With the world losing over 8 million people to tobacco-related deaths, there is a need for safer alternatives that deliver nicotine without exposing consumers to harm. However, despite the burden tobacco exerts on the health systems across the globe, it’s not all doom and gloom as players in the tobacco industry have come up with new innovative means to reduce the harm caused by tobacco.
Several novel nicotine products have been developed over the years to try and provide alternatives to adult smokers who struggle to quit. Some of the nicotine products on the market either don't use any heat at all or they use electricity to heat an aerosol. These include vaping products, heated tobacco (heat not burn), unheated nicotine products, and more traditional smokeless tobacco and Snus.
To date, a number of governments have successfully implemented Tobacco Harm Reduction (THR) interventions and this has had positive impacts on the public health of those countries. Japan for example has recorded a continued decline in the overall smoking rate and Phillip Morris International’s (PMI) data shows that less than 0.1 percent of new smokers started because of its HTP product, IQOS, in 2017.
Sweden now has 44 percent fewer tobacco-related deaths, 41 percent lower lung cancer rates, and 38 percent fewer cancer deaths. At the end of 2022, the daily smoking rate in Sweden was just 5.6%, by far the lowest in the European Union, and the country is expected to reach the smoke-free target of below 5% at the end of the year according to the World Vapers Alliance.
At the Technovation 7 in Switzerland, Grégoire Verdeaux, PMI’s Senior Vice President of External Affairs, cited Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Sweden, the U.K., the United States, and other countries that are enjoying the benefits of Tobacco Harm Reduction and made the case for inclusive and innovative frameworks that have complemented traditional tobacco control measures in expediting the decline of smoking.
“The number of smokers globally has remained virtually unchanged for the past 30 years,” said Verdeaux, who drew attention to the upcoming session of the Conference of the Parties (COP10) to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) in Panama next month, as a crucial juncture to change the global smoking rates status quo.
He added that the WHO FCTC COP 10 could be used an as opportunity to bring all stakeholders together to consider the comprehensive science on nicotine alternatives and create guidelines that can unlock harm reduction for hundreds of millions of smokers around the world.
“Unfortunately, this is not the case, but we hope that this will change in the future for the benefit of a billion smokers and global public health.”
Tobacco use is one of the key risk factors for non-communicable diseases and effective tobacco control is important for the prevention and control of NCDs, a flagship priority of the region since 2014. In the European Union, however, the overall smoking rate still stands at 25 percent, and around 700,000 people die due to smoking-related illnesses every year. Despite the high smoking prevalence, the EU plans to intensify its crackdown on alternative nicotine products, including higher taxation on vaping and flavour bans.
The WHO predicts that there will continue to be over 1 billion smokers into 2025 and beyond. That means many smokers will not benefit from tobacco control measures to curb adoption and increase quitting. A growing number of governments are now complementing traditional tobacco control measures with a harm reduction approach or example by providing adults who would otherwise continue to smoke with scientifically substantiated less harmful products.
In Italy, Bulgaria, Cyprus, and Portugal the regulators adopted dedicated regulatory frameworks defining the scientific requirements for consumer communications about the reduced risk or reduced harm effects of using novel tobacco products (and e-cigarettes in the case of Cyprus) compared to smoking.
Meanwhile, Stefano Volpetti, President of Smoke-free Inhaled Products and Chief Consumer Officer, closed the event, with an impassioned plea to all attendees that “no smokers be left behind.”
“Consumers have the right to accurate information about and access to these products. This right needs to be balanced with protecting unintended audiences such as youth. While blocking youth access should always be a priority, prohibitionist approaches to disable access to smoke-free alternatives for all smokers can result in perpetuating smoking rather than helping smokers switch to a less harmful smoke-free alternative.”
