In 2006, I interviewed Matthew Myers, the president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, about reduced-harm tobacco products.
The idea that people might one day be able to get a nicotine fix without ingesting all the carcinogens derived from burning tobacco was still new. Tobacco companies were pouring millions into research labs trying to make such products a reality, but the only thing on the market was snus, the pouch tobacco product made by Swedish Match AB. Electronic cigarettes, first developed in China in 2003, hadn't yet migrated to the United States.
Myers co-founded his organization in 1996. Ever since, he's been one of the two or three most important people in the tobacco-control community, someone whose opinion matters a great deal. That's why I wanted to learn his view about the prospect that it might soon be possible to consume addictive nicotine without dying of cigarette smoke. He was wholeheartedly in favor. "The challenge to me is not to eliminate smoking, but the death and disease of smoking," he said.