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Reviews of For Smokers Only
"Dr. Rodu shows real courage in taking on the anti-tobacco establishment with this credible, logical and eminently do-able stop-smoking, stop-dying program. The politically-correct police are coming out in droves to bash this guy. He's trying to do something to help. I would rather you use smokeless tobacco than smoke. Look for the book... it's reasonable and rational."
-Dr. Dean Edell
Medical Journalist
"FOR SMOKERS ONLY provides an excellent and highly readable assessment of the risks and benefits of smokeless tobacco. Dr. Brad Rodu's intent is not to abolish tobacco use but to expand the range of consumer options and to enable consumers to make more informed decisions. This option of informed choice should become the guiding principle of U.S. public health policy toward tobacco."
-W. Kip Viscusi
Professor of Economics
Duke University
Author of Smoking: Making the Risky Decision
"Brad Rodu has performed an extremely careful cost-benefit analysis of the use of smokeless tobacco to quit smoking. He shows that the monetary and non-monetary costs of this solution are much lower than those associated with the nicotine patch and nicotine gum, the success rate is higher and the health risks are minimal. His study deserves serious consideration by the scientific community, and his prescription for quitting smoking deserves the same type of consideration by current smokers."
-Michael Grossman
Director, Health Economics
National Bureau of Economic Research
"Good Evidence and good ethics are inseparable, but evidence tends to be forgotten in heated debate. The public debate about reducing the harms of tobacco is as polarized as the abortion debate. Anti-tobacco crusaders will try to suppress this book and the information it contains. As an ethicist, I have learned that there can be no moral compromise with radical extremists, since their demands are absolute. Real life is more ambiguous and involves choices of greater or lesser harm or good. The ethical absolutists would forgo the real public health gains of helping nicotine addicts switch as they continue their fight for complete freedom from addiction. That is an indefensible position. Anyone interested in ethics and public health should read this book."
-John C. Fletcher, Ph.D.
Kornfield Professor of Biomedical Ethics
University of Virginia
"The reaction of the anti-smoking establishment to Rodu's message has been reminiscent of the hard-line drug warrior's attitude toward 'harm reduction' measures such as methadone maintenance, the distribution of clean needles, and honest drug education... Rodu is refreshingly skeptical of anti-smoking dogma, even on the issue of addiction. He pokes fun at the notion, promoted with a straight face by anti-smoking activists and trial lawyers, that cigarette makers have been concealing the fact that tobacco contains an addictive drug from an unwary public. 'Nicotine addiction is no deep dark secret recently blown out of hiding,' he writes... Similarly, Rodu demonstrates the vacuity of complaints that tobacco companies 'manipulate' nicotine levels in cigarettes... Rodu's common sense and intellectual honesty are especially striking in light of his strong anti-smoking views. He questions claims ('secondhand smoke kills,' 'smokers are a burden on society') that he considers shaky or erroneous, even though they would reinforce his argument for switching from cigarettes to smokeless tobacco. That kind of rigor is rare in the anti-smoking movement, which could use a few more heretics."
-Jacob Sullum
Senior Editor
Reason, Volume 27, October 1995
"If you can't quit smoking, please read this book. [It] proposes an unusual and, in some circles, controversial answer to a difficult question. The author is to be commended for his courage. Traditional American approaches to addiction treatment are prohibitionist. If you have a problem with a substance, stop using it. If you don't have a problem, don't start. Addictionologists prescribe abstinence from the offending drug as the preferred intervention for an addict. Dr. Brad Rodu, an oral pathologist and researcher, does not. Rodu's plan is based on the psychological principle of substitution, and a sociological intervention popularized in Europe called harm reduction. Rodu proposes his plan to those who have found nicotine's grip among the most difficult to escape - those who have tried to quit smoking and have failed. Rodu's writing style, like his plan, is straightforward and no-nonsense. He is that rare scientist who communicates meaty ideas with a clarity and appeal often missing in self-help books. Even if you know you disagree with the doctor's premise, read."
-Susan Griffin, NCADC, CCS
Self-Help Psychology Magazine |
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