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Information on Tobacco Harm Reduction (THR), Nicotine, and safer alternatives to using combustible cigarettes
We aim to provide information for interested members of the public (remember you are the 'public' in public health). This might include consumers, scientists and researchers, health workers, medical doctors, regulators, and journalists. Most of the time that links directly to the original science, we aim to provide useful summaries/comment where possible as a guide, we encourage you to read the full paper if you wish.
Finding Balance
In 2021, the American Journal of Public Health published the paper "Balancing Consideration of the Risks and Benefits of E-Cigarettes." It was written by 15 past presidents of the Society for Nicotine and Tobacco Research (SRNT). SRNT is the main global professional society for researchers who focus on nicotine and tobacco. Its mission is "...to stimulate the generation and dissemination of new knowledge concerning nicotine in all its manifestations - from molecular to societal." The paper discussed the contentious debate about tobacco harm reduction, with a focus on e-cigarettes.
Around the world, limits are being placed on people who smoke to help themselves stop smoking. There are many reasons for over-regulating and outright banning reduced-risk products. They include a moral panic over youth use, a false belief that THR products are a gateway to smoking, stigma about using nicotine, misinformation, click-bait media articles, and science riddled with mythological flaws (To learn more about these issues, please search this website). This is adversely affecting people's ability to save their own lives and improve their health by quitting smoking or preventing a return to smoking.
If after exploring the Safer Nicotine Wiki you feel compelled to help consumers in their efforts to have access to safer alternatives to combustible tobacco, please see our Advocating For Tobacco Harm Reduction page, which contains calls to action you can assist with. While some of our volunteers may fill an advocacy role outside of their efforts on the Safer Nicotine Wiki, we do not participate in or endorse/oppose any regulations as a group. It is outside our mission. We're here for educational purposes only. That information may include studies showing the outcomes of some regulations because it is always important to look at the goals and tradeoffs of any policy.
Tobacco Harm Reduction News
The Latest News on THR, Vaping and Safer Nicotine
Here you will find the latest news and links to news about all nicotine products, regulations, etc.
How to explore:
There is also a list of FAQ Questions that may be interesting. And a lists of FAQ questions from various other organizations,
There is this list of categories Guide to Main Categories, find your local vaping organisation List of orgs
What is this?
This Wiki has been assembled by a team of keen volunteers, free of funding from any industry (tobacco or otherwise) source. If you would like to contribute to the expansion and evolution of this resource, please see the how to contribute section below. Remember: respected sources only.
We are looking for volunteers to translate the wiki into different languages, please sign up for an account if you can help. We can be contacted at the email below, please include your username when contacting us.
Safe or Safer? Briefly, nothing is absolutely safe, but as the products continually evolve they become safer. Nicotine Replacement Therapy products such as patches, gums, sprays, and inhalers are substantially less than 1% as risky as smoking. Non-pharmaceutical nicotine products can also pose a fraction of the risk of smoking, e.g. Snus (approximately 1%), E-Cigarettes (less than 5%), and Heat not Burn (approximately 10%). These estimates become ever more refined as increasing numbers of research studies are published. Beyond the debate about nicotine tied to smoking and products used to quit smoking, science is also looking at potential therapeutic benefits of nicotine.
Links here for debunking myths Myth Busting provides links to info on anti nicotine claims and how to correct them.
Quit Aid The most frequently-used method to quit tobacco is 'cold turkey', i.e. unaided, but this has a greater failure rate than perhaps all others. It is very difficult to attribute a precise figure towards popular quit methods such as NRT, Varenicline (various trade names), Allen Carr, hypnotherapy, snus etc., as the usual medical standard of proof, the Randomised Controlled Trial, doesn't really cover certain options such as e-cigarettes adequately (as choices of all various combinations of flavour choice, nicotine strength, and device type are impossible to include). However, a recent RCT demonstrated that e-cigarettes were twice as effective as NRT for cessation (probably an underestimate of real world results). Like who knew the Pez dispenser was a quit aid?
Health Improvements Virtually everyone who used a safer nicotine product to quit cigarettes completely experiences profound improvement in their health, e.g. improved breathing and cardiovascular benefits. This is possibly due to totally removing the previous inhalation of carbon monoxide from the tobacco cigarette. Asthma and COPD patients have shown great recovery, see Health Improvements
Commentary from respected sources Many governments around the world recognise that Safer Nicotine Products offer benefits, along with respected organisations such as Public Health England, Royal College of Physicians, Cochrane, and NASEM (US). See Also: Commentary from experts
Cost Savings Vast savings are experienced; this is quite underappreciated by some members of the general public. It would be a gross underestimate to state that a 50% reduction in spending would be experienced by anyone who completely switches. For some users who make their own liquids and manufacture their own coils, costs can be less than 1% of what they would have incurred when smoking.
Our DIY page lists details and has links to important safety information, particularly for those new to making their own liquid. It also provides basic information on safe operation of vaping devices.
Don't forget the list of List of all pages if you can't find what you are looking for, try the Search page
How to Contribute
Find your local vaping group or organisation here: List of Tobacco Harm Reduction and Vaping Groups, worldwide
Please sign up for an account, you will need to verify your email address, you can then start editing after a short delay, please see the How to edit the wiki page for full details. If you use a screen reader and e.g. captchas are a problem, please email us and we will accommodate where possible.
We are looking for volunteers to translate the wiki into different languages, please sign up for an account, if you can help.
If you already have an account, you should be able to promote yourself to a translator, click the link in the sidebar menu or TranslatorSignup. To do this requires a verified email address, that you have completed some (currently 3) edits elsewhere on the site, and your account is not brand new. If you have difficulty or would like to be promoted manually, please email us at info@safernicotine.wiki
We will accept documents if you prefer to write them in word (.doc(x)), or open document format (.odf) or PDF (.pdf). please include you name for attribution, unless you wish to remain anonymous. Please let you know any info you would like included for attribution etc. emails may be sent to the address above. We apologize, but it may take some time to add submitted information. Note: several people may monitor the email address please include a ref. to any previous communication so that we can find it. Thanks!
Looking for something to edit? Try Category:All stub articles for pages that need your input!
Or click any red link to create that page! Try searching and if there is no page already, you can create one from the search results page.
Get in touch
Please email info@safernicotine.wiki
Please do not email asking to use our page authors work, that right is already granted by our licence CC-BY-SA, see the link at the bottom of the page.
Twitter @SaferWiki
Maintenance
Please note every Sunday from 10:00 to 21:00 the site will be undergoing maintenance, disruption will be kept to a minimum but it might be slow or unavailable for a time due to database optimizations. Thank you for understanding.