A proposal by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was unveiled on Friday. The government proposes cutting nicotine level in cigarettes to non-addictive.

The Big Tobacco is obviously not too happy about the proposal, shares of all the major tobacco companies in both the US and UK fell heavily after the news came out, losing around $26 billion in value in a matter of hours.

While it's true that it's not nicotine that's the problem bit in cigarettes, it's what makes smoking cigarettes addictive. And if you're not smoking, you're also not inhaling the other chemical compounds in tobacco that are the problem.

As FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said, "Nicotine itself is not responsible for the cancer, the lung disease and heart disease that kill hundreds of thousands of Americans each year. It's the other chemical compounds in tobacco and in the smoke created by setting tobacco on fire that directly cause illness and death."

Will this proposal get people to study more the potential health effects of e-cigarettes to say one and for all whether e-cigarettes would be a good replacement? We don't know. Only time will tell. Or maybe Big Tobacco will start coming out with some strange studies themselves, like something we faked here a few years ago ourselves - Big Tobacco claims there's no smoke in their cigarettes.