On 2017 May 07, Clive Bates commented:

Has it occurred to the authors that the value (or 'USP') of new and emerging tobacco or nicotine product like e-cigarettes or heated tobacco products might be that they really are very much "better and safer" than smoking?

No serious scientist doubts this. The question is by how much, with many credible sources suggesting 95% or greater reduced risk (see, for example, the Royal College of Physicians' 2016 report Nicotine without smoke: tobacco harm reduction).

However, the authors' conclusion appears to be inviting regulators to mislead the public about the risks of these products in order to reduce demand for them. There are many problems with such an approach:

• It is ethically improper for the state to intervene in this way to manipulate adult choices by withholding or distorting information (see: Kozlowski LT, 2016).<br>
• The unintended, but wholly foreseeable, effect of trying to prevent people using safer alternatives to cigarettes is not that they quit smoking, but that they carry on smoking - and are harmed as a result of regulatory misinformation.
• How would regulators (or the authors) take responsibility and assume liability for harms arising from deceptive communications that adversely influence behaviour?
• Companies have a right to make true and non-misleading statements about their products. Under what principle should they be prevented from doing that?

The appropriate approach for a regulator is to truthfully inform smokers of the relative risks of different nicotine products. That would allow consumers to make informed choices that could prevent disease, save life and improve welfare. It is not to enforce abstinence from the use of the legal drug nicotine, which in itself, and without delivery through tobacco smoke, poses low risks to health.

Once again, tobacco control academics proceed from results to conclusions and on to policy prescription without any remotely adequate policy evaluation framework or any apparent awareness of the limitations of their analysis.

On 2017 May 07, Clive Bates commented:

Has it occurred to the authors that the value (or 'USP') of new and emerging tobacco or nicotine product like e-cigarettes or heated tobacco products might be that they really are very much "better and safer" than smoking?

No serious scientist doubts this. The question is by how much, with many credible sources suggesting 95% or greater reduced risk (see, for example, the Royal College of Physicians' 2016 report Nicotine without smoke: tobacco harm reduction).

However, the authors' conclusion appears to be inviting regulators to mislead the public about the risks of these products in order to reduce demand for them. There are many problems with such an approach:

• It is ethically improper for the state to intervene in this way to manipulate adult choices by withholding or distorting information (see: Kozlowski LT, 2016).<br>
• The unintended, but wholly foreseeable, effect of trying to prevent people using safer alternatives to cigarettes is not that they quit smoking, but that they carry on smoking - and are harmed as a result of regulatory misinformation.
• How would regulators (or the authors) take responsibility and assume liability for harms arising from deceptive communications that adversely influence behaviour?
• Companies have a right to make true and non-misleading statements about their products. Under what principle should they be prevented from doing that?

The appropriate approach for a regulator is to truthfully inform smokers of the relative risks of different nicotine products. That would allow consumers to make informed choices that could prevent disease, save life and improve welfare. It is not to enforce abstinence from the use of the legal drug nicotine, which in itself, and without delivery through tobacco smoke, poses low risks to health.

Once again, tobacco control academics proceed from results to conclusions and on to policy prescription without any remotely adequate policy evaluation framework or any apparent awareness of the limitations of their analysis.