A brutal culture war is raging on the role of harm reduction to hasten the end of smoking. But as the Twitterstorms rumble on, the evidence is mounting that safer nicotine products—vapes, pouches, snus and heated tobacco—are helping millions of people around the world switch away from combustible cigarettes and other risky tobacco use.
Cigarettes are a harmful delivery mechanism for nicotine—and nicotine doesn’t cause tobacco-related disease.
Options now available deliver nicotine at vastly reduced risk. More Swedes use snus than smoke cigarettes, resulting in the lowest lung cancer rates of any EU country. In the United Kingdom, vaping is supported by health authorities as a cessation tool. Around 7 per cent of adults (six million people) vape; a year-on-year increase in vaping is matched by a decline in smoking, and over a quarter of people who made a quit attempt in England in 2020 did so by switching to vaping. These products reduce harm at both an individual and population level.
Gerry Stimson – Filter – 2022-06-07.
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