Public-health advocates who met in Australia urged international health bodies and government regulators to ease the restrictive rules against noncombustible, smoke-free nicotine products that are regarded as much safer alternatives to cigarette smoking.
“We have the evidence that harm reduction products—snus, vapes and heat-not-burn tobacco—are at least 90 percent safer,” said Dr. Colin Mendelsohn, a tobacco treatment specialist and conjoint associate professor in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of New South Wales, during the Ninth International City Health Conference held in Melbourne, Australia, early this month.
The Progressive Public Health Alliance, a group of health professionals, researchers and public-health advocates, organized the conference in Melbourne that focused on urban health and harm reduction in all its forms, the conference news release said.
Harm reduction refers to an approach designed to reduce the negative impact associated to cigarette smoking. The approach is being opposed by people who feel they have an obligation to defend their moralistic views.
Participants in the conference also urged the public not to be swayed by the recent hysteria against vaping, saying noncombustible, smoke-free nicotine products from reputable suppliers are always safer than smoking, the news release said.
Amid recent reports of an outbreak of vaping-related illnesses in the United States, the United Kingdom, which has the most advanced regulation on electronic-cigarettes, has not recorded any vaping-related deaths so far.
Public Health England, an agency of the Department of Health and Social Care in the UK, reported in 2015 that the use of electronic cigarettes was 95 percent less harmful than cigarette smoking.
The US outbreak is now being investigated for the possible use of illicit vaping liquids, or tetrahydrocannabinol.
Two US Army soldiers have fallen ill with a severe lung illness linked to vaping, joining more than 1,500 cases either confirmed or under investigation across the country, NBC.com reported on October 10.
Public health advocates in Melbourne said the US issue should not grab the attention away from the much greater harm caused by cigarette smoking.
“Tobacco smoking kills 19,000 people in Australia every year,” Mendelsohn said.
Globally, 20,000 smokers die of cancer and other related illnesses each day, translating into a death every 4.5 seconds.
Mendelsohn said that unfortunately, the rate of decline in smoking rate in Australia has stagnated over the past six years because of the government’s ban on harm-reduction products.
“Harm-reduction products are safer. We are the only western democracy to ban them,” Mendelsohn said.
“We know there are three types of tobacco harm reduction—snus, which had a huge success in Scandinavia, vaping and heat-not-burn products. These are different options, all of which are effectively illegal in Australia,” he said.
Health advocates noted that countries that allow harm reduction products have experienced a rapid decline in smoking rate. Japan, for example, saw a third of its cigarette market disappear since heated tobacco products, such as IQOS, was introduced in the country in 2014.