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Anti-smoking activists give smokers a stark choice: Stop smoking or die! In fact, there is a third path: reduce the harm by shifting to less-hazardous kinds of tobacco products. For example, moving from unfiltered to filtered cigarettes, and from regular to “low tar” cigarettes, both appear to reduce the risk of lung cancer. Switching from cigarettes to chewing tobacco dramatically reduces the health risk.

For many years, the Swiss have used a kind of “spitless tobacco” called “snus.” At least partly because of the widespread use of snus, Switzerland has the lowest rate of cigarette smoking and lung cancer in Europe. Surely there are lessons here for U.S. tobacco policy.

Unfortunately, in the U.S. advertising the comparative health effects of different tobacco products is strongly discouraged by the FDA, state attorneys general, the courts, and a variety of government funded antitobacco organizations. As a result, few smokers know that the health risks of smoking can be dramatically reduced simply by reducing the number of cigarettes smoked or by switching to filtered and light cigarettes or to chewing tobacco.