Regular reviews on Tobacco Harm Reduction

Tobacco harm reduction is a controversial area. I can't comment on the science but I can give an outline. The premise of tobacco harm reduction is that smoke, rather than nicotine, is what makes smoking dangerous. Consequently smokers who want to give up can use smokeless tobacco or e-cigarettes more safely than smoking tobacco.

The emerging tobacco harm reduction market has benefited from scares about the dangers of smoking to by-standers. Urging people to give up smoking has always been easier if you can persuade them that smoke is killing their loved ones. In fact ASH Scotland uses the term 'harm reduction' here (a section from Sheila Duffy's epic 'Beyond Smoke Free' document), to mean that using nicotine replacement therapy beats smoking in front of your children. She seems to feel that smokers should be content with a 'sticking plaster', rather than a satisfying experience.

Users of e-cigarettes and other smokeless tobacco have found themselves faced with the threat of prohibition far more quickly than smokers. The market for e-cigarettes has clearly competed for the same customers that might otherwise have bought nicotine patches and gum from global pharmaceutical companies. Pharmaceutical companies want to develop drugs based on natural substances like tobacco, and the entire anti-smoking establishment has sought to make e-cigarettes unavailable to consumers, in the hope that it will create a captive market for pharmaceutical cessation products (see forum discussion here).

Users of e-cigarettes know that banning their product is not to do with health (even though spurious claims are made about uncertain health risks). They can see cigarettes still on the market, while the product they resorted to in order to stop smoking has been banned – leaving them with the options of stopping smoking without any help or buying the products of pharmaceutical interests.

Smokers have lived with their chosen product being taxed to the heavens: e-cig users live with the threat of their product of choice being made unavailable (for much the same reasons as the rest of us will no longer be able to buy calendula lotion or other common herbal products after 1 May). For most people an e-cigarette ban remains a threat rather than actuality (New York State being closest to an outright ban in the US, and full bans operating in Brazil, Singapore and in Canada except where the e-cigarette is free of nicotine – see here for details).

This guide to essential reading on tobacco harm reduction offers further links and insights. Stories include a possible workplace ban on e-cigarettes in Georgia (together with suggestions for local action) and the opposition of students at the University of Massachusetts to a smoking ban that included e-cigarettes and smokeless tobacco in its reach. There's much more where this came from, and the list will be regularly updated.

European Union seeks wider anti-tobacco powers: petition and consultation

Forest presents a video on the EU tobacco control consultation, which closes on Friday.



Please sign petition here, consider replying to the consultation, or take both actions. A campaigner for e-cigarettes writes:

Plans to hand all nicotine sales rights to pharmaceutical companies are moving along. There are now proposals from the EU and WHO to bring nicotine under tobacco control regulations where it hasn't been medicalised. To complement that move, new end game strategies from tobacco control on removing it from tobacco products have been announced.

There may be more outright bans or just trading restrictions, border quotas, internet sales bans, advertising bans, postal bans, extortionate taxes, etc.

Please take action, it is important for nicotine traders and users to be vocal to have our wishes heard, all policy and regulatory considerations so far appear to be by and for corporate pharmaceutical and tobacco control interests.  The EU consultation presents at least a pretence of  democracy but the WHO have no intention of anything but totalitarian control.  Are we subordinate drones in the collective or humans with self determination and free will?

Respond to the EU and WHO proposals and please spread the word to other nicotine users.  Don't let them take away the rest of our choices without a fight.

The consultation document is 11 pages long, far shorter than many such documents. The format is fairly simple: it presents an aspect of the problem, such as legislation about smokeless tobacco, and gives three options. Option 1 is usually to retain control for policy within member states. Options 2 and 3 are generally Europe-wide solutions with Option 3 generally being more hard-line. (You may wish to support Option 2 in Question 2, which provides for the legalisation of snus and other smokeless tobacco throughout the EU.)

Clearly the Commission wants to be given a mandate to legislation for the whole of Europe. Please respond to the Consultation if you can, recommending that member states retain control over tobacco control policy.

The deadline is Friday 17 December. Instructions for responding are all contained here.

Pharmaceuticals, harm reduction and competing interests

Iro Cyr of CAGE Canada has written an enlightening letter to David Staples of the Edmonton Journal, who wrote an article questioning the delay surrounding new warnings on tobacco packs.

Her letter clearly shows the confusing message put out by authorities that encourage smoking cessation, and yet ban products that customers choose as a substitute, allegedly on safety grounds. The products not covered by such bans include nicotine replacement therapy and other products of pharmaceutical companies. Those that are: e-cigarettes, snus, and other products sourced from companies other than the pharmaceuticals, including tobacco companies. Taking such substitutes off the market in favour of the pharmaceutical companies' nicotine products reduces the options available to smokers who want to stop smoking, and also increases their cost.

Iro Cyr asks why journalists criticise the lobbying activities of tobacco companies but not of pharmaceuticals, for example, who prefer that the only products available to help people stop smoking are their own. The letter is clear and challenging and the links are informative.

The European Commission is currently lobbying on exactly this area in an elegantly entitled consultation: Possible Revision of the Tobacco Products Directive 2001/37?EC, asking respondents whether EU member states should have their own policies or whether policies and bans should be comprehensively applied across Europe. Anyone concerned about the power of the EU should consider answering it, as well as those concerned about effective harm reduction or plain old choice (further details here). Other than harm reduction products (e-cigarettes and smokeless/chewing tobacco), questions cover the display of tobacco, the use of vending machines, the listing of tobacco ingredients and packaging requirements: both whether they should be regulated and if so, whether this should be done on a Europe-wide basis.

Answering this consultation will not be enough, but it will be something.