• Electronic nicotine delivery devices
• Co-substance use
• Fire safe cigarettes
• Nicotine
• Prevention

Big Tobacco has got to be pretty pleased at the media storm over duelling letters sent by public health scientists and practitioners to the Director-General of the WHO concerning tobacco harm reduction and e-cigarettes. The first of these letters, with 53 signatories, argued in favour of including harm reduction strategies in WHO's approach to tobacco control and proposed a set of 10 guiding principles for formulating policy around nicotine products.1 In response, a second letter was sent with 129 signatories, which emphasised the involvement of tobacco companies in the e-cigarette market and argued against exempting e-cigarettes from any provisions of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).2

As signers of the first and second letters, respectively, who found ourselves pressed to choose among positions with which each of us did not entirely agree, we are dismayed at the eagerness with which some on both sides have fanned the flames of division—and baffled at how the e-cigarette issue has consumed attention that should be directed to the real killer products: conventional cigarettes, the manufacturers of which continue business as usual (while buying up controlling interests in popular e-cigarette companies).

Harm reduction has long been a source of conflict in the tobacco control field, following the lasting damage from the tobacco industry's cynical ‘lights’ and ‘low tar’ cigarette scams.3 Unlike strategies that focus solely on reducing smoking uptake and increasing quitting, encouraging smokers to switch to less …