Banning products doesn’t necessarily eliminate demand. Prohibition can push consumers toward black markets, reduce regulatory control, and create unintended consequences for public health. Timur Abdullaev explored prohibition, tobacco harm reduction, nicotine policy, and the challenges of trying to reduce smoking through increasingly restrictive policies. He also examined why nicotine, tobacco, and smoking should not be treated as synonymous — and what happens when they are.
Transcription:
00:03 - 00:11
[Zuzanna Kopacz]
This year's conference topic is prohibition. What do you think about prohibition in tobacco harm reduction or in harm reduction in general?
00:13 - 04:01
[Timur Abdullaev]
Good luck. No, seriously. It's so naive. When people decided that the best way to fight drugs is by prohibiting drugs... It led to some decrease in drug use, but it actually cost more in human lives and in everything than if there was a more pragmatic approach. You can't fight things by prohibiting them. Like, okay, we have, like every country has a criminal code. I'm a lawyer, so sorry for illegal reference. Every country has a criminal code which says what cannot be done and what is going to happen if you do that, right? And usually it's like, hmm, you don't want that. You don't want to go to jail, right, for things. And in some countries you don't want to be punished. Otherwise, maybe even killed. Does it help? Does criminal code stop people from committing crime? If it did, we wouldn't have prisons. You adopt a criminal code, you say it's prohibited, and people are like, oh, okay, it's not going to happen. So good luck with prohibiting. It's not going to work. And then you will probably, I mean, they will probably think, I think we're not doing a good job prohibiting. We should prohibit more. which is the dumbest thing they can come up with. But they do, and that's what they do. And that's what is happening. And I think it never worked. And guess what? It's not going to work. So this is my position. You can prohibit things, but then at least supplement them with something that will help to those who cannot cope, who cannot... do the things that are prohibited. You cannot stop doing things that are prohibited. You cannot smoke in public spaces. You cannot buy a cigarette. You prohibit, you create black market. You ban something, you create black market. You basically just do everything to lose control over the things you could control if you didn't ban it. So this is the outcome that I see coming from this prohibitionist policy that WHO has been maintaining for decades now. If it was effective, how come we're still discussing this? They failed for 20 years at least. They were failing in stopping smoking. They did a lot of mistakes. They basically put a sign of equation between tobacco, nicotine and smoking, which is stupid, okay? Let's call it this way. Because these are not the same things. Nicotine is not tobacco, tobacco is not smoking. they don't equal to each other. They made things that are not synonymous, they made them synonymous, which is a big problem, number one. But even without that, there are so many issues with what WHO is doing, there is so much ideology, and I'm afraid there is a lot of corruption a lot of corruption because usually people who point at you and say that you got money from tobacco because that's immediately what comes to mind. when i say that i do thr you got money from tobacco industr. And you know what? Usually they get money from someone not as nice maybe not as bad maybe as tobacco industry but somehow people are fine taking money from Bloomberg. And they think it's criminal to take money from tobacco industry. Thank you Timur.