WHO Releases New Report
The World Health Organization releases a new report that “sheds light on the dark impact of e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products”
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by Dave Cross
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The WHO manages to touch base with facts and evidence at one point, where it states that tobacco kills “more than 8 million people a year, with more than 7 million of those deaths attributed to direct tobacco use and about 1.3 million – to exposure of non-smokers to second-hand smoke. Tobacco also eventually kills up to half of its users and therefore remains a global health emergency.”
The WHO study group on tobacco product regulation claims its report will be able “to inform policymakers of these products’ scientific background and urges them to bridge the regulatory gaps for new nicotine and tobacco products. These include electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS), electronic non-nicotine delivery systems (ENNDS) and heated tobacco products (HTPs).”
Unfortunately, the study group has produced a politically and ideologically driven document, rendering it wholly useless to legislators.
They claim:
- Harm caused by vaping due to toxic ingredients
- Harm is caused by the use of nicotine exposure
- Electronic cigarettes have “hardly any regulation”
- Vapes “are aggressively marketed”
- Promotion of vaping is aimed “children and adolescents”
Against this background of misinformation, laughably, the WHO promotes a main recommendation from the new report that policymakers “should maintain focus on evidence-based measures to reduce tobacco use, as outlined in the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC). This includes novel and emerging tobacco products, which are being pushed by the tobacco industry.”
How it expects evidence-based policy to arise from its collection of half-truths and lies isn’t explained.
The report recommends:
- Heated tobacco products should be placed under the most restrictive tobacco control regulations
- Heated tobacco product manufacturers should be banned from making claims about reduced harm
- That the public is “well informed about the risks associated” with using heated tobacco products
- That countries should “rely on and support independent data and research on the health impact of using heated tobacco products”
- A total ban on all commercial marketing of e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products, including social media and through organisations “funded by and associated with the tobacco industry”
- To ban all e-cigarettes, “in which the user can control device features and liquid ingredients”
- Where cannabis is legal, for it to be banned from use with e-cigarettes
The WHO says these recommendations should be enacted immediately: “Countries are urged to implement the new report’s recommendations. There is sufficient information about nicotine and tobacco products to act to protect the health of their populations, especially younger generations.”
The global threat posed to tobacco harm reduction and vaping by the World Health Organization couldn’t be more stark.
Harm reduction expert Clive Bates urged the UK Government to use its experience of reducing smoking rates by encouraging switching as part of its “big independent voice” at the forthcoming COP9 summit in November.
He recently told the Daily Express that the WHO is being “negligent and incompetent” and “ignoring the science”, adding: “Millions of lives are on the line. That is not hyperbole. If you resist a life-saving technology where progress has been very slow in the past then essentially you are culpable in denying people that life-saving technology and the result will be more cases of disease and death.”
Lord Ridley stated that the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Vaping’s recent report, “urged the UK to take a strong position on harm reduction and the opportunity here to go in with a strong harm reduction message.
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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