Authors’ response

Sir,

We thank the author of the letter-to-editor¹ for reading our article² and sharing their views. The lack of transparency by the tobacco industry/companies in disclosing the harmful effects/constituents was highlighted first in context to the evolution of the filtered cigarettes as safer alternatives to tobacco smoking emphasizing that neither the tobacco harm has been reduced, nor the incidence of lung cancers or other tobacco-related diseases decreased anywhere in the world. We have highlighted that ‘Filter fraud’ is labelled as the deadliest fraud in the history of human civilization. Further, in the context of the heat-not-burn (HNB) tobacco products, strong evidence of the conflict of interest was highlighted concerning studies conducted by the tobacco industry or by researchers funded by them³. We highlighted that these tobacco companies did not disclose the high concentration of particulate matter, tar, acetaldehyde, acrylamide, acrolein metabolite, and formaldehyde in their studies on emissions from heated tobacco sponsored by them. However, it is a well-known fact that transparency of the tobacco companies in disclosing the harmful constituents on any form of tobacco products they bring into the market cannot be underscored with respect to their claim of safety or safer alternatives to tobacco smoking.

We are in line with the authors in the letter-to-editor on the facts they have highlighted on the perspective of tobacco control and how the tobacco company exploits the gaps in process and deceive people in glorifying their tobacco products and bypassing the regulators and or jurisdiction. This throws more light on the transparency of tobacco companies with respect to the harm reduction policy as well as disclosing the harmful constituents