Respondents’ perceptions of the future importance of tobacco harm reduction
| Question | Respondent category (number of respondents)* | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All (1473) | Researcher/scientists (199) | Activists/advocates (338) | p Value† | National/international (117) | State/local (963) | p Value† | |
| *Sample sizes include all individuals who selected an answer that placed them in the relevant respondent category. Due to attrition and exclusion of “unsure” and “rather not answer” responses, the number of cases included in each calculation may be smaller. | |||||||
| †χ2 test calculated as a 3×2 table, including the neutral responses (not shown above). | |||||||
| ‡Entire question reads: “Ten years from now, how do you think tobacco harm reduction will compare to the following methods to decrease tobacco related health risks?” | |||||||
| §Percentages do not add to 100% because neutral responses have not been included in the table. | |||||||
| ¶Entire question reads: “Please indicate your level of agreement or disagreement with the following statements regarding potential negative consequences of harm reduction. (a) Harm reduction will reduce the rate of smoking cessation. (b) Harm reduction will cause many children who would not have tried smoking to experiment with new nicotine containing products. (c) New products will have unintended negative side effects on the health of the products’ users (e.g. by introducing a new toxin).” | |||||||
| THR versus prevention 10 years from now‡ (% answering that THR will have a larger/smaller role§) | 12.1/67.4 | 7.4/73.0 | 13.3/71.4 | 0.081 | 13.1/57.9 | 12.0/68.1 | 0.068 |
| THR versus cessation 10 years from now‡ (% answering that THR will have a larger/smaller role§) | 26.0/38.8 | 20.0/46.8 | 24.0/41.5 | 0.424 | 29.6/34.3 | 26.4/38.1 | 0.682 |
| THR versus reducing ETS 10 years from now‡ (% answering that THR will have a larger/smaller role§) | 24.5/47.5 | 20.0/56.8 | 23.9/49.0 | 0.249 | 21.6/49.0 | 24.4/46.8 | 0.811 |
| Negative effects of THR¶ (% answering agree or strongly agree/% disagree or strongly disagree): | |||||||
| Reduce rate of smoking cessation | 49.3/32.1 | 49.7/30.8 | 51.8/30.6 | 0.845 | 45.6/35.0 | 48.3/32.0 | 0.826 |
| Cause children to experiment with nicotine products | 48.2/34.4 | 38.9/41.1 | 55.8/28.5 | <0.001 | 41.2/39.2 | 50.1/33.3 | 0.230 |
| Unintended negative side effects on health of users | 63.1/13.0 | 58.9/12.3 | 66.3/11.5 | 0.252 | 58.4/11.2 | 64.0/13.2 | 0.575 |
| Eventual impact of THR on health of American public (% answering benefit/% harm§) | 26.4/56.0 | 30.7/45.4 | 23.9/59.3 | 0.016 | 24.7/52.6 | 26.0/56.5 | 0.507 |
| Health risks for individual smokers of smoking low tar and nicotine cigarettes versus full strength filtered cigarettes (% answering increase risks/% decrease risks§) | 20.7/10.4 | 22.0/6.6 | 21.4/8.5 | 0.748 | 21.7/5.7 | 20.9/11.7 | 0.164 |
| Impact on collective health of Americans if low tar and nicotine cigarettes never marketed (% answering better/% worse§) | 40.4/7.5 | 44.2/5.8 | 37.3/6.5 | 0.336 | 47.7/9.2 | 36.9/7.9 | 0.055 |