This TED Talk features public health leader Mitch Zeller, recorded live at TEDx Mid-Atlantic

2019.

I'm going to tell you a story.

I'm going to tell you a story about how the deadliest consumer product imaginable came to be.

It's the cigarette.

The cigarette is the only consumer product

that when used as intended

will kill half of all long-term users prematurely later in life.

But this is also a story about the work that we're doing

at the Food and Drug Administration,

and specifically the work that we're doing to create the cigarette of the future

that is no longer capable of creating or sustaining addiction.

A lot of people think that the tobacco problem or the smoking problem

has been solved in the United States

because of the great progress that's been made over the last 40, 50 years

when it comes to both consumption and prevalence.

And it's true.

Smoking rates are at historic lows.

It's true for both adults and for kids.

And it's true that those who continue to smoke are smoking far fewer cigarettes

per day than at any time in history. But what if I told you that tobacco use, primarily because

of firsthand and secondhand exposure to the smoke in cigarettes

...