MAHA claims that nicotine is good for you echo decades of tobacco industry propaganda

The New York Times recently highlighted how many “Make America Healthy Again” influencers are promoting the benefits of nicotine, including reversing Alzheimer’s Disease and improving cognition. While we don’t know what role the tobacco companies are playing in this latest resurgence of claims that nicotine is a beneficial substance that poses little or no risk, we do know that the tobacco companies have promoted such claims, usually indirectly through third parties for decades.

We know this because the UCSF Truth Tobacco Documents Library contains millions of pages of previously secret internal tobacco industry documents that allow us to find undisclosed connections between the tobacco companies and individuals and organizations.

For example, we found way back in 2010 that the research showing benefits for Alzheimer’s Disease comes from studies conducted by people who have ties to the tobacco industry while the studies by investigators independent of the tobacco industry show that smoking is associated with increased risk of Alzheimer’s Disease. Specifically, we concluded:

For the last two decades [as of 2010], the tobacco industry has been actively funding research that supports the position that cigarette smoking protects against AD [Alzheimer’s Disease], and for the past two decades, the scientific literature has reported conflicting results as to the direction of the association between smoking and AD. Consequently, older smokers and their health care providers have been unaware that smoking is a modifiable risk factor for AD. There is an association between tobacco industry affiliation and the conclusions of individual studies and, probably, review papers of AD. Controlling for industry affiliation, study design and other factors, smoking is not protective against AD; it is a significant and substantial risk factor for AD. [emphasis added]

In a direct effort to influence public opinion, after the US Surgeon General concluded that nicotine was addictive in 1988, the industry responded by quietly promoting a series of efforts, including publications, designed counter this conclusion as well as to promote the social acceptability of smoking. One aspect of this effort was to form “Associates for Research in the Science of Enjoyment” (ARISE), which was active from around 1988-1999:

[M]embers toured the world promoting the health benefits of the use of legal substances, including tobacco [nicotine], for stress relief and relaxation, without acknowledging the industry’s role. … [T]hese programs utilized academic sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, psychologists, philosophers and economists, and allowed the industry to develop and widely disseminate friendly research through credible channels. Strategies included creating favorable surveys and opinions, infusing them into the lay press and media through press releases, articles and conferences, publishing, promoting and disseminating books, commissioning and placing favorable book reviews, providing media training for book authors and organizing media tours.

The industry connections were usually minimized or not disclosed at all.

Additional internal industry documents also reveal that after the 1988 Surgeon General’s Report, tobacco companies (particularly RJ Reynolds) intensified efforts to promote the benefits of nicotine while downplaying its addictiveness and health risks:

Activities included building relationships with academic institutions and funding scientific studies of the benefits of nicotine on cognition and other performance areas through intramural and extramural programmes. Companies then promoted their research findings through public relations campaigns, often minimising nicotine’s health risks by comparing it to caffeine or coffee. These comparisons appeared in highly publicised scientific meetings and interviews with the press. Nicotine-positive messages reappeared in the popular press and on some company websites in the 2010s. Tobacco companies implemented strategies to promote benefits of nicotine to scientific and general audiences while minimising its health risks. These strategies reappeared at the time novel tobacco products like electronic cigarettes were introduced.

Of course, the claims that nicotine is benign are, at best, uninformed. Beyond being addictive, nicotine has a wide range of adverse effects on the cardiovascular system, lungs, and, while not causing cancer, it is a tumor promoter.

I did a quick search of the tobacco industry documents for “MAHA” since 2024 and nothing popped up. Whether this is because there are not any connections today or whether it is too early to see those connections in the documents in unknown, but it is clear that the current promotion of the benefits of nicotine echos these past claims the industry quietly promoted.