Introduction:
The WHO/FCTC defines tobacco control as a range of supply, demand, and harm reduction strategies. However, it remains silent on the ways to conduct the latter strategy, harm reduction. The tobacco industry has taken advantage of this gap to appropriate the concept of harm reduction and make it its main marketing theme for its new nicotine-based or heated tobacco products. It also uses it to divide the tobacco control community.

Methods:
The concept of tobacco harm reduction is defined by reference to its historical evolution, looking at documents produced by public health and tobacco control experts on one hand and documents emanating from the tobacco industry and its front groups on the other. A theoretical model is developed to capture the key differences between the two approaches to harm reduction.

Results:
It is shown that, when used by the tobacco industry, “harm reduction” has a radically different meaning from its meaning when used in public health. For the tobacco industry, the determinants of harm reduction are the free market “laws” and the maximization of profits. For public health, the determinants are ethical considerations and minimization of the health and social burden caused by the addiction to tobacco and nicotine products. The two kinds of determinants are contradictory and irreconcilable.

Conclusions:
The tobacco industry’s use of harm reduction is inherently at odds with the ethics of public health. Instead of rejecting harm reduction, the tobacco control community should re-appropriate it and give it its true public health meaning.