Nicotine / THR - Statements from Experts
The following experts are speaking out in support of adult use of Tobacco Harm Reduction (THR) products to help people quit smoking and to prevent relapse.
Argentina
Dr. Diego Verrastro
Australia
Ron Borland PhD
Wayne Hall
- Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- It is extremely disappointing that the World Health Organisation’s policies towards e-cigarettes (and other reduced risk nicotine and tobacco products) are so hostile to the interests of smokers who wish to use them to quit smoking or as a substitute for smoking cigarettes. WHO has used legitimate concerns about youth uptake to justify a de facto prohibition of e-cigarettes for smokers. A more balanced and sensible public health policy would allow smokers to access e-cigarette s in ways that minimise youth uptake and maximise the potential for e-cigarettes to eliminate the global use of combustible tobacco products.
- Wayne Hall - Bio and Photo
- Emeritus Professor
- National Centre for Youth Substance Use Research
- The University of Queensland
Dr. Alex Wodak AM
- Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- In 1976 Professor Michael Russell famously said: “People smoke for nicotine but they die from the tar”. The situation has changed. Now people smoke for nicotine but they die from the intransigence of opponents to tobacco harm reduction. The World Health Organisation opposed drug harm reduction in 1999 but began supporting harm reduction in 2000, required urgently at that time to control HIV among and from people who injected drugs. Public health practitioners and organisations opposed to tobacco harm reduction risk serious reputational damage”.
- Novel forms of drug harm reduction are often vigorously resisted initially. Opposition may continue long after benefits have been shown to far exceed adverse effects. The development of a growing range of reduced risk options for ingesting nicotine offers spectacular potential public health gains, especially in low- and middle-income countries, in reducing deaths from smoking tobacco and oral smokeless tobacco”.
- Opposition to reduced risk nicotine options inevitably protects the smoking of tobacco which is responsible for the deaths of over half of long term smokers. Vaping is now not only the world’s most popular form of quit smoking aid but also the most effective”.
- Dr. Alex Wodak AM - Bio and Photo
- Emeritus Consultant, Alcohol and Drug Service, St Vincent’s Hospital
- Director, Australian Tobacco Harm Reduction Association
Belgium
Frank Baeyens, PhD
- Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- Over the past decade, as an academic researcher, I have thoroughly reviewed the thousands of scientific studies relevant to an analysis of the value of Tobacco Harm Reduction (THR) in general, and of the ecigarette in particular, in the fight against smoking and its detrimental health effects. Also, my own research over the past decade has been devoted exclusively to various facets of THR.
- If the e-cigarette is to be used as a THR tool, it is important to demonstrate that (a) it is indeed a low-risk nicotine product, but also (b) that it is accepted by current smokers and that it is effective with respect to smoking cessation, while (c) it does not attract substantial numbers of non-smokers and especially does not cause smoking initiation in (young) people who would otherwise not start smoking.
- Based on my analysis of the literature and on my own research, I conclude that vaping passes these three critical tests with flying colors.
- (a) Even the strongest anti-vaping activists will at least admit that there is no doubt that vaping is significantly less harmful than smoking; as a matter of fact, the harmfulness of vaping is only a tiny fraction of that of smoking.
- (b) There is converging evidence from multiple different sources that e-cigarettes are a valuable tool for many smokers to help them quit smoking.
- (c) Regular vaping among non-smokers is rare, and there is no evidence of a "gateway effect" from vaping to smoking, including in young people.
- WHO's stance on THR is anti-scientific, morally reprehensible, and diametrically opposed to its primary mission: it costs lives rather than saving them.
- Frank Baeyens, PhD - Bio and Photo
- Professor of Psychology,
- KU Leuven (Belgium)
Canada
Ian Irvine, PhD
- Source of Bio
- Source of photo
- Source of quote
- See also: The Taxation of Nicotine in Canada: A Harm-Reduction Approach to the Profusion of New Products
- Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- Between 2019 and 2020 the Canadian Tobacco and Nicotine Survey (administered by Statistics Canada) reports that current smoking of those aged 20-24 fell from 13.3% to 8%. This is an unprecedented decline.
- It indicates that those who began to vape prior to their twenties treat vaping as a substitute for combustibles. Vapes are a proven reverse gateway. If public policy were actively directed towards inducing smokers of all ages to migrate to alternative nicotine delivery systems, Health Canada’s 2035 target of a 5% smoking rate for the whole population is well within reach.
- Canada sees 40,000 premature smoking-related deaths each year. These deaths are preventable by embracing harm reduction in an active manner.
- Ian Irvine
- Professor, Economics, Concordia University, Montreal Canada.
- Disclosure. I have advised the federal government of Canada on alcohol and tobacco policy, and also advised lawyers in the private sector on tobacco.
David Sweanor
- Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- Effective public health efforts need to be based on science, reason and humanism. Yet the world’s premier health body is aligning itself against all three when dealing with nicotine. The result is that one of the greatest opportunities to improve global health, separating nicotine use from smoke inhalation, is being squandered. Global trust in health authorities, and the WHO in particular, has never been so important. Yet the WHO is abandoning science, rationality and humanism on nicotine and instead apparently pursuing the moralistic abstinence-only agenda of external funders. This is a public health tragedy that extends well beyond the unnecessary sickening of the billion-plus people who smoke cigarettes.
- David Sweanor, JD (Bio and Photo)
- Adjunct Professor of Law
- Chair of the Advisory Board of the Centre for Health Law, Policy and Ethics
- University of Ottawa, Canada
England
John Britton, MD
- 1-Source: Electronic cigarettes:
- There are other arguments not presented above, and more will arise, but in my view electronic cigarettes represent a potent opportunity to prevent death and disability from smoking. It is therefore important to grasp the opportunity they provide while also managing the risks to minimise any unwanted effects. I therefore propose that electronic cigarettes are an opportunity that health professionals should welcome and develop, and use them to help prevent death and disability from smoking in our society.
- 2-Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- Health policy should be driven by science, not prejudice or dogma. Vaping has already provided an effective gateway out of smoking for millions of people, unequivocally benefitting individual smokers, public health and wider society. It beggars belief that the WHO appears to be incapable of understanding the basic science, or designing rational policy to capitalise upon, rather than reject, the opportunities that harm reduction offers. By seeking to block access to less hazardous nicotine products, other than licensed medicines, the WHO is adding and abetting the tobacco industry to kill millions of people.
- John Britton, MD - Bio and Photo
- Emeritus Professor of Epidemiology
- School of Medicine
- Nottingham University
Sharon Cox, PhD
- Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- The guiding principles of harm reduction are to respect the rights of people who use substances, to reduce stigma, to work with the networks that support people who use substances and to follow the scientific evidence. There is strong evidence that tobacco harm reduction can achieve these goals, but we need all major health organisations to support this vision – and that includes WHO. Denial or selective interpretation of the evidence, including deliberate conflation of nicotine and tobacco, means those individuals facing severe disadvantage will continue to be left behind and continually stigmatised, and tobacco health inequalities will remain entrenched. If the WHO engaged with the evidence for tobacco harm reduction with genuine objectivity and dispassion, we could all work together to accelerate progress on reducing major diseases and health inequalities, leaving no smoker behind.
- Sharon Cox, PhD
- Senior Research Fellow
- UCL
Lynne Dawkins, PhD
- Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- The need to reduce the global burden of disease caused by smoking is incontestable. This will not be achieved however, if the WHO continues to reject tobacco harm reduction. Smoking related harms are overwhelmingly due to combustion – the long-term exposure to toxins in tobacco smoke. Switching to non-combustible products such as e-cigarettes can significantly reduce or eliminate exposure to these toxins. Given that 95% of quit attempts end in failure, e-cigarettes offer a lifeline for smokers who are unwilling or unable to stop. The WHO should therefore be enabling and encouraging adult smokers to access these products. Discouraging uptake and presenting inaccurate or misleading information about the reduced risk status of e-cigarettes means millions of smokers who might otherwise have switched, will suffer the health consequences of continued smoking. As an editorial in The Lancet in 1991 concluded, “there is no good reason why a switch from tobacco products to a less harmful nicotine delivery system should not be encouraged”.
- Lynne Dawkins, PhD - Bio and Photo
- Professor of Nicotine and Tobacco Studies
- Centre for Addictive Behaviours Research
- London South Bank University
- COI: I have provided consultancy for the pharmaceutical industry relating to the development of smoking cessation products. I have no conflicts with respect to the tobacco or e-cigarette industry.
Peter Hajek, PhD
- Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- When smokers switch to vaping, they maintain nicotine use, but their intake of toxicants responsible for the main health risks of smoking is almost entirely removed. Yet time and again, in a stark contrast to its proclaimed mission to promote health, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has been urging regulators to prevent such switching and discouraging smokers from attempting it. Their latest pronouncement that switching from smoking to vaping ‘is not quitting’ shows the bizarre moralistic underpinning of their stance. Low-risk alternatives to smoking represent the best chance we ever had of eradicating smokingrelated disease and death. The efforts to stop this happening pose a reputational risk to the whole organisation.
- Peter Hajek, PhD - Bio and Photo
- Professor of Clinical Psychology
- Director of the Health and Lifestyle Research Unit
- Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine
- Queen Mary University of London
Martin Jarvis ODE, PhD
- Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- It is the smoke from cigarettes that kills, not the nicotine. The starting point for rational regulation of tobacco has to be to an appreciation of the risks: favour non-combustibles and bear down on cigarettes and other combustibles. It’s a no-brainer.
- Martin Jarvis ODE, PhD - Bio and Photo
- Emeritus Professor of Health Psychology
- University College London
Caitlin Notley, PhD
- Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- For pregnant women who smoke, quitting smoking is the most important health behaviour change to make to improve the chances of having a healthy, term baby. It is much safer to switch to using a nicotine containing e-cigarette or nicotine replacement therapy if that helps the woman stay completely smoke free, as it is the carbon monoxide in tobacco smoke, not the nicotine, that reduces blood flow through the placenta during pregnancy. Pregnant women may need to use higher strength nicotine containing products to help them stop smoking tobacco completely. Metabolism is faster during pregnancy so women need more nicotine, not less, so that they do not experience withdrawal when they try to stop smoking. It is vital that pregnant women who quit do not relapse back to tobacco smoking.’
- Caitlin Notley, PhD - Bio and Photo
- Professor of Addiction Sciences
- Norwich Medical School
- University of East Anglia
David Nutt DM, FRCP, FRCPsych, FSB, FMedSci
- Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- Vaping and snus are likely to be the greatest health advance of this coming century and could save nearlya billion lives. The WHO should embrace the opportunity not block it
- David Nutt DM FRCP FRCPsych FMedSci DLaws (Bio and Photo)
- Edmond J. Safra Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology
- Imperial College London
Louise Ross
- 1-Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- We fully endorse the letter sent by Bates, Sweanor, Abrams and Niaura. It’s appalling that an organisation that claims to work for health protection and health improvement refuses to listen to researchers, scientists, policy-makers, clinicians and consumers who have a different opinion. What does it take to see that vaping displaces smoking and saves lives? How many people have to suffer smokingrelated disease and an early death because the WHO cannot admit they could be wrong?’
- Louise Ross - Bio and Photo
- Vice Chair, New Nicotine Alliance.
- I am employed by the Smoke Free app and the National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training. I have no financial ties to the tobacco, vaping or pharmaceutical industry
- 2-Source: Louise Ross - profile page
- One of the most important aspects for us in this developing field of harm reduction has been to listen to people when they tell us what worked for them. At the same time as being appalled at how readily, deviously and arrogantly some commentators and researchers have undermined the public’s confidence in vaping, we hear daily from people who desperately wanted to stop smoking that this worked for them, and that’s what they want to use. If this revolution is to be maintained and expanded, organisations with power and influence need to stop sabotaging it
Lion Shahab, PhD CPsychol AFBPsS
- 1-Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- Long-term smoking cessation is notoriously difficult to achieve, and tobacco use results in millions of avoidable deaths each year. The aim of tobacco control should be to reduce tobacco-related preventable morbidity and mortality. To achieve this goal, as the WHO statement says, “we must be guided by science and evidence”. It is therefore disappointing to see that this WHO statement makes questionable and antiscientific claims about the role that e cigarettes can play in helping smokers to quit and live longer.
- There is now substantial evidence, both from clinical trials and real-world studies, that e-cigarettes are as effective as other proven cessation medications and have helped millions of smokers, who have struggled to stop with other means, to quit cigarettes for good. While not harmless, numerous studies have shown that compared with cigarettes e-cigarettes significantly reduce exposure to toxic and carcinogenic compounds that cause the majority of smoking-related illnesses. This will like reduce the death toll if smokers switch over to e-cigarettes completely. We should provide smokers with all available support to achieve a smokeless society, much of which is detailed by the WHO statement, but based on latest scientific and evidence, this should also include e-cigarettes.
- Lion Shahab, PhD CPsychol AFBPsS - Bio and Photo
- Professor of Health Psychology
- University College London, UK
- COI: LS has received a research grant, honoraria for talks, consultancy and travel expenses to attend meetings and workshops from pharmaceutical companies that make smoking cessation products (Pfizer; Johnson & Johnson). He has never received any funding or other monetary benefits from the tobacco or e-cigarette industry.
- 2-Source: Letter to EU Commissioner Mairead McGuinness on Vaping
- Electronic Cigarettes have had a tremendous impact on tobacco control. It is important to remember that they are a harm reduction product. Harm reduction is not about risk elimination but about a utilitarian risk calculus: to reduce risk for the largest number of people.
France
Jacques Le Houezec, PhD
- Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- Smoking kills because combustion kills (as well as misinformation). Non-combustible forms of nicotine (snus, NRT and vaping products) have helped millions of smokers to stop smoking worldwide. As a smoking cessation specialist in France, I have helped hundreds of smokers to stop smoking with NRT and vaping products. Denying smokers to use non-combustible forms of nicotine of any sort by demonizing or banning them is against human rights to choose their way out of smoking.
- Jacques Le Houezec, PhD
- Neuroscientist and Smoking cessation specialist
- Manager Amzer Glas – CIMVAPE, training and certification organisation, Rennes, France.
- I have no conflicts of interest with respect to tobacco, vaping or pharmaceutical industries
Greece
Konstantinos Farsalinos, MD, MPH
- Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- An evidence-based approach dictates the integration of tobacco harm reduction in a holistic strategy towards a smoke-free world. Public health is about preventing harm rather than judging behaviors. A carefully-regulated environment that promotes reduced-risk nicotine products to smokers is a historical opportunity to make smoking obsolete. It is also in alignment with the Ottawa declaration of empowerment in health. The WHO should re-examine its position, explore both intended benefits and potential, unintended harms, and establish a stance based on the totality of evidence, avoiding prejudice and predisposition.
- Konstantinos Farsalinos, MD, MPH - Bio and Photo
- Department of Pharmacy, University of Patras, Greece
- Department of Public and Community Health, University of West Attica, Greece
India
Dr Nimesh Desai
It is also important to understand that there is no one formula which applies to all, every smoker has their biogenetics, their personality, their circumstances owing to which they cannot quit smoking. There is a need to consider different solutions for various groups and assess safer alternatives on a case-to-case basis. There is a need to provide consumers with varied and safer alternatives giving them the right to choose the best solution that works for them. There is plenty of evidence and scientific evidence on the vast potential of the tobacco harm reduction category and how it can benefit adult smokers. Source
Malaysia
Dr Steven Chow
President, Federation of Private Medical Practitioners Associations Malaysia “We cannot discount tobacco harm reduction strategies. Switching to less harmful alternatives such as vape, snus, nicotine patches and gum can provide smokers a pathway towards quitting traditional cigarettes altogether.”
New Zealand
Ruth Bonita, MPH, PhD, MD (hon) and Robert Beaglehole, MD, DSc
- Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- We are extremely disappointed by WHO’s illogical and perverse approach to reduced-harm nicotine delivery products, such as vaping, which are a way of limiting the harm caused by burnt tobacco. A key challenge in global tobacco control is to assist cigarette smokers to transition from burnt tobacco products to much less harmful options that provide the nicotine without the toxic smoke. WHO’s continuing disregard of the wealth of evidence on the value of these products is condemning millions of smokers to preventable disease and premature death.
- Ruth Bonita, MPH, PhD, MD (hon) - Former Director of WHO Department of NCD Surveillance (Bio and Photo)
- Robert Beaglehole, MD, DSc - Former Director WHO Department of Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (Bio and Photo)
- Emeritus Professors - University of Auckland, New Zealand
Nigeria
Clive Bates
- Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- WHO is fighting a futile battle in the wrong war using failed tactics and baseless propaganda. WHO needs to stop and rethink right now. Instead of opposing innovations like vaping and raving about the tobacco industry, it should be giving 100 per cent priority to helping people to quit smoking by whatever method works. For millions of people, that includes vaping and smoke-free tobacco and nicotine products. WHO appears to be more interested in who makes these products than in their enormous potential to stop millions of people dying in agony from cancer or living in misery with emphysema.
- Clive Bates - Bio and Photo
- The Counterfactual
- Former Director Action on Smoking and Health (UK)
- I have no conflicts with respect to the tobacco, nicotine or pharmaceutical industries
Norway
Karl E Lund, PhD
- Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- Closing the life-saving escape route that smokers can have in snus and e-cigarettes is a bit like closing the door to the fire escape because the steps may be slippery
- Karl E Lund, PhD - Bio and Photo
- Senior Researcher
- Norwegian Institute of Public Health
Phillipines
Dr. Fernando Fernandez
Better strategy than watching our patients who smoke die of oral cancer
Renowned Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeon and International Lecturer, member of the Philippine Dental Association (PDA) and the Philippine College of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons (PCOMS). He is the past president of the PCOMS and the PDA. Fellow of the International College of Dentists (ICD), International Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (IAOMS) and the Asian Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (AAOMS).
“We warn our patients who are smokers that smoking is the leading cause of oral cancer and strongly advise them to quit smoking. For those who cannot or do not want to quit smoking by themselves or with currently approved methods, we convince them to switch to non-combustible alternatives,”
Sweden
Anders Milton MD, PhD
- Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- Give people a chance to quit smoking by telling them that there are differences in harm depending how they get their nicotine.
- Traditional cigarettes are lethal; half of the smokers die as a direct result of their smoking.
- Look at the Swedish statistics. Swedish men have the lowest incidence of tobacco related death within the EU according to EU statistics although around 30 percent of Swedish men use nicotine on a daily basis. The reason is that about two-thirds of the men that use nicotine daily use snus which does not cause cancer.
- Governments and public agencies as well as intergovernmental agencies should tell people the truth – there are differences in harm to health between different sources of nicotine. Allow people to make choices based on correct information.
- Anders Milton MD, PhD - Bio and Photo
- Chairman of the Snuscommission
Lars Ramström PhD
- Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- Snus is the most commonly used self-treatment aid for smoking cessation. Quit attempters using snus as a cessation aid have a significantly higher success rate than those using other aids. All these effects yield favorable consequences for public health, suggesting that snus has been a major factor behind Sweden’s record-low prevalence of smoking and its position as the country with Europe’s lowest level of tobaccorelated mortality among men based on analysis of data from a WHO report.”(Ramström L, Borland R, Wikmans
- Lars Ramström PhD - Bio and Photo
- Principal Investigator
- Institute for Tobacco Studies
- Täby, Sweden
Tunisia
Fares Mili MD-CTTS- NCTTP
- Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- Slightly more than one in ten people in the world (10.7%) present a mental health disorder like Depression, Bipolarity, Schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, substance use disorder, Alcohol use disorder, Drug use Disorder and eating disorders ( IHME’s Global Burden of Disease 2017) with a high prevalence of smoking in this specific population and low rates of long term abstinence. Many of them present a quantitative or qualitative dysfunction of the nicotinic alpha 7 receptor and disturbances in attention and need to boost their cognition by the use of nicotine. Depriving them of the use of a much less toxic source than conventional cigarettes such as no smoking nicotine products is a kind of stigma. The same is true for all marginalized populations in developed countries and low and middle-income countries. WHO gains by making its strategies more flexible by adopting risk reduction as an effective tool alongside other means of helping to quit smoking.
- Fares Mili MD-CTTS- NCTTP - Bio and Photo
- Pulmonologist- Addictologist
- Tunisian Society of Tobacology and Addictive Behaviors ( STTACA) Chairman
United States
Kenneth Warner
- Photo: University of Michigan
- Source: Article by Marc Gunther
- Author of: How to Think—Not Feel—about Tobacco Harm Reduction
- Author of: Who’s Smoking Now, and Why It Matters
- Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- Evidence from six completely different sources demonstrates that vaping is increasing smoking cessation.
- 1. Randomized controlled trials. The Cochrane Review, the gold standard of scientific credibility, says there is “moderate certainty evidence” that vaping increases smoking cessation more effectively than do nicotine replacement therapy products.
- 2. Population studies find e-cigarettes increasing smoking cessation, especially when people use ecigarettes frequently.
- 3. As e-cigarette sales rise, cigarette sales fall. Econometric studies confirm the two products are substitutes.
- 4. Other studies have found that policies intended to decrease youth vaping have increased youth smoking. Another study found that a tax on e-cigarettes in Minnesota increased adult smoking and decreased smoking cessation.
- 5. Multiple simulation analyses have concluded that the potential benefit of vaping for adult smoking cessation substantially outweighs any risk that vaping might increase youth smoking.
- 6. Swedish men’s substituting snus, a smokeless tobacco product, for cigarettes demonstrates the potential for lower-risk products to dramatically reduce tobacco-produced diseases.
- Tragically, public health organizations that focus exclusively on the potential risks of vaping for young people – risks that, frankly, have been grossly exaggerated – are likely to be damaging the health of the public.
- Kenneth Warner, PhD
- Avedis Donabedian Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Public Health,
- Dean Emeritus of Public Health
- University of Michigan
- Evidence from six completely different sources demonstrates that vaping is increasing smoking cessation.
Steven Schroeder
- Photo: E-Cig Summit 2020
- Source: Article by Marc Gunther and Source: Article by Thomas Fuller
Mitch Zeller, JD
- Photo: FDA
David Abrams
- 1-David Abrams good quotes from David and others
- Photo: Documentary - You Don't Know Nicotine
- Quote: Interview
- Bio: NYU School of Global Public Health
- 2-Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- WHO of all Institutions should base its policies and recommendations on the best and strongest scientific evidence available. The WHO can do better at saving the lives of over a billion smokers by updating its science and by correcting the massive misinformation that all forms of nicotine and tobacco -products are equally deadly and thus smokers should quit or die rather than reduce their harms dramatically by using dramatically less harmful modes of nicotine delivery.
- The WHO misinformation is not science at its best, it is tantamount to embracing propaganda. Propaganda that conflates all tobacco and nicotine products as being equally harmful. This is unacceptable from such an august and respected body as WHO, it is antithetical to the core values of WHO – of social justice, eradication of preventable chronic diseases where combusted (smoked ) tobacco and some forms of smokeless tobacco but not nicotine itself is the primary driver of chronic diseases, death and untold suffering.
- David B Abrams PhD.
- Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences
- New York University School of Global Public Health
Tom Miller
Scott Ballin, JD
- Photo: Monique Calello / The News Leader
- Bio: Has served as chairman of the Coalition on Smoking or Health (the precursor to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids); vice president of the American Heart Association; steering committee of the Alliance for Health Economic and Agriculture Development (AHEAD); advisor to the Food and Drug Law Institute’s tobacco conferences; advisor to the University of Virginia's Morven Dialogues on tobacco, nicotine and harm reduction.
- Statement: Most smokers want to quit and if we can provide those smokers with science based, consumer acceptable lower risk products we could fundamentally alter the current marketplace and save hundreds of thousands of premature deaths.
- Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- This year approximately 8 million people will die prematurely from smoking. I am deeply disappointed with what can only be described as an ongoing 'dark ages' approach to tobacco control. While many traditional forms of tobacco control remain useful and effective, little has been done by the WHO and many other mainstream public health organizations to acknowledge and think about how regulation, research, technology and innovation can be collectively harnessed to give the billion addicted cigarette smokers viable science based lower risk products. Science and 'safe-haven' engagement and debate continues to be displaced with polarized thinking that often is more focused on getting media attention than actually finding workable win-win solutions for the good of society.
- Scott D. Ballin, JD
- Health Policy Consultant
- Former Vice President and Legislative Counsel, American Heart Association
- Former Chairman of the Coalition on Smoking OR Health (AHA, ASCS. ALA)
- Advisor to the University of Virginia, Institute for and Engagement and Negotiation (The Morven Dialogues)
Kenneth Michael Cummings PhD, MPH
- 1-Source: If you have somebody pulling their chemo bag and they are going to sneak a cigarette out behind the cancer center, which we see, it’s pretty sad. It ain’t a choice. It’s a true addiction. There are alternative nicotine delivery products that don’t have to send you to your local cancer center,”
- 2-Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- The status-quo is unacceptable – 8-million deaths from cigarettes just this year, more next and the year after that. WHO’s ideologic, non-science based position on lower risk nicotine products as substitutes for deadly cigarettes is costing lives and protecting the profits of the very companies they wish to put out of business. Please update your tobacco control playbook, lives are stake.”
- K. Michael Cummings, PhD, MPH - Bio and Photo
- Professor, Medical University of South Carolina, USA
Clifford E. Douglas, J.D
- 1-Statement:
- All nicotine-containing products fall along a continuum of risk – with combustible tobacco products like cigarettes on one end representing the most dangerous form of nicotine delivery, and on the other end medicinal nicotine products. For the smoker, quitting all nicotine and tobacco use is the surest way to reduce risk, but for those who want or need to continue using nicotine, switching to a noncombustible source of nicotine will significantly reduce their risk compared to continued smoking.
- 2-Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- The WHO blithely, and quite wrongly, claims that switching from smoking cigarettes, by far the leading preventable cause of premature death and disability, to far less harmful e-cigarettes—which they cleverly but unscientifically imply may be deadly—is not quitting,
- Clifford E. Douglas, J.D.
- Director, Tobacco Research Network
- Adjunct Professor, Department of Health Management and Policy
- University of Michigan School of Public Health
- Bio and photo:
- In 1988 he served as the associate director of the National Coalition on Smoking or Health, where he worked for its founding director, Matt Myers (who later became the president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids); He served as an attorney and advisor in the state attorney general actions that resulted in the Master Settlement Agreement; Worked as a policy advocate, lawyer and consultant on behalf of Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights and the Public Health Law Center; Served as the American Cancer Society’s Vice President for Tobacco Control and as the founding Director of ACS’s Center for Tobacco Control; He is the Director, University of Michigan Tobacco Research Network and Adjunct Professor, University of Michigan School of Public Health.
Allan Erickson
No Photo found. Source #1 Bio: Former Vice President for Public Education and Tobacco Control, American Cancer Society; staff director, Latin American Coordinating Committee for Tobacco Control. National Tobacco Reform Initiative (NTRI) Coordinator Statement / Quotes: I know how totally horrible tobacco is for a human being, and what it does to you. But I think things are moving in the direction of harm reduction. I think a lot of people have hidden their heads in the sand. They are just so totally opposed to e-cigarettes, it drives them nuts. I think there is a whole range of new products that are coming up that could potentially be better and better and better—less harmful.
Abigail S. Friedman, Ph.D.
- Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- A myriad of studies link e-cigarette price increases and access-restrictions to greater smoking rates. Findings from biochemical analyses suggest that such regulations are likely to be harmful on net: vaping nicotine appears to produce substantially lower levels of key toxicants than smoking cigarettes; and, adverse respiratory and cardiovascular outcomes as well as biomarkers for major carcinogens generally fall when smokers switch to nicotine e-cigarettes. Thus, for smokers who do not want to quit tobacco or who want to quit but have been unsuccessful in their cessation attempts, substituting towards electronic nicotine delivery systems offers a means to reduce their risk of tobacco-related illness. The public health community and World Health Organization have a moral obligation to clearly communicate these facts to smokers and their families, and to advocate for policies that reflect tobacco products’ relative risks.”
- Abigail S. Friedman, Ph.D. - Bio and Photo
- Assistant Professor,
- Department of Health Policy and Management
- Yale School of Public Health
Jonathan Foulds PhD
- Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- Over a billion people smoke tobacco. All smokers should be informed that many sources of nicotine are far less harmful than cigarettes. Keeping people ignorant of this fact denies the basic human right to accurate information and impairs their ability to make informed choices that affect their health. Nicotine in its most harmful and addictive form—the cigarette—is typically cheap, available everywhere, to take for as long as you like, and in many parts of the world (including the USA) comes with minimum information on health risks. It is time for regulation of all nicotine-delivery products to provide access inversely proportional to harmfulness (the opposite of the current situation). [Foulds & Kozlowski, 2007]
- Jonathan Foulds PhD - Bio and Photo
- Professor of Public Health Sciences & Psychiatry
- Penn State University, College of Medicine, United States
Dr. Cheryl Healton
Bio (from the above link) Her Photo is on her bio page: Founding President and CEO of American Legacy Foundation (created from MSA Funds, now known as the Truth Initiative); Dean of School of Global Public Health and Professor of Public Health Policy and Management, NYU School of Global Public Health; Founding chair of the Public Health Practice Council of the Association of Schools of Public Health; Serves on the National Board of Public Health Examiners, the Betty Ford Institute, Lung Cancer Alliance, Board of Directors at the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health, and the Board of Directors at HealthRight International. Tobacco Harm Reduction Quote: E-cigarette Summit 2021 We treat addiction to combustible tobacco differently than addiction to other products with respect to harm reduction approaches. We are spending way too much time on infighting and too little time on finding common ground to massively reduce combustible tobacco use and ending the false equivalency between products. Smoking remains a worldwide tragedy causing a billion lives at stake in this century alone. Lower risk products exist to help those unable or unwilling to quit. We have abandoned our harm reduction approach in public health when it comes to saving smokers. Retirement from American Legacy (now Truth)
Bethea A Kleykamp, MA, PhD
- Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- As I write these words, thousands upon thousands of people are losing their lives because of tobacco smoking. Each of these lives had a story—a story cut short because health authorities including the WHO are not using scientific and regulatory resources to make harm reduction products and information fully available to the public. Let us finally come to our senses and stop these unnecessary deaths by embracing the science of harm reduction.”
- Bethea A Kleykamp, - Bio and Photo
- Research Associate Professor,
- University of Rochester Medical Center
- COI: I currently have no conflicts of interest with respect to tobacco, vaping or pharmaceutical industries. From May 2014 to September 2018, I provided harm reduction consulting services to an e-cigarette company (NJOY) and a tobacco company (RJ Reynolds) through my work at Pinney Associates.
Lynn Kozlowski
Ethan A Nadelmann
- Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- 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.
- 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.
- Ethan A Nadelmann - Bio and Photo
- Founder & Former Executive Director (2000-2017)
- Drug Policy Alliance
- New York and International
Raymond S. Niaura, PhD
- Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- Misinformation that conflates the term tobacco control with all forms of nicotine delivery regardless of harm thus egregiously deprives smokers, the public, policymakers and governments of responsible policymaking and individual choice, grossly ignores the full weight of current scientific evidence, evidence that can and should more rapidly make the most lethal combusted forms of smoked tobacco obsolete and save millions and millions of lives and suffering much sooner that could otherwise be achieved. Telling the whole truth to the world should be the sole mission of WHO and it can and should do better.
- Raymond Niaura PhD. (Bio and Photo)
- Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences
- New York University School of Global Public Health
- Former: Director of Science and Training at the Schroeder Institute (SI) for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies at the Truth Initiative, and former President of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco
- Deputy Editor of the Nicotine and Tobacco Research
John Seffrin, MD, PhD
Photo Source #1 and Source #2 Bio: Former CEO of the American Cancer Society and ACS Cancer Action Network. Served on the White House Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion, and Integrative and Public Health, as well as the Advisory Committee to the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He also served on the National Cancer Policy Board of the Institute of Medicine and the National Cancer Legislation Advisory Committee. He is a past president of the International Union Against Cancer. He helped to create the National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids (now the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids) Source #1 and Source #2 Statement: Technologies/alternatives exist today that can help people quit smoking or at least reduce significantly their consumption of burned tobacco, which is what kills them. After fighting the tobacco epidemic for over 5 decades, we now have proven harm reduction methods to help us avoid a carnage in otherwise preventable deaths.
Michael Siegel
Matthew Wayne Johnson, Ph.D.=
Cheryl K. Olson, Sc.D.
- Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- Too few of my colleagues in public health research know people who smoke; they become abstractions to us. Existing smoking cessation aids have been available for many years; evidence suggests they don’t help most smokers. Let’s treat smokers like fellow human beings and provide them with a range of options they actually want and can live with (pun intended).
- Cheryl K. Olson, Sc.D. - Bio and Photo
- San Carlos, California
- Behavioral research consultant,
- Previously on Harvard Medical School psychiatry faculty
Michael F. Pesko, PhD
- Source: Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
- The evidence base is growing that when you regulate e-cigarettes so they are harder to purchase and/or less appealing to use, there is more combustible tobacco product use across all populations. WHO should acknowledge that e-cigarettes (and snus) are safer products, and advocate regulating proportionate to risk, in order to improve population health.
- Michael F. Pesko, PhD - Bio and Photo
- Associate Professor
- Department of Economics
- Andrew Young School of Policy Studies
- Georgia State University
Daniel Wikler, Ph.D.
Michael Fiore
"In just today, we are going to lose 20 of our residents. Twenty individuals in Wisconsin are going to die prematurely of a disease directly caused by their smoking, on average, robbing them of 10 to 15 years of life." " Many adults don't want children exposed to secondhand smoke. Vaping is, without a question, less dangerous than cigarette smoking."
Thomas Brandon, PhD, United States
Earlier this year, the findings from a major clinical trial, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that e-cigarettes were almost twice as effective as the nicotine patch for producing one year of smoking cessation. These findings added to those of other, smaller studies previously published.
“This could be a game-changer for lots of people,” says Thomas Brandon, Ph.D., director of Moffitt’s Tobacco Research and Intervention Program and chair of the Department of Health Outcomes and Behavior. “It means that for smokers who have not been able to quit by using the available medications, vaping might be worth a try. But it is important to completely switch from smoking to vaping to get the most health benefits.”
Thomas Brandon, PhD, is the Director of the Tobacco Research and Intervention Program and Chair of the Department of Health Outcomes and Behavior at Moffitt Cancer Center. He is also Professor of Psychology and Oncologic Sciences at the University of South Florida
Jason Osborne
Statements by Multiple Parties
2021: One hundred specialists call for WHO to change its hostile stance on tobacco harm reduction - new letter to FCTC delegates published
2021: Reappraising Choice in Addiction: Novel Conceptualizations and Treatments for Tobacco Use Disorder
2021: 75 Tobacco Control experts ask CDC to change the name of EVALI
2018: Letter from seventy-two specialists in nicotine science, policy and practice
Suggestions to add to this page
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Sec. Azar (need to find original source, might be a youtube video) VTA Graphic and Hawaii Graphic
“If you’re going to do one or the other, in terms of these respiratory effects you’re probably better off with an e-cigarette,” says study co-author Dr. Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco
expert reaction to WHO report on nicotine and tobacco products
Ending Cigarette Use By Adults In A Generation Is Possible
More names to research for positive statements
Jaron Hoani King
Comments on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from expert stakeholders
World No Tobacco Day: Here's why WHO’s approach to tobacco cessation needs an overhaul
The Truth Initiative, too, once embraced harm reduction. Its former board chairman, Tom Miller, Iowa’s long-serving attorney general, still argues that e-cigarettes are a “means to saving millions of lives.” Cheryl Healton, its former CEO, and David Abrams, formerly executive director of the Schroeder National Institute of Tobacco Research and Policy Studies, which is housed at the Truth Initiative, are harm-reduction advocates. So is Steven Schroeder, for whom the institute is named. Found here
Bill G.
Neil B.
Dr Garrett McGovern Bio Article and [1]
Kellie Ann Forbes BScN Here
PROFESSOR HEINO STÖVER and here
Dr. Derek Yach
- “We’ve been very clear that we support provisions that children should never vape or smoke. However, our main objective is to help adult smokers quit by making cessation aids accessible and to support adult smokers switching to approved harm reduction products. These include snus, e-cigarettes, heated-tobacco products and nicotine pouches,” says Yach. “In the long term, tackling cessation together with harm reduction is the only way to bring smoking rates down relatively soon. If today’s adult smokers quit or switch, even into their fifties or sixties, they will see improvements in their quality of life.”
