Watch a candid panel from GFN 2025 Warsaw: How to Talk About Tobacco Harm Reduction exploring how to communicate evidence-based tobacco harm reduction to the public, clinicians, policymakers, and media.
Transcription:
00:11 - 02:41
[Harry Shapiro]
Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on where you're tuning in from. My name is Harry Shapiro, and I'm here to welcome you to the 12th Global Forum on Nicotine Conference, coming to you from Warsaw. So this is the 12th year. I've been coming for 10 years. So I've been coming here since 2015, which is really where I started to get involved in the tobacco harm reduction space. All the conferences I've been to have been exemplary, both in logistics and in content. But I'm particularly interested in this one because it's all about communications, which has been my sort of stock in trade in drugs, HIV, and more recently tobacco harm reduction for over 40 years now. But we know in 2025 about the challenges of communication around communicating the benefits of tobacco harm reduction to the wider world, to professionals, politicians and the media. And for those of you who are going to be sticking with us, we have a really top, best of the best, really, people coming to speak here about the challenges of tobacco harm reduction and hopefully some of the ways of either getting over the hurdles or swerving around them. Talking about the best of the best, I'd like to introduce you to the commentary team that are sitting here. Over on my far right, we have Marcela Madroso from Mexico, who represents Promoting Health Without Frontiers. We have Gabriel Oki from Nigeria, but resident in Liverpool. And he's a Liverpool supporter, Paddy, by the way. He's a public health researcher with a special interest in... Well, I'm sure he's got lots of special interests, but one of them is tobacco harm reduction communications and public health messaging. And Will Godfrey, who many of you will know, editor of the esteemed Filter magazine, where truth and justice meets harm reduction. There you go. There's a slogan for you.
02:41 - 02:43
[Will Godfrey]
Giving me that tagline for free.
02:43 - 03:09
[Harry Shapiro]
No, no, no. You can pay me later. So let's start off with Marcella. You've come all the way from Mexico. So, apart from the possibility of getting a free pen and a nice bag, what brings you all the way here to GFN? What are your hopes for the conference that focuses on communications?
03:09 - 04:51
[Marcela Madrazo]
Well, thank you very much and good morning to all of you. As you know, in America we have a lot of challenges. And one of the challenges we have to confront better is how to communicate with our population. And when I talk about population, I mean which population, because the message cannot be the same one to everyone. The message to young people cannot be the one that we want to send people that want to quit smoking, for instance. So what are the messages that are working, that are targeting the population we want to reach? What kind of new messages should we send to the population? Because we've talked about THR for a long time. We've talked about how many people die because they consume tobacco, how many people die in each country, how many people smoke around the world. But this has been said so many years. We have to be fresh. We have to start with new messages. And something I expect is to learn what is working in other regions of the world. What type of messages make us able to reach the population we want to reach and give them the message we want them to receive. That's what I would like to, and I hope, I'm sure, I'm going to learn a lot during these three days. Thank you for that.
04:51 - 04:54
[Harry Shapiro]
Okay, so Gabriel, what about you?
04:55 - 05:42
[Gabriel Oke]
Okay, so I'm really excited because I work in communications. Since my undergrad, I've been working in communications, writing articles, working on newsletters, social media communications. So when I left uni, I was like, okay, I wanted to do something, you know, very novel. And then I realized, oh, tobacco and reduction doesn't have enough research, you know, and enough communication. You don't see enough about it online. And that was how I joined the Tobacco and Reduction Scholarship. And since then, I've been coming. This is my fourth time. My fourth time now in that we're talking about communications, you know, so I'm really excited. I want to know what is working from even Will, who runs his own organization, learning from people, what is working. Because as you all know, in communication, you're zoning on what is working. You know, you keep, you know, you keep it treating.
05:43 - 05:43
[Harry Shapiro]
Yeah.
05:43 - 05:54
[Gabriel Oke]
And then you leave behind what is not working and then you keep working on, you know, on things that are working. So those kind of research combined with communication for advocacy is what I'm really excited about for this conference, to be fair.
05:54 - 06:14
[Harry Shapiro]
Excellent. Mr Godfrey, you've been here before, but I don't think we've had a GFN that actually does focus on what you do every day. So what particularly... I mean, you've had a look at the programme, I assume. What kind of sparks your interest, do you think?
06:15 - 07:38
[Will Godfrey]
Well, I mean, I'm particularly thrilled with the overall theme of the conference to begin with, because to me, and not... denigrating the really important work that people do in so many areas of this field, but communication is the absolute number one priority. Because with science, yes, there's always more that we can find out, but we have the basic knowledge in place about relative risks, about cessation. And the gap is that the public and of course lawmakers don't know it or refuse to know it. So we have a situation where in country after country, majorities of people believe that THR products are as harmful or worse than cigarettes. And imagine if we could find ways to reverse that. And then it would not only see people changing their behaviours, as some already are in their millions, despite governments not deigning to permit or condone it, And you'd have governments that implement prohibitionist or restrictive policies suddenly realizing that those policies are wildly unpopular. And so that's, I don't know if that quite answers what you're asking, but that's why I think the theme of this conference is so important.
07:38 - 08:17
[Harry Shapiro]
No, that's fine. You can ramble away. We don't mind. You know, it's all very friendly and it's formal. No worries. No worries. So Marcela, this kind of combines the two questions, really, because you come from a country which is not exactly tobacco harm reduction friendly, if I can put it like that. Not at all. Not at all. So in terms of promoting health without frontiers, what are you actually doing? How does all of that work for you in Mexico?
08:17 - 08:42
[Marcela Madrazo]
Well, in the last three years, we've been engaged mainly in communicating what really THR means, what are these tools, how can they be used if you want to quit smoking, because a lot of people in Mexico, this is something very important. The prevalence of smokers has grown in Mexico, despite FCTC.
08:42 - 08:42
[Harry Shapiro]
Right.
08:42 - 11:32
[Marcela Madrazo]
All right. And it went down to 16.8% of the population. Well, yeah. And after all the presidential decrees banning them, it went to 19.6. So as soon as they started banning, even though you were able to buy them, because you could go to many places where you could really buy vapes, even though the prevalence grew. Now, what I'm trying to say is we focused on communicating through social media, And we also worked and we had training with doctors, first contact doctors that can, because you know, in Mexico, when we started, seven out of 10 doctors thought nicotine was the cause of cancer and heart attacks. for instance. So how do you consider they're going to be able to advise their patients if they don't have the information, or they have misleading information? So we started to work with them, and we also worked with, we had workshops with journalists. because those are the ones that can help us send the message to their audiences. So we focused on that and we also started working regionally. We did case studies of Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Colombia, and we went there and we presented how is the status of tobacco control and THR. And it was important because we had a lot of media. when we did the presentation. So we were able to reach that population of South America and Central America. Now, what's going to happen in Mexico? That's a big question mark. Because the constitution says that any activity that has to do with vapes and electronic devices will be sanctioned. But they don't say how they're going to be sanctioned. They don't say they are banned or prohibit. They said they will be sanctioned. But any activity, does that means that talking about this in Mexico is going to be a sanction? We don't know yet. Because the secondary laws have not been approved. And we don't even have a project of secondary law. We don't know how it's going to be. There's no project registered, not even in the Senate or the deputy's chamber. So we don't know how it's going.
11:32 - 12:05
[Harry Shapiro]
We're going to come back to challenges in a minute. Because for you, for Mexico, that's a big one. It's a big challenge. That's huge. Gabrielle, I know you've been, I've seen stuff online that you've written about media responses in Africa. I mean, I'm obviously particularly interested in Africa because for all sorts of different reasons, which I'll come back to. But what's been your focus in terms of tobacco harm reduction communications work?
12:05 - 14:04
[Gabriel Oke]
Yeah, thank you very much for that question. So as I said earlier, when I wanted to like, you know, that into research communications, I realized that, you know, there wasn't you don't even have enough journalists, enough people talking about it. So I didn't have enough to even work with. And that was why I decided to organize a fellowship program when I joined the Tobacco and Reduction Scholarship Program. to do a fellowship program and then you know recruits people who are interested in the topic have discussions about it and then experts come in they talk about it as well and then alongside pre the pre the fellowship and after the fellowship you know collected data as well and then look at the data you know what was the knowledge before they joined the program and then what was their knowledge so that was how i got to publish research talking about i realized that more than 70 percent don't even have proper knowledge of what tobacco harm reduction is. And these are imagined journalists. These are imagined public health advocates. More than 400 people were part of that study. Imagine 70% of these people who are going to become journalists tomorrow, who are going to be in front of televisions tomorrow, talking to people, not even having a full understanding of what... Was that a study done in Nigeria? No, Nigeria and Africa generally. So that was really concerning, to be fair. And then I realized, oh, there's something here, because the knowledge gap is really huge. And then probe further to know, okay, where are you even getting the misinformation you're getting? I realize people are, you know, lots of people who call themselves, you know, advocates as well, who just read something online and all, just want to gather likes on Facebook and the likes on... Just push anything out there. And so when you are getting misinformation from other type of media and then the real media, which is, I mean, not the real media, but, you know, your TV, your radio and the likes are not giving you the right information. Then, you know, you know, there's a there's a lot of problem in the future. So the gaps, knowledge gap is where I'm really interested in science and communication, trying to ensure that there's enough to to to drive advocacy really.
14:04 - 14:13
[Harry Shapiro]
Yeah. So that's why I'm interested. Thank you for that. That's really interesting. Will, I mean, how long has Filter Magazine been going?
14:14 - 14:22
[Will Godfrey]
We pushed it live in 2018, which was actually the first year I came to this conference as well. And we've been continuing ever since.
14:23 - 14:34
[Harry Shapiro]
Right, right. And the mission statement, if I can call it that, for the magazine is what? Because you don't just talk about tobacco harm reduction in your magazine.
14:35 - 15:19
[Will Godfrey]
Yes, so we cover and communicate about drug policy and harm reduction and related human rights issues in general. But within that, tobacco harm reduction is centrally positioned. And that's something that was very deliberate in the concept right from the beginning, because how can you adequately cover drugs without covering the world's biggest cause of drug-related death. To me, it would be absurd. And so we're very proud to do that and to make efforts to integrate THR within the wider harm reduction and drug policy movement where I think it belongs. And unfortunately, the two have been siloed.
15:19 - 15:35
[Harry Shapiro]
We'll come back to that one if we've got time, which I think we probably will, looking at the clock. So what kind of, I mean, presumably, Filter goes global, doesn't it? Presumably you've got readers all over the world? Yes, yes.
15:36 - 16:18
[Will Godfrey]
We, you know, the biggest segment of our audience is in the English-speaking countries, United States top of the list, but all over the world. So, yeah, we've generated a direct audience of millions, but also, of course, been picked up, republished, cited, blogged about, uh in in many many other publications um including um kind of national mainstream media in the us and other places so so hopefully our reach is um is is bigger still he's big he's big excellent okay so back back to to some of the the challenges which marcel you've already
16:19 - 16:45
[Harry Shapiro]
touched upon. I'm just thinking, in terms of talking to journalists, talking to doctors, two things really. One, how receptive do you find them? And two, depending on what a definition of sanctions means, there's a potential that you just won't be allowed to People won't be allowed to talk about this.
16:45 - 17:48
[Marcela Madrazo]
This sounds weird. We could go there. We don't know. We hope we don't. But we don't know. When the Constitution was reformed, the same reform said that the Congress had 180 days to publish, let's say, the secondary laws. Now, this is going to, the 180 days are due next July 17. I mean, it's right now. It should be approved by now. As I said, we don't even have a draft. We don't know of a draft. So how is it going to be worth it? We have no idea. What we have also done, and I didn't mention it, and I think it's important, we had a weekly podcast. We have a weekly podcast. And we have experts there. Roberto Sussman has been there several times. And he explains in a very casual vocabulary so everybody can understand.
17:48 - 17:50
[Harry Shapiro]
Which is difficult for Roberto.
17:50 - 19:33
[Marcela Madrazo]
Which is very difficult for Roberto. It's very difficult. I have to recognize he's been very good at it. Because as you said, many people thought that THR was even worse than smoking, using THR devices. And many people said that, think that the vape, the aerosol that comes out of the vape is even worse than smoke, well, emissions. So he was there to explain, well, They're not the same, they're different, and of course, you cannot compare the danger or the risk of one with another. But we also had people that, testimonial people that were able to quit smoking after 30 years of maybe consuming two, three packs a day, and they did it through vape. And, or electronic, combust, tobacco, comprimido, compressed tobacco devices. And we also had families, children that said, my father doesn't smoke anymore, we don't have to be smelling the smoke. He doesn't smell like, you know, And so it's been very, very interesting. And well, that's something we hope we are going to be able to do. If not, what we are going to do is move to the region. and have our broadcast and everything from another country of the region. And hopefully we could reach audience in Mexico, but we're not going to be doing it from Mexico. But it all depends on how the secondary laws.
19:33 - 19:38
[Harry Shapiro]
Right. So there's no definition of what sanction means in Mexican law.
19:38 - 20:05
[Marcela Madrazo]
No, not yet. I mean, somebody even said that if you had a baby in your car, not even using it, just to have it, 36 hours of arrest and 180,000 pesos of sanction. I mean, this is absurd. This is weird. Somebody in the media started saying that this was, but as you go to the portal of the Congress, there's nothing there. Nobody has registered.
20:05 - 20:19
[Harry Shapiro]
And nobody, you haven't, people who are, you might define as activists or others like yourself, have not been able to make representations to politicians or anything like that?
20:19 - 21:35
[Marcela Madrazo]
What happens is that the ruling party has more than two thirds of Congress under their control. So we have, and there are doctors that are in Congress that feel that this ban is absurd. And it's going to put at risk everybody because we don't know what the quality of the products you're gonna buy. And what we are doing is strengthening the black market. And in Mexico, as you can imagine, the black market is in the hands of the cartels. So if anyone is happy with this are the cartels, not the rest of the population. But what they say is we are going to go to Tribune. We're going to win the discussion, but we are going to lose. when they vote, when Congress votes. Okay, so yes, not personally because I'm not advocacy, but they are also saying, well, let's wait. until someone registers a draft, and then we can discuss on something. Right now, we don't know.
21:35 - 22:11
[Harry Shapiro]
I've got a lot less time than I actually thought I had. So I'm going to move very quickly. I was talking about public health messaging in Africa. I was talking to a delegate from the DRC yesterday over lunch. who told me that his country has got 100 million people, 75% of them haven't got any electricity, most people live in rural areas. Very briefly, how on earth do you get public messages, actually about anything, but about this to people who... I haven't got a mobile phone because you can't plug it in anywhere.
22:11 - 23:07
[Gabriel Oke]
It's tough. It's really tough, to be fair. I was also trying to build on what she said about the kind of communication. What you would tell a doctor when you're even trying to advocate about CHR is different from what you tell the journalist, the messaging itself. So I feel like to an extent we really don't understand how bogus the problem of communication really is, because it's like everything. You know, while I was traveling on a plane, I was reading this book by Gladwell, Malcolm Gladwell, where he did research on how Nickelodeon did some of their cartoons and all that. They were able to reach children and make them think about stickiness. He was talking about stickiness. And I was thinking about this conference, like, wow, we really need to do a lot of work. When I was looking at the robustness of the research in that area. So, yeah, as you said, DR Congo is just one of the countries. Lots of countries like that. Lots of countries. So, you know, some don't even have television.
23:07 - 23:09
[Harry Shapiro]
You have to be innovative.
23:09 - 24:06
[Gabriel Oke]
You have to be innovative, yeah. And then I think sometimes you now have to look at what is existing already. So I think a place like Rwanda now, they have, a huge program around community health care workers. I wrote an article about it on filter as well. So you can now work with that. So if you are able to educate community health care workers very well, then they go into communities alongside other communication they are doing. When they see someone smoking, then they can administer that. So that's one way. Because that is already working in a place like Rwanda. In Nigeria, maybe you use radio because whenever there is maybe a word tobacco they watch this day or what that day you know right people always come on radio so if people are coming already on these days don't pass them misinformation and they are really saying the right things okay then you know you are reaching people on radio you know things like that mr god i'm gonna i'm gonna leave it there because we we've got um a presentation later about the problems of integrating tobacco harm reduction
24:06 - 25:09
[Harry Shapiro]
with drugs and HIV harm reduction, which is a big issue. People who you would think are our allies are quite often not. So I'm going to, where are we? Where's that camera gone? Right, we're doing this camera now. So there is an issue here which we didn't get to talk to, but there is a presentation at the conference about integrating drug, HIV, tobacco harm reduction, because we should all be allies, and sometimes we're not. So thank you to my commentary team for a very interesting conversation. Have a good conference, everybody. My name's Harry Shapiro. This has been the first commentary team, and now we're going to switch over to the main hall for... for an opening keynote speech on why is everyone so terrified? What's wrong? Why are we all terrified about tobacco harm reduction? Well, we're not, but there are people who are. Thank you very much. Thank you.