The Use of Alternative Nicotine Delivery Systems: A Viable Strategy to Quit Smoking
The use of Combustible cigarettes, despite robust efforts at individual and policy levels, has remained the most challenging task before the public health officials so far. Nicotine, in combustible cigarettes, is a cause of concern for the officials as traditionally it is the nicotine that is considered to be addictive in cigarettes, the monstrous effect of smoking combustible cigarettes lies in the byproducts of burning tobacco.
The use of tobacco, over the period, has only increased and not decreased. The number of deaths, due to smoking cigarettes is numbered in millions over one year across the globe. Although nicotine is harmful in smoking cigarettes, the major cause of concern has remained to be the byproducts of burning tobacco. Tar, reportedly has been the most serious cause of concern for public health officials and has been among the major causes of cancer in patients. Nicotine, too, is harmful to the blood vessels since it causes the blood vessels to contract. It is the nicotine that is known and believed to be the cause of addiction to cigarettes.
For the delivery of nicotine, combustion is not necessary. Although the consumption of nicotine, through the use of combustible cigarettes, makes its delivery fast and its pulmonary absorption rapid, there are non-combustible ways developed to reduce or eliminate the absorption of other harmful components like tar that are the byproduct of burning tobacco.
The amount of nicotine that is being taken in the form of cigarettes, too, is not benign and is harmful, yet it is far less harmful than the other components of cigarettes, therefore, it is advisable that if nicotine is delivered in non-combusting forms. The harms associated with nicotine and the use of tobacco-related products may be viewed as a chain of series, in which self-restraint from all forms of tobacco will be considered as the least harmful, the use of combusted tobacco products would be the most harmful, and the use of non-combusted nicotine products lay somewhere in the middle. The aim of the policies that are being designed concerning the control and prevention of smoking should be that the population may be moved down this chain from the most harmful to the least harmful.
Unfortunately, cigarettes are highly addictive, engineered over decades to maximize the development and maintenance of chronic, dependent smoking. It is estimated that only 7.4% of the population in the US is successfully able to quit smoking altogether. It is pertinent to mention here that this number of smokers quitting smoking is extremely small as a huge 68% of the people are interested in quitting smoking while 55.4% of the people make a quitting attempt.
Since the late 80s and till much later, nicotine has been considered as the major component in the addictive properties of cigarettes. This belief about nicotine being the major reason for addiction to tobacco smoking has led to devising strategies that involved the use of products that were nicotine-rich only and were free from other harmful components of smoking tobacco. This understanding of nicotine has led to the development of Alternative Nicotine Delivery Systems (ANDS). ANDS refers to the non-combustible nicotine or tobacco products designed to deliver fewer toxicants than cigarettes. ANDS include products like snus, nicotine replacement therapy products, and, in recent years, e-cigarettes. Understanding nicotine as the driving force in cigarette addiction has also provided a rationale for potential tobacco policies such as reducing the nicotine content of combusted tobacco products to render the product less addictive.
It must, however, be understood that smoking is associated with more than the consumption of nicotine. Other factors contribute to the addiction to nicotine. Other factors such as the sensory stimuli associated with smoking and the act of smoking itself become leading factors and driving forces for the use of smoking. The smoker gets so habitual to smoking that it becomes an essential part of the smoker’s life. Smoking becomes such an essential part of their lives because they associate smoking with different situations, feelings, and emotions that may be both positive and negative.
The use of tobacco is also embedded in the cultural norms in some areas. To divert people’s minds from smoking and to make them quit smoking, in many instances the authorities devised such policies where they tried to interfere with the cultural norms in many parts of the world and modified them to control the use of tobacco. However, managing people the way they use nicotine — a constituent of tobacco that is widely considered to be the reason for people getting addicted to smoking. Devising policies that manage people’s addiction to nicotine can vastly impact the control of the use of tobacco. Currently, some 40 million Americans and over one billion smokers worldwide are using a product developed and aggressively marketed over decades, deeply embedded into the environments in which smokers live, and integrated into their personal histories, making behavioral change extremely difficult.
