If you eliminated all of the forty most prominent carcinogens in cigarette smoke, you would only reduce the risk of cancer by one or two percent. It’s become abundantly clear over the years that the problem is products of combustion, saying if you dried, shredded and rolled up cabbage or broccoli or even carrots, and people smoked as much of that stuff as they did cigarettes and inhaled it as deeply into their lungs at that very hot temperature, they would get the same risk of heart disease, cancer and other diseases. So this business of making cigarette smoke safer by changing the ingredients has got no scientific basis whatever, and it’s another giveaway to cigarette companies.
– Dr. Joel Nitzkin, Chair of the Tobacco Control Task Force of the American Association of Public Health Physicians.