Clive Bates describes a tobacco industry under competitive pressure from “clean” nicotine used not just therapeutically but recreationally. Depending on how big the recreational nicotine market became, the extent to which tobacco companies moved into the cleaner end of it, and the extent to which demand for traditional tobacco products declined, tobacco companies' customer base and profits might in fact expand significantly under such a scenario.

That the tobacco industry might prosper is neither here nor there. The question we should be concerned about is whether expansion of the nicotine market is the most effective way of reducing the harm currently caused by tobacco.