Update - 3 of the 4 Producers that we review and recommend are still selling and shipping as of this afternoon.

SmokeFree Pensylvania is urging smokers and tobacco harm reductionists to support a move to:

(1) allow nicotine gum, lozenges and patches to be sold by all retailers that sell cigarettes, (2) allow these nicotine products to be sold in less expensive daily dose units, and (3) change warning labels on these nicotine products to truthfully inform smokers that they are far less hazardous alternatives to cigarettes.

The following is taken directly from an email from Bill Godshall:

Please urge the FDA to approve this petition NOW. Simply go to: www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main?main=DocketDetail&d=FD A-2008-P-0116 and click on the "Add Comments" icon to the right of the first document "State of New York Department of Health - Citizen Petition" 

Unless/until the FDA can reasonably and responsibly regulate the least hazardous nicotine alternatives to cigarettes, the FDA cannot reasonably or responsibly regulate cigarettes or other tobacco products (especially when the enabling legislation, sponsored by Waxman/Kennedy, requires the FDA to protect cigarettes from market competion by far less hazardous smokefree tobacco products).

So far, the following organizations/agencies/associations (along with many health professionals and citizens) have submitted comments urging the FDA to approve the NY State Health Commissioner's petition. Noticably absent from the list are the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, American Heart Association, and the national office of the American Cancer Society (all of which have urged the FDA to ban similar e-cigarette nicotine vaporizers, and also are lobbying Congress to enact FDA tobacco regulatory legislation they negotiated and agreed to with Philip Morris in 2004).