Chowdhery for President
Tobacco harm reduction champion Samrat Chowdhery has been appointed as the President of the International Network of Nicotine Consumer Organisations
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by Dave Cross
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Chowdhery has been a journalist in India for over 20 years. He founded Association of Vapers India (AVI) to fight against the corrupt government’s attacks on THR has been involved in advocacy work since 2014.
Samrat was presented with the ‘Advocate of the Year’ award at the 2018 Global Forum for Nicotine in Warsaw. He is currently working on a project that evaluates the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of lower-risk options for bidi smokers and smokeless tobacco users, which involves opening cessation clinics across the country.
Now he takes over the presidency of INNCO, a global umbrella organisation that supports the work national advocacy groups.
Talking about his new role, Chowdhery said: “While harm reduction is a well-accepted intervention strategy in many fields, from addiction treatment to pandemic response, it is finding uncharacteristic opposition in tobacco use, which kills 8 million people every year. Our goal is to ensure consumers have a say in the framing of global tobacco policies as they are affected the most by them.”
INNCO was formed in 2016 when a consumer advocacy groups from across the world came together with the mission of representing the world’s 1.1 billion smokers and millions of users of lower-risk alternatives who often find themselves excluded from decisions that affect them severely. Since then, INNCO has made numerous representations at WHO and national levels, and has secured nearly a $1 million grant for 2020-21 for its advocacy work.
INNCO members include:
- ACEAF Vape
- Acvoda
- AIDUCE
- ANESVAP
- ASOVAPE
- Austrian Vapers Customer Association
- AVCA
- AVI
- CASAA
- CVA
- DADAFO
- ECST
- EU For Snus
- Greek Vapers Club
- Helvetic Vape
- IG-ED
- M.O.V.E.
- NNA Suitsuvaba Eesti
- NNA Sweden
- Norwegian Union of Vapers
- Not Blowing Smoke
- Provapeo Mexico
- Argentine Association for Tobacco Harm Reduction
- The Vapers Philippines
- THR Brasil
- Tobacco Harm Reduction Association of Canada
- Union Belge pour la Vape - Belgische Damp Bond (UBV-BDB)
- Vapers Finland
- Vapers in Power
- ZVS
Other appointments made by INNCO include Ángeles Muntadas-Prim Lafita of Spain as Vice President, Rob de Lange of Netherlands as Secretary and Ingmar Kurg of Estonia as Treasurer. Asa Saligupta from Thailand, Tomas O’Gorman from Mexico, and Claude Bramberger from France have been added to the governing body.
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Photo Credit:
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Logo from INNCO
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave 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.
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