect the risk of serious diseases.
• Nicotine in tobacco products is addictive.

• Long-term studies (epidemiology) have established that smoking is the highest-risk form of tobacco use, and that smokeless tobacco products, including moist snuff and snus, present significantly less risk of serious diseases, including oral cancer, than smoking cigarettes.
• We believe that vapor products and other noncombustible tobacco products may present less risk to adult tobacco consumers than smoking cigarettes. Although these products have not been used by consumers for a sufficient period of time to develop definitive scientific conclusions about their level of risk reduction, there is a growing body of scientific evidence that these products may present less risk than smoking. While some studies report that there may be health risks associated with these products, those risks appear to be lower than the risks of smoking cigarettes.
• Nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) products approved for smoking cessation present less risk than smoking. We believe that similar noncombustible tobacco products also present less risk than smoking.
• Governments, public health officials and tobacco manufacturers share a responsibility to provide accurate, useful information to adult tobacco consumers about the differing levels of risk between different types of tobacco and nicotine products.