Translations:Nicotine / THR - Change the Conversation/11/en

• To date, more attention has been paid on the virtues or vices of potential harm reduction products such as e-cigarettes with less focus on cigarettes, which prematurely kills half of its long-term consumers. Most in the tobacco control community would agree that an immediate main goal is to rapidly eliminate tobacco-related death and disease. To effectively achieve this goal, a more cohesive and unified approach is urgently needed before million more lives are lost to tobacco use.
• Perhaps this approach could be achieved by convening yet another strategic dialogue on harm reduction that is led by one of the governmental agencies, a scientific organization and/or by respected scientists who are not strongly associated with one particular ideology. At this meeting, the current and evolving science, modeling that projects population health effects under different scenarios, identification of research gaps and consensus on a potential path towards a sensible and agreeable harm minimization approach can be developed. Keeping focus on how best to regulate combusted tobacco products and ANDS and allowing tobacco harm reduction as a component of a comprehensive tobacco control program would be one such approach.