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World No Tobacco Day: a missed opportunity

The New Nicotine Alliance says World No Tobacco Day is a missed opportunity

by Dave Cross
May 31, 2018

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The New Nicotine Alliance (NNA) is a charity concerned with improving public health, through a greater understanding of “new” (risk-reduced) nicotine products and their uses. Tobacco harm reduction is vital to saving millions of lives, and the NNA criticises the World Health Organisation (WHO) for not helping.

The NNA makes four key points in a press release:

The World Health Organisation is misleading in attributing a raised risk of heart and cardiovascular disease to tobacco, rather than smoking.
The WHO could achieve improved results by adhering to its own stated commitments to tobacco harm reduction and providing opportunities to the public to make informed choices.
Grass roots tobacco harm reduction campaigns have been instrumental in driving considerable reductions in smoking prevalence in many nations.
World No Tobacco Day should be an opportunity to raise global awareness of innovative modern alternatives to smoking.

Speaking on World No Tobacco Day 2018, the New Nicotine Alliance (NNA) called upon the World Health Organisation to show leadership in highlighting the considerable public health potential of reduced risk products.

“E-cigarettes are a proven safer alternative to smoking which a great many people find an acceptable substitute. They have contributed to record falls in smoking prevalence in the United Kingdom,” said Sarah Jakes, chair of NNA.

“There have also been big declines in smoking prevalence in France and the USA due to uptake of innovative products, while Sweden and Norway boast by far the lowest smoking rates in Europe thanks to the widespread use of snus, a tobacco product which carries a fraction of the risk of smoking lit tobacco.”

She continued: “The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control was founded with a commitment to encourage tobacco harm reduction. Its Ottawa Charter and Jakarta Declaration also pledge to put people at the heart of decision-making and to support and enable consumers to keep themselves, their families and friends healthy. Yet these goals appear to have been abandoned in favour of blindly attacking industry, ignoring the global success of alternative nicotine products and refusing to engage with consumers.”

“On World No Tobacco Day, it is time for leadership from the WHO in educating governments that e-cigarettes are not tobacco products as some states wrongly categorise them, and emphasising that it is the act of lighting tobacco and smoking it which is harmful to heart and cardiovascular disease, not tobacco in all its forms,” added Jakes.

“In 1976, Michael Russell famously said ‘people smoke for nicotine but they die from the tar’, leading to an acceptance of the nicotine replacement therapy market we have today. Yet increasingly the public are being misled into believing nicotine is a problem, when it can be a solution.”

“World No Tobacco Day should be a great opportunity to raise awareness of far safer alternative nicotine products to maximise benefits to public health worldwide. The WHO should be empowering people to take control of their health by way of clear messages on differing risks and the relative safety of nicotine, but this year they have sadly missed the target.”

The NNA would like to see a greater commitment by the WHO and NGOs to correcting ideological opposition to successful consumer-driven solutions to lit tobacco, and a better recognition of long-term recreational use of nicotine as a powerful incentive for smoking cessation.

Support the NNA for free here: https://nnalliance.org

Dave Cross

Journalist at POTV

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Dave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.