WHO Hits Out At Vaping Again
The World Health Organization’s Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has put his name to yet another attack on vaping, ASH shows how far it has fallen, and an expert speaks sense
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by Dave Cross
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“History is repeating itself,” writes the World Health Organization’s Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. He was talking about the tobacco industry selling nicotine to children, but he could’ve easily been talking about the succession of lies being carried by various WHO Twitter accounts. Or, he could have been talking about the nonsense contained in the latest report about vaping from the WHO.
The World Health Organization (WHO), strongarmed by Michael Bloomberg, and STOP, a global tobacco industry watchdog funded by Michael Bloomberg, have launched “Hooking the next generation,” a report claiming that the, “tobacco and nicotine industry designs products, implements marketing campaigns and works to shape policy environments to help them addict the world’s youth”.
The report was published just ahead of World No Tobacco Day, 31 May, and the WHO claims to be “amplifying the voices of young people who are calling on governments to protect them from being targets of the tobacco and nicotine industry”.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO Director-General, joyfully stated: “These industries are actively targeting schools, children and young people with new products that are essentially a candy-flavoured trap. How can they talk about harm reduction when they are marketing these dangerous, highly-addictive products to children?”
Commenting on the report, Professor Nick Hopkinson, Professor of Respiratory Medicine at Imperial College London, highlighted how far Action on Smoking and Health has fallen, a charity he acts as chair for, when he said: “Although vaping is much less harmful than smoking, and there is clear evidence from large randomised controlled trials that they can help smokers to quit, WHO is absolutely right to highlight the fact that the tobacco industry is aggressively marketing e-cigarettes to children and young people. This is completely unacceptable and governments around the world need to take steps to introduce and enforce regulations to stop this.
“It is unfortunate that back in 2021 the UK government voted down amendments that would have given it power to regulate marketing of e-cigarettes. It also failed to introduce an excise tax on them, which the chancellor was advised to do last year. By calling a snap election, the Prime Minister has stopped the Tobacco and Vapes bill in its tracks. This would raise age of sale to create a smokefree generation and get a grip on youth vaping. Whatever happens at the election, the next government will need to move swiftly to reintroduce these vital public health measures.”
Hopkinson failed to pick up on any of the serious problems contained in the WHO’s report or take on board the many experts pointing out the grave flaws in the Tobacco and Vapes Bill. ASH has consistently drifted away from a measured approach to tobacco harm reduction and now seem keen to adopt a similar stance to its prohibitionist cousin in Scotland.
“This report, and the accompanying press release, make claims that do not accurately reflect current evidence on e-cigarettes” - Dr Sarah Jackson
Dr Sarah Jackson, Principal Research Fellow at the University College London Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group, added a badly needed evidence-based perspective: “This report, and the accompanying press release, make claims that do not accurately reflect current evidence on e-cigarettes.
“The report suggests there is ‘insufficient evidence’ that e-cigarettes are effective in helping people to stop smoking. In fact, a Cochrane review on this topic (recognised worldwide as the highest standard in evidence-based healthcare) has concluded that there is ‘high-certainty evidence’ from randomised controlled trials that e-cigarettes increase quit rates compared to nicotine replacement therapy. The most recent version of this review included 88 trials with more than 27,000 participants. This finding is echoed by numerous observational studies that find people who try to quit smoking with an e-cigarette are around twice as likely to be successful in their quit attempt than those who try to quit without using e-cigarettes. In addition, population-level trends show that as more people try to quit smoking with e-cigarettes, the success rate of quit attempts increases.
“The report also suggests it is misleading to suggest that e-cigarettes offer a form of harm reduction compared to smoking cigarettes. Large evidence reviews, conducted independent of industry, consistently conclude that while vaping is not risk-free, it poses only a small fraction of the risks of smoking tobacco.
“The press release states that ‘e-cigarette use increases conventional cigarette use, particularly among non-smoking youth’. That e-cigarettes are a gateway to smoking is a widespread concern, based on observational studies that show young people who vape are more likely to subsequently start smoking than those who do not. However, little evidence currently suggests this association is causal: just because vaping precedes smoking does not mean vaping causes smoking. If that were the case, we would expect to see declines in smoking decrease or reverse when rates of vaping increase. If anything, we currently see the opposite pattern: larger declines in smoking among age groups with greater increases in vaping.”
Photo Credit:
Banner image – WHO press release, cropped and resized
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.
