Group pushes science to counter smoking
Strategies that provide smokers with less harmful alternatives to cigarettes are far more likely to reduce smoking than the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control
Daily TribuneStrategies that provide smokers with less harmful alternatives to cigarettes are far more likely to reduce smoking than the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control
A lively debate had started between tobacco alternative experts and anti-smoking groups regarding the most effective way of eradicating the harmful effects of the practice while keeping alive businesses dependent on the industry.
Strategies that provide smokers with less harmful alternatives to cigarettes are far more likely to reduce smoking than the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, or FCTC, recommendations to prohibit them while cigarettes remain widely available, public health experts said in a global forum.
"To remain at the forefront of adopting effective strategies to reduce smoking, countries that have experience regulating these new products, including the Philippines, must continue to advocate at the global stage for science to guide policy response, not vice versa," Dr. Lorenzo Mata, president of Quit For Good, a non-profit organization promoting harm reduction in the Philippines, said.
Dr. Mata was one of the panelists who joined the hybrid 6th Summit on Tobacco Harm Reduction: Novel Products, Research & Policy organized by SCOHRE (the International Association on Smoking Control & Harm Reduction) on 25 and 26 September 2023 in Athens, Greece.
Prep for COP10
The summit was held as member countries of the WHO FCTC prepare for the 10th Conference of the Parties, or C0P10, in Panama in November 2023 to discuss WHO's recommendations to ban "novel and emerging tobacco and nicotine products" such as vapes, heated tobacco and nicotine pouches or regulate them the same as cigarettes.
Dr. Fernando Fernandez Bueno, a Spanish physician, agreed with Dr. Mata: "The debate on tobacco control must be based on scientific arguments and clinical data, moving away from mere opinions and emotional responses. This is the only way to make progress in the fight against tobacco."
In his keynote speech exploring the financial aspects of smoking, Professor Andrzej Fal, President, Polish Society of Public Health, Poland, warned that at an era when health expenditures keep growing, prevention is the most effective way of investing in future health: To stop the smoking pandemic and its financial and health effects, we need to raise funding for primordial prevention, as well as introduce a "less harm, less tax" regulation."
Prof. David Sweanor of the University of Ottawa said the FCTC and the WHO failed to acknowledge the merits of using less harmful tobacco and nicotine products to displace cigarettes: "Failure to do it is this continued carnage — unnecessary death and disease. We also see government bodies, UN bodies destroying their credibility. When we lose the trust of the public, it affects us on a far broader range of issues than just tobacco and nicotine."
