MANY will doubt tobacco industry claims that it is sharpening its science to evaluate “healthier cigarettes”. But that’s what will happen if the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gets the job of regulating the industry, as a Senate vote on the issue was expected to decide this week (see “Could smoking ever get safer?”). Then the health agency will be placed in the bizarre situation of deciding whether to approve new versions of products that have killed millions.
Radicals will argue that the only way of preventing tobacco-related death and disease is to ban cigarettes, not encourage more…
