FDA Discusses New Plan To Tackle Smoking In United States

KYW's Medical Reports Sponsored By Independence Blue Cross

By Dr. Brian McDonough, Medical Editor

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) --  The statistics are startling. We all know that cigarette smoking can have a dramatic impact on health and that smoking increases the risk of death at an early age.

According to the F.D.A. there are 480,000 annual tobacco related deaths in the United States each year.

Official say they need to attack this problem and they have developed a new plan.

Their new strategy is based on the fact that nicotine, while highly addictive, is most dangerous and harmful when delivered through smoke particles in combustible cigarettes.

They say nicotine by itself is not particularly toxic at the doses which people administer.

The real danger comes from the effects of nicotine causing the addiction which leads to smoking.

Each cigarette allows more than 7,000 chemicals to be dispersed through the lungs and into the bloodstream and into the body organs. No fewer than 70 chemicals are known human carcinogens.