Tobacco harm reduction experts from across the globe recently gathered for this year's #GFN25 conference in Warsaw, so in this special series we've put together some of THR's leading experts to highlight the communication barriers that we need to overcome to share the real science behind safer nicotine products. Joining us on the conference floor today are Clive Bates, Fiona Patten and Mark Tyndall to highlight their biggest concerns facing the THR movement, and their hopes for the future.
Transcription:
00:09 - 00:15
[Joanna Junak]
what are the biggest barriers to communicating around tobacco harm reduction around the world?
00:17 - 00:57
[Clive Bates]
I think the problem is there's a lot of misinformation about tobacco harm reduction. People failing to acknowledge that the products like vapes and pouches are much less harmful than smoking, that they can displace smoking, and that they're creating a huge amount of confusion in the minds of the public, the politicians, and the media. And until we get people being honest and truthful about the basic scientific facts, Nobody's really going to know what to think. And it's like, you know, merchants of doubt we used to have with the tobacco industry. We now have that from public health. So until people are ready to be honest and clear about the science, there's always going to be confusion.
00:58 - 01:02
[Joanna Junak]
Okay. And why is education so important in tobacco harm reduction?
01:03 - 01:56
[Clive Bates]
So we have to get back to basic scientific realities. The vaping and pouch products are much, much less harmful than smoking, and we know why that is. We know that the toxicity of the emissions is much lower. We know that people's health improves when they switch to them. We know a lot of things for certain. We don't know everything for the long term, but we can... It's not like we know nothing. So we can communicate what we do know. We know that these products display smoking. We know that even with young people, we know that there would be some young people, if they take up vaping, would otherwise have smoked. And for them, it's beneficial. So we have to have a more sophisticated understanding of the basic science and epidemiology of tobacco harm reduction. And then I think people will realize how valuable it is as a strategy.
01:57 - 02:53
[Mark Tyndall]
Well, I think we're dealing with a long-term epidemic in tobacco. People have sort of accepted that this is the way it is. And most of my colleagues still feel that people can quit, even though they've had very little success with people quitting. and feel that it's not really worth offering people a safer alternative when the best alternative would be for them to quit. And my other experience with other drugs, I think people think of it differently. People, if they're using heroin, well, of course you can't stop right away, so we'd have to make it safer for you. But I think the attitude with cigarettes is that it's not that big a deal. You know, you should be able to quit and we don't really need to offer you any options. So I think that's probably the most important.
02:54 - 03:00
[Joanna Junak]
Okay, and why is education so important in tobacco harm reduction?
03:00 - 03:38
[Mark Tyndall]
Well, I think From what I just said, we need to fight back on that. I mean, it's the biggest killer in the world and clearly it is a big deal and that we need to, if we have something safer to offer people, then I think we have an ethical obligation to do that. So to me, it's choosing not to treat hypertension or choosing not to treat diabetes, even though we could. And I think... physicians and healthcare workers and politicians need to look at it that way, that now we have a treatment for smoking and we should be offering it to everybody.
03:40 - 04:13
[Fiona Patten]
In Australia, our tobacco control organisations, they have dug such a deep hole in talking about the fact that tobacco harm reduction cannot happen, that it's very hard for them now to pivot and change that opinion. So they keep digging deeper, but Australian smokers are taking up tobacco harm reduction, even though they must do it illegally.
04:13 - 04:19
[Joanna Junak]
And why is education so important in tobacco harm reduction?
04:19 - 04:50
[Fiona Patten]
It's absolutely crucial. When you look at how many people still die every day, even in Australia. And in Australia, we have low smoking rates in some communities. But in our Aboriginal communities, in our communities with low socioeconomic backgrounds, the smoking rates are very high. And we are not getting the education to them. And that is what we desperately need to do. Thank you.