Well over half of the participants in a three-month trial in which smokers tried vaping as a way of either stopping or reducing smoking successfully gave up cigarettes. Of those who continued to smoke while also vaping, 79% reduced their cigarette consumption.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recently published its 9th report on tobacco use, titled “WHO report on the global tobacco epidemic.” The report monitors global tobacco use and analyzes the effects of MPOWER, a Michael Bloomberg-backed strategy deployed by the WHO (and other Bloomberg-funded organizations), which includes various measures to reduce tobacco use.
When the life-saving benefits of vaping were finally accepted and backed by the UK government, England was at last given a fighting chance of reaching its 2030 smoke-free target.
Negotiating international framework conventions demanding multi-national agreements is always going to be a challenge. And the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) was no exception. Delegates went into bat armed with all their vested interests, anxious not to displease their political bosses back home. In fact, the most active participants in the smoke-free rooms were the American anti-smoking NGOs, who saw a golden opportunity to influence the global anti-smoking legislative landscape in the face of health-based delegates with no experience of drafting international agreements. Incidentally, neither did the WHO, as this was the world’s first health-focused framework convention.
The World Vaper's Alliance has slammed the World Health Organization's new publication claiming to examine the evidence surrounding vaping. The WVA says the publication of the WHO's 'The global tobacco epidemic' report, "once again discounts the powerful impact of harm reduction and vaping, reaffirming WHO's adversarial stance against it".
The one where the WHO denies quitting smoking is quitting smoking, and other daydreaming
This interactive session depends on your stories and memories, as we create an oral history of tobacco harm reduction. Please come ready to share your experiences! Following a ‘chat-show’ format, we'll look back on the rapid development and acceptance of tobacco harm reduction as a key public health strategy over the past decade. Key moments and events that have driven or impeded progress will be illustrated by short video clips from our archives. Our host, Clive Bates, will seek testimony from you, the GFN audience - because so many of you have been directly involved in and integral to tobacco harm reduction's development. Summing up the discussion, Clive will identify key points that might influence or impact the future of the approach, at this tenth anniversary edition of the Global Forum on Nicotine.
The World Health Organization was once implacably opposed to harm reduction related to drug use, instead preaching abstinence as the only policy approach. It was steadfastly resistant to the practice of needle/syringe exchange programs to reduce infection. Today, the WHO website has a page extolling these programs’ benefits to public health. It states, “the risk of transmission of HIV is mainly linked to the injection of drugs.” Yet, the WHO once not only dismissed needle/syringe programs to control HIV but campaigned against them.
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