As you know, in a new report on efforts to combat smoking around the world, WHO warns that vaping risks negating years of progress in “denormalizing” smoking, and e-cigarettes could “renormalize” this practice.
In turn, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyes noted that electronic nicotine delivery systems are harmful and should be better regulated.
Former New York City Mayor and WHO Global Ambassador for Noncommunicable Diseases and Injuries Michael Bloomberg added that tobacco companies have begun aggressively selling new products such as e-cigarettes and electronic nicotine delivery systems.
British experts criticized these statements. In particular, Public Health England is promoting vaping as a tool to help smokers quit smoking.
“The best thing a smoker can do is quit smoking altogether. Our data shows that vaping is one of the most effective ways to quit smoking (especially for those smokers who tried to quit smoking but failed). smokers quit smoking altogether. Although vaping is not safe, there is evidence that it is far less harmful than smoking, “Martin Docrell, head of tobacco control at the Public Health Service, told The Times.
Jerry Stimson, Professor Emeritus at Imperial College London and Director of the Public Health Agency (Knowledge-Action-Change), added that WHO is committed to reinvigorating weak tobacco control efforts by encouraging nation states to impose bans or overly restrictive policies on safer nicotine.
“These actions are irresponsible and illogical. It will only lead to the fact that millions will continue to smoke, die prematurely, and traditional cigarettes continue to be sold,” he added.
John Britton, Emeritus Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Nottingham, believes that WHO still does not understand the fundamental difference between the addiction to tobacco smoking, which kills millions of people every year, and the addiction to alternative tobacco products.
In his opinion, the position of the WHO is hypocritical: while recommending the use of medicinal nicotine products for the treatment of smoking addiction, at the same time the organization opposes similar alternative products in the form of electronic cigarettes.
“WHO is right that non-smokers, especially children, should be discouraged from using any nicotine product. But for the world’s more than one billion tobacco smokers, electronic nicotine delivery systems are part of the habit-fighting solution, not a problem,” he added. …
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