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| ===Ethan A Nadelmann===
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| *[https://twitter.com/ethannadelmann Follow on Twitter]
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| *Source: [https://clivebates.com/documents/ExpertCommentsOnWHOMay2021.pdf Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders]
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| **It took WHO all too many years to embrace “harm reduction” thinking and policies vis a vis consumers of illicit drugs but it eventually did. Hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of lives, could have been saved if WHO had acted earlier to transcend the political forces and counterproductive ideologies and rhetoric that drove the war on drugs and its insistence on punitive abstinence-only policies.
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| **Yet now we see WHO repeating very similar mistakes as it resists and dismisses the technological innovations in tobacco and nicotine products that could radically reduce associated harms to both consumers and society at large. The organization’s leaders need to open their eyes and summon the courage to follow the science, not the politics. Failure to do so may ultimately result in the emergence of an international tobacco/nicotine prohibition regime with all the failures, costs and counter-productive consequences of the failed global drug prohibition regime.
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| **Ethan A Nadelmann - [https://drugpolicy.org/staff/ethan-nadelmann-founder Bio] and [https://twitter.com/ethannadelmann/status/857637028883771396 Photo]
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| **Founder & Former Executive Director (2000-2017)
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| **Drug Policy Alliance
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| **New York and International
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