To the Editor:
Contrary to Bennett S. LeBow's statement regarding his new Vector cigarette, there is no reason to imagine that using a zero-nicotine cigarette will help smokers quit (Economics, Jan. 16). Would inhaling fine sugar promote abstinence in someone addicted to cocaine? The "double-whammy", to use his own term, will more likely double smokers' travails than reduce them.
When committed (that is, addicted) smokers switch to a low-nicotine product, the result is that they change their smoking behavior to get more of the drug, nicotine. They inhale more deeply and more frequently. Smokers who try that with the Vector cigarette will remain unsatisfied, while exposing themselves to even higher doses of the many known and unknown tobacco carcinogens.
Further, the assertion that the absence of nicotine will lead to a reduced exposure to nitrosamines is irrelevant, even if true: there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of carcinogens in tobacco smoke. There is no reason to think that reducing the level of one would have any impact on the manifold devastating health effects of smoking.
It is indeed very difficult to quit smoking, but there are many effective and approved methodologies that help. Smokers should ask their doctors, not the tobacco industry, for guidance.
