Ahead of the upcoming World Conference on Tobacco Control, leading addiction and harm reduction specialist Garrett McGovern sat down with Brent Stafford to underscore the issues with Tobacco Control's rejection of tobacco harm reduction, and why following the science is the only rational approach to public health policy.
Transcription:
00:01 - 00:26
[Joanna Junak]
Garrett McGovern, addiction medicine specialist with over 25 years of experience, during his visit to this year's Global Forum on Nicotine conference, shared his thoughts on the issue of vaping and nicotine regulation in light of the upcoming World Conference on Tobacco Control, which begins on Monday in Dublin. Let's hear what he has to say.
00:27 - 03:12
[Garrett McGovern]
So the World Conference in Tobacco Control that's taking place in Dublin next week, I think that, I'm assuming that the big thing on everyone's lips will be to try, bring down smoking prevalence, try and, you know, move towards a tobacco-free world, etc, etc. The only problem with all that is we all in this space know awful well how tobacco control feel about safer nicotine products and particularly how they feel about vaping. So I can only surmise, because again I haven't seen the agenda, I don't know who's going to be talking, WHO were involved in it, somebody said that the head of WHO, Dr Tedros, will be at it, if not live, probably from a link-up. We know what WHO's position is on vaping and I'm pretty sure it'll be pretty negative. I think what we're seeing more and more of now is that anywhere where smoking rates, the prevalence of smoking rates have stagnated in terms of not coming down, now we're looking at more and more rhetoric that vaping is to blame for that. And this doesn't tie in with any of the research. I mean, if you look at countries like Sweden, you look at countries like Norway, what they've done is because of safer nicotine products. I mean, certainly in the case of Sweden, it's just incredible, really, what's happened with snus over there. I mean, to get it down to 4.5, so I think... 5% is meant to be the equivalent of smoke-free, and now we're going down to 4.5%. It's an absolutely incredible achievement. It's unbelievable. And how this massive conference that's going to happen next week in my own homeland will not be able to talk about Sweden and in the same breath talk about the role of safer nicotine products and snus is unimaginable. But I'm guessing that that's the road they're going to take. They're going to be... They're going to be very negative. I don't think there's going to be any dissenting voices if the whole issue of vaping comes into the conversation and all the stuff about newer generation of nicotine addicts and youth vaping and epidemics and all that sort of stuff. My worry is that it'll go unchecked. There'll be no rebuttal to any of this. So it's kind of important for me to get a message out, and I hope I can. I'm hoping that what will come out of that conference is some media coverage one way or the other. And hopefully voices like my own can put some balance to this. And I hope I can, I hope we can.
03:13 - 03:16
[Brent Stafford]
What does it say about them not allowing the other side?
03:17 - 04:33
[Garrett McGovern]
Well, it's a sort of form of propaganda. It's to silence any other view other than that vaping is bad and that it doesn't have any role in smoking cessation or bringing down smoking prevalence. I don't know why... They want to do this. But it's the world we live in now. Every year that I come to GFN, we just feel a little bit more pessimistic. It's like, you know, year one, we've got two arms, two legs. It feels like we're missing an arm. They're missing another arm. And now they're going to try and take our legs off for flavourings. So the disposables look like they're gone in the UK and... they are in the UK and Ireland, the next sort of tier is going to be flavourings. And we all know, we've kind of, I think we let disposables go a little bit too cheaply. You could argue, what could we do about it? But I think we did because it was kind of the last bastion because now they're going to go into flavours. Where else can they go? I mean, other than an outright ban, which most people, commentators who know what they're talking about will say, well, if you remove flavors, it is an outright ban, it's a de facto ban. So that's a real worry. So we really need to get a different message across next week. I'll put it another way, we need to get the truth across.
04:33 - 04:39
[Brent Stafford]
Is it a problem that tobacco control is applying their control to nicotine in general?
04:39 - 05:28
[Garrett McGovern]
Yeah, so it isn't just about vaping now. They've gone to war on nicotine, which is strange really because NRT has been approved for a long, long time and yet now there's this big war. trumping up the harms of nicotine. I was at a talk this morning where we had questionnaires about misinformation about nicotine. Does it cause cancer? Does it cause COPD? Is it harmful in pregnancy? Etc, etc. And it's amazing how the narrative still in tobacco control, and many people like that, with that sort of bent, you might say, Is that nicotine is very dangerous and we know really there's no really good evidence to show it is dangerous We know NRT isn't dangerous. So why should nicotine be dangerous anywhere else, you know?
05:29 - 05:32
[Brent Stafford]
What message might you have for your government?
05:33 - 06:24
[Garrett McGovern]
I would One simple message I would like my government to to view evidence over eminence, if I can put it that way. Just because people are very important, just because they're attached to very important organisations, just because they have years of reputations in other areas, they're wrong too. So the facts are facts, it doesn't matter who states the facts. We see this all the time. It's like anybody from the tobacco industry says anything, they're poo-pooed. The next tier down is anyone from the vaping industry, they're poo-pooed. In other words, we can't have an opinion from you, you're compromised. The truth is the truth. I think we need to get away from this idea of who says the truth. It's either the truth or it's not the truth. And really that's the message to get across.