Eight Weeks to GFN24

Firstly, speaking on Thursday 13 June at the opening of #GFN24, is internationally renowned expert in lung health, allergies and public health, Professor Andrzej Fal. The current President of the Polish Society of Public Health, he leads the Department of Allergies, Lung and Internal Diseases at Poland’s National Institute of Medicine, and over the course of a distinguished career, he has published more than 350 papers in his areas of expertise. 

Professor Fal’s address, titled ‘Health and economic benefits of tobacco harm reduction’, will examine the impact of different models of policy and use of safer nicotine products and continued combustible tobacco use, on individual and population health. Hosted by Dr. Grzegorz Król, Professor Fal’s address will be followed by a response from Michelle Minton, senior policy analyst at the US-based Reason Foundation, where she specialises in consumer policy and regulatory issues. 

On Saturday 15 June, Vivien Azer will deliver her keynote, titled ‘Tobacco harm reduction market influence - past, present, future’. A leading financial analyst and nicotine market specialist, she will be sharing a perspective drawn from her stellar career on Wall Street where, until recently, she was Managing Director and Senior Analyst in Global Beverages, Tobacco and Cannabis at T.D. Cowen. Her coverage of the tobacco and cannabis sectors earned her industry accolades, including a spot-on Institutional Investor’s All-America Research Team on several occasions. In 2022, Vivien was selected as one of the most influential names in cannabis on Forbes’ “The Cannabis 42.0” list.

Vivien Azer will discuss the complex factors that prompted and drove initial investment in the field, as well as the potential impacts of regulation or prohibition on future investment patterns. As the first senior US financial analyst to cover the emerging cannabis sector, she will consider whether there are lessons to be learned from its trajectory for the safer nicotine product industry. Hosted by David Sweanor, Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Ottowa, the response will be offered by Jon Fell, former Chief Executive Officer and Partner at the UK-based investment firm, Ash Park Capital. 

#GFN24 Conference Director, Jessica Harding, commented that she is excited to bring new voices to the conference to share their expertise on the economic and health impacts of tobacco harm reduction. She continued: “There are tens of millions of people worldwide who already have or could successfully quit smoking by switching to safer nicotine products. At #GFN24, we’ll be asking what is the cost to those individuals, to their families, to the health systems that must care for them, or the economies that must manage without their labour, if poorly drafted regulation pushes them back to combustible tobacco? And to what extent will the future of tobacco harm reduction be decided not by governments, but by the markets and consumer demand for safer products?”

Registration for #GFN24 is open now, and accommodation at the Warsaw Marriott can be booked at a discounted rate until Friday 10 May. In-person attendance is required to participate in the full programme, but selected sessions will be streamed at no cost for registered participants unable to travel. Simultaneous translation into both Spanish and Russian will be available both onsite and online for numerous sessions.

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.