Tobacco harm reduction has made more progress than is often assumed.
By Patrick Basham
The good news about tobacco harm reduction is the bad news is wrong. The tobacco harm reduction experience is actually a positive story.
It is true that the preponderance of influential and well-funded public health institutions and stakeholders are rabidly anti-tobacco harm reduction (THR). The World Health Organization is the most clear-cut example, with billionaire philanthropists funding global campaigns that, in concert with the WHO, incentivize national governments and their public health agencies either to ignore or to disparage THR’s demonstrated ability to improve public health.
It is also true that most politicians who talk about THR-related reduced-risk products (RRPs) are critical of the technology and its marketing and are subsequently prohibitionist with regard to e-cigarettes, heated-tobacco products (HTPs), oral smokeless tobacco, etc. It is also true that the tone and substance of the vast majority of media coverage is highly negative.
Such a choreographed chorus of naysaying has most everyone with even a passing interest in THR assuming that the political, institutional and media criticism is, first, representative of a global consensus among stakeholders that THR is a bad idea and second, that THR policies fail whenever and wherever they are introduced. Consequently, when surveyed, the public is at best ambivalent about RRPs’ comparative benefits vis-a-vis combustible cigarettes.
All of the above may be true, but it is not the entire truth about tobacco harm reduction and reduced-risk products.
The Other Side of the Coin
My recent THR report pushes back against the criticisms—and against the broader skepticism they engender. The report does not attempt to catalogue THR’s critics and their mostly ill-informed critiques. The case against THR is readily available, easily accessible and delivered ad nauseam. Instead, this report seeks only to inform the reader that there is actually another, distinctive and very positive side to the THR coin.
To that end, my report addresses overlooked and underappreciated elements of this policy conundrum. The report discusses the public opinion hurdle that must be surmounted by THR proponents in order for their political representatives to adopt more progressive and enlightened positions on this crucial aspect of public health policymaking. A summary is also provided of RRPs’ successful, yet largely unknown and therefore unappreciated, track records since their adoption in many parts of the world.
There is an accounting of the many pro-THR governments who have adopted sophisticated strategies and policy prescriptions; there is also recognition of influential public health stakeholder endorsements since THR products became a commercial reality more than a decade ago. The report concludes by drawing lessons from the THR story so far, so that open-minded political and regulatory decision-makers may be better guided on their policymaking journey.
Consumers worldwide are, on average, either uninformed or ill-informed about the concept of tobacco harm reduction and the specific reduced-risk products central to its implementation. Such ignorance is understandable as the THR paradigm is a comparatively new concept beyond public health circles and RRPs are innovative new technologies that only recently delivered commercially viable options for consumers.
Such ignorance is nonetheless frustrating because respective prohibitionist politicians, philanthropists, regulators, public health organizations, academics and consumer groups have consciously erected the central barriers to better consumer understanding of, and appreciation for, THR and RRPs.
The aforementioned anti-THR actors are seemingly dedicated to the proposition that tobacco and nicotine products scientifically proven to be less harmful than combustible cigarettes should not be readily available for use either by current smokers seeking less (often far less) toxic sources of tobacco and nicotine or even by smokers seeking to quit smoking altogether.
Layered upon the anti-THR and anti-RRP campaigns are unhidden, viscerally anti-industry agendas that reflexively oppose any innovative technology or business model that may preserve, let alone enhance, the profitability of the tobacco and nicotine industries.
A great many countries, international institutions and public health organizations are employing, and advocating for, THR policies and strategies to reduce cigarette consumption. To date, nearly 70 countries have adopted regulatory frameworks on reduced-risk products.
An enormous number and variety of electronic nicotine-delivery products are in the marketplace, with nearly 16,000 flavors available and global sales rising to $15 billion in 2019. HTPs were also available in over 50 markets worldwide in 2020. Only one Western democracy (Australia) still requires its citizens to acquire a nicotine prescription in order to vape.
Snus can be legally bought in 81 countries. RRPs are already being used by 112 million people worldwide, with approximately 82 million using nicotine vaping devices, 20 million using heated-tobacco products and 10 million using smokeless tobacco.
Contributing to Cessation
The evidence in favor of THR as a complementary intervention to help drive down death and disease from smoking is robust. For example, we now have evidence of the impact vaping has had on smoking. Vaping is today widely considered to be the world’s most effective smoking cessation tool.
Extensive international evidence supports the conclusion that vaping plays a major role in smoking cessation. All of the nearly 70 countries that have adopted regulatory frameworks on safer nicotine products subsequently report a decline, often a dramatic one, in smoking prevalence. Countries that embrace vaping have witnessed a decrease in smoking rates that is twice as fast as the global average.
Snus’ extensive contribution to improvements in Swedish public health is well documented. When Norway allowed snus products to be more widely available, cigarette smoking fell by half in just 10 years.
Japanese tobacco harm reduction is the story of HTP-driven success.
Japan’s policies have led to a remarkable drop in cigarette smoking. In October 2020, in the world’s largest heated-tobacco market, the smoking rate dropped to a record low of 16.7 percent, down 1.1 percent on the previous year. Between 2016 and 2021, domestic combustible cigarette sales declined 43 percent.
This decline is directly attributable to the availability of noncombustible RRPs, mainly HTPs. HTP popularity caused cigarette sales to plummet five times faster than before HTPs were available.
Tobacco harm reduction is a refreshingly good news story, as detailed in the preceding sections. That is the reason governments around the world are increasingly placing THR at the heart of their tobacco control strategies.
Pro-THR policymakers are legalizing RRPs for widespread consumer use as regulators in these countries construct regulatory frameworks that harness the products’ potential to reduce tobacco-related harm while restricting their availability to adult consumers exclusively.
That said, certain governments and regulatory agencies have disproportionate influence on the global stage. The governments of many smaller and medium-sized nations, in particular, look to the likes of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the European Union and the Chinese government for case studies, regulatory models, bureaucratic signals and political cover regarding THR’s innate veracity, as well as the applicability and suitability of specific RRPs to public health in general and the consumer marketplace specifically.
Some of the steps taken by governments and public health bodies with outsized influence have empowered THR while other steps have retarded its progress. My report’s accounting and cataloging of THR successes and adoptions provides these institutional actors, and those influenced by them, with numerous lessons concerning the best way forward should public health be the overriding concern.
Ten policymaking lessons stand out:
- Tobacco harm reduction should be the principal driving force behind a nation’s tobacco control strategy.
- Legalize the import, export, sale, possession and use of reduced-risk products. These products should be as widely available as tobacco products and available without a prescription.
- The debate is not legalization versus prohibition. The latter approach is empirically unsound, unenforceable and counterproductive. Hence, it is crucial that specific regulations and tax policies are THR-friendly, too.
- Employ the “weighting principle,” that is, employ concepts such as absolute risk, relative risk, and usage patterns in order to calculate the net public health effect of RRPs, and utilize that data to guide the adopted regulation.
- RRPs are most suitably regulated as consumer products rather than as medicines or tobacco products.
- Apply the “continuum of risk” approach across tobacco and nicotine products. Regulation should reflect the lower toxicity levels of RRPs and, therefore, regulations and taxes should correspond to the level of harm caused by a given product, hence the need for the differential taxation of RRPs.
- Lower rates of taxation for RRPs than for cigarettes help to ensure the affordability of RRPs for low-income consumers, who smoke disproportionately, and incentivize smokers to switch from combustible products.
- Smokers have the right to accurate information on RRPs; therefore, governments should underwrite health education messages about the comparative risks of RRPs. A pragmatic regulatory approach furthermore recognizes the utility in fewer restrictions on RRP advertising than on cigarettes, hence reduced-risk claims for RRPs should be permitted in advertising.
- Providing a choice of flavors to adult consumers encourages them to switch from combustibles to less harmful products.
- Traditional cessation approaches are not the only tools available to help people transition away from smoking cigarettes. Vaping is the world’s most effective smoking cessation tool.
The greater the number of governments that learn and apply these lessons, the greater will be the public health benefit that the world experiences from tobacco harm reduction’s focus upon the reduced-risk potential of innovative tobacco and nicotine products.
