On Friday, FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb announced some new cigarette and vaping regulations that the agency will put into place over the next few months or years. One of the biggest: the addictive component of cigarettes will have to go away.

Nicotine is what keeps people coming back to cigarettes; Gottlieb calls it “astonishingly addictive.” But it’s the rest of the cigarette—the other components, and the smoke from setting it all on fire—that causes cancer, heart disease, and lung disease. If the nicotine were removed, or reduced to non-addictive or minimally addictive levels, the FDA is betting that far fewer people would end up smoking cigarettes and suffering the consequences.

Here’s how Gottlieb put it:

Looking at ways to reduce nicotine levels in cigarettes so that they are minimally or non-addictive, while not altering the nicotine content of noncombustible products such as e-cigarettes, is a cornerstone of our new and more comprehensive approach to effective tobacco regulation. And Congress has made clear that FDA has this authority.

So, if this rule goes through (it will have to clear a lot of red tape and industry opposition), we could end up in a world where cigarettes contain tar but not nicotine. Meanwhile, vaping liquids contain nicotine but no tar, and the FDA seems inclined to keep it that way.