Urgent call for action – Save the future of alternative nicotine!

We need you to take action! Reach out to your national COP 10 representatives to support proposals that will quickly reduce smoking rates. Write to the representatives about how you quit smoking through harm reduced nicotine products and how important it is for your health!

In the highest-impact academic journal The Lancet, Emeritus Professor Robert Beaglehole and Emeritus Professor Ruth Bonita raises tobacco harm reduction as a successful public health strategy. The New Zealand scientists in Population Health give several examples from different countries in their article and argues that tobacco harm reduction should also be the central strategy of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in addition to the measures for demand and supply reduction.

As the WHO FCTC Conference of the Parties 10 (COP10) – the governing body of the FCTC – starts February 5^th in Panama, it is essential that all the delegates are reminded about these facts. Indeed the FCTC does not prohibit harm reduction approaches but leaves it up to countries to decide how to regulate e-cigarettes and other novel nicotine products. WHO’s lack of endorsement of tobacco harm reduction limits healthier choices for the 1,3 billion people globally who smoke and who are at an increased risk of early death. There is no scientific justification for WHO’s position that e-cigarettes and other novel nicotine products should be treated in the same way as tobacco products.

According to the Professors this position overlooks a risk-proportionate approach, and they believe WHO needs to provide positive leadership and technical support to countries as they consider the use of e-cigarettes and other nicotine delivery devices, including snus, pouches, heated and smokeless tobacco. Sweden, with a long tradition of snus use, is mentioned as having the lowest prevalence of adult daily smoking in the world, down to 6% in 2022, accompanied by low mortality from tobacco-related diseases.

Professors Beaglehole and Bonita means that the recommendation to treat nicotine products as equivalent to cigarettes and regulating them in a similar way would ultimately favour the global cigarette market. Instead, they stress WHO to embrace innovations in nicotine delivery.

We need you to reach out to your national COP 10 representatives to support proposals that will quickly reduce smoking rates. The world’s 1,3 billion people who smoke, half of whom will die early, deserve this leadership from WHO.

Follow these four steps to make a difference!

1. Open up the COP 10-participant list and find you national representatives.
2. Find their email addresses.
3. Write about how you quit smoking because of harm reduced nicotine products, and how important harm reduced nicotine products are for you and your way of quitting cigarettes. Write about how you support proposals that will quickly reduce smoking rates, and send them the article from The Lancet!
4. Share this appeal with the people around you! Your actions can make a crucial difference. Together, we can defend public health.