New approach needed

The New Nicotine Alliance (NNA) is calling for a new approach by the UK’s public health bodies toward vaping and the consumption of other safer nicotine products.
The NNA, which is a charity concerned with improving public health through a greater understanding of risk-reduced nicotine products and their uses, said in a press note issued today that warring factions in public health were contributing to the confusion and mistrust surrounding effective alternatives to smoking.
‘If the public’s health is to be properly served by state-funded organizations, accurate and impartial information is key,’ it said.
‘Misperceptions are harmful, breed intolerance, and are exacerbated by bans and restrictions on proven safer products.
‘If public health advocates wish to see further reductions in smoking, public health needs to come together and win over hearts and minds.’
The NNA’s call for a new approach toward safer nicotine products will be reiterated today by its chair, Sarah Jakes (pictured), who is speaking at the E-Cigarette Summit at the Royal Society.
The NNA is concerned that the public has been bombarded with ‘less-than-honest propaganda from ideologically-motivated sources on products which carry a reduced risk, and which have contributed to the lowest smoking prevalence rates in the UK’s history’.
“The public need to be able to trust that the information given to us by public health authorities is accurate and complete,” Jakes was due to tell the Summit.
“[T]he vast majority of the public are not scientists, so they go with what they perceive to be a trustworthy source of information. But who can you trust when the authorities and experts are so divided?”
Jakes will highlight the ‘febrile’ political debate currently taking place in the US, where, she says, truth about vaping has been abandoned in favor of moral posturing that serves no positive purpose for US smokers. She will urge campaigners to settle their ideological differences for the benefit of those they are tasked to help.
“The vast majority of vapers don’t advocate, or even identify as vapers,” she will say. “They are simply people getting on with their lives who also happen to vape. This silent majority are mothers, fathers, grandparents, brothers and sisters with ordinary and extraordinary lives to lead but our humanity is often obscured from view when the label of ‘vaper’ is applied.
“As long as the apparent controversy continues, the public will trust only what they see with their own eyes, and what they see is bans, restrictions, warning labels and something that looks like smoking.
“Misperceptions are harmful in more ways than one. They breed intolerance, which supports restrictive policy, which in turn creates more misperceptions and more intolerance. Is it any wonder that many smokers don’t see the point of switching?”
The NNA makes the point that smokers and vapers are not merely numbers in a dataset, or a trend on a graph. They are ‘real people and should not be pawns in a political power game between different factions of the public health community’. A new, more sympathetic approach was required.
“We must never lose sight of the fact that behind every data point is a real person with strengths and weaknesses, desires and ambitions, and that every life is precious,” Jakes will say.