This is all rather simple. If an official or other says that tobacco did this or that, the alarm bells must ring.
NO studies of smoke from tobacco ITSELF have yet to be brought to court, legislatures, or establishment medical journals.
No Public Interest has been shown to justify laws about Tobacco Smoke! Yet tobacco is the guilty party, NOT those who adulterated it (or replaced it entirely) with more untested and toxic/carcinogenic non-tobacco things than one could find in a Toxic Waste Site. Tobacco, whether one likes it or not, is being "convicted" without a trial.
It's Reefer Madness II.

Either Google your way to the "U.S. Patent Office" ("tobacco substitute material"), or go to a library...and seek out Class Number 131, subclass, 359 and/or 347. There's almost 300 patents for fake tobacco, "tobacco" compositions, processes to make this stuff, and related things.
OR...just see this:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=3978866.PN.&OS=PN/3978866&RS=PN/3978866
...and then wander back and forth in that category. [If that patent doesn't open up, type "3978866" into the "number" box.] This one's about "tobacco" (part or all of a cigarette) made from Peanut Shells. No laws yet exist to regulate "EPSS" (Environmental Peanut Shell Smoke). (This isn't to say there's no nicotine. That's added in measured doses to achieve "uniformity".)

At U.S. Patent Office, search up also Patent Numbers, 3964495 (popped corn substitute for tobacco), 3993082 (paper), 3796222 (coffee bean hulls), 3964496 (rice), 6289897 (about 11 different crops) and etc etc etc. The chances of any of these cellulose sources being Organic are about zero, or less. Plus, of course, none have been tested by labs, or, like tobacco, by thousands of years of human use. They are all just substitutes, cheaper than tobacco, more profitable if they can be sold as if they are tobacco. Even our "concerned" anti-smoking officials tolerate it being called "tobacco". Such officials are either abysmally ignorant, or complicit. No other option possible.

These bogus "tobacco products" CANNOT produce Tobacco Smoke, the ostensible target of so many prohibtionary laws. However, if contaminated with chlorine substances, if wrapped in chlorine-bleached paper, they CAN and do produce Dioxin...a chlorine by-product that causes diseases identical to most of those said to be "tobacco related" or "smoking related". Big Chlorine has not yet been dragged into any "smoking and health" hearing, nor questioned or condemned by the media.

You might want to just revisit this Partial list of non-tobacco cig ingredients from which manufacturers select their secret "recipes." "Big Tobacco" constitutes every one of the providers of those chemicals and crop products, not to forget the suppliers of radioactive phosphate tobacco fertilizers, advertisers, insurers/investors...and adequately bribed "public" officials.

The bottom line question to ask (under oath, preferably) virtually anyone speaking about "tobacco" is..."What Do You Mean by "Tobacco"? Tobacco, itself, without adulteration, the Target of Law and Displeasure, still has not been studied for real or potential harms. Certainly no such studies have been brought to court, legislatures, or corporate-linked medical journals. It is a convenient "sinful" scapegoat for the effects of industrial chemicals. Tobacco is a natural, unpatented, public-domain element of "pagan" Native American culture, convicted, as it were, Without A Trial.

What happened over the years, since development and use of industrial chemicals, is that the RISK from smoking has actually been eliminated.
Yes.
That risk, that CHANCE of Harm (as anything has) from using plain tobacco, has been replaced by Inevitable and Inescapable Harm, even death.