Tobacco control without a maximum nicotine level in products is a smokescreen

The title of Agrawal’s editorial on Khan’s report on tobacco control policy that challenged the feasibility of the government’s ambition to reduce smoking prevalence to below 5% by 2030 rightly states that tobacco control must focus on children.1 But the subtitle emphasising that “lack of political will threatens progress” deserves comment.Political inertia is certainly a problem, as with alcohol and junk food. But some of Khan’s 15 recommendations are naive and others fly in the face of evidence. Raising the legal age of sale of tobacco products is a prerequisite, but its effectiveness will be limited as the ban will be hardly implemented, not to account for the marketing tricks of the industry and for sales on the internet. The “active promotion of vaping as a quit smoking tool”1 denies that electronic cigarettes are a Trojan horse of the tobacco industry, fooling experts with the harm reduction mantra as previously…
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