Lowering nicotine in cigarettes can dissuade people from smoking

The death toll of smoking is 15 times higher than for opioids

The new commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently made a surprising and bold announcement that could potentially save more lives than if we ended the opioid epidemic today. FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, a physician and cancer survivor, said that federal regulators will start a conversation about dramatically reducing the amount of nicotine in cigarettes, low enough to make them nonaddictive, while taking a go-slow approach to adopting new regulations on electronic cigarettes and other devices that are increasingly popular for consuming nicotine.

As Gottlieb put it, efforts to reduce smoking in the