Join Barnaby Page (Editorial Director, ECigIntelligence & Tobacco Intelligence) as he hosts a thought-provoking discussion with Sam Tam (Canadian Vaping Association) and Jeannie Cameron (expert in international tobacco control policy).
In this GFN 2025 commentary session, the panel explores:
- The impact of the FCTC, 20 years later;
- Different perspectives on tobacco harm reduction (THR);
- The evolving role of vaping and consumer advocacy;
- Key takeaways from the Global Forum on Nicotine so far.
Whether you’re a policymaker, public health professional, or simply curious about the future of nicotine, this conversation offers valuable insights into the global debate on smoking alternatives and regulation.
Transcription:
00:12 - 01:01
[Barnaby Page]
Well, hi, everybody, and welcome to this afternoon's commentary session. I'm Barnaby Page. I'm the editorial director at ESIC Intelligence and Tobacco Intelligence. And I have with me today Sam Tam, who's from the Canadian Vapors Association, and also Jeannie Cameron, who many of you will have heard just now chairing a really fascinating session on the FCTC 20 years later. So a couple of very different perspectives here. We have Jeannie who's come largely from a government position, Sam who's coming very much more from the sort of consumer advocacy end of the vaping world, of the THR world. So let me start off, guys. I know we're only sort of halfway into the first day of the full session, but let me start off with a general question. What are your takeaways so far from GFN? Jeannie, maybe you'd like to start.
01:02 - 01:56
[Jeannie Cameron]
Oh, I think probably the takeaway so far was listening to, you know, just a reliving of some of the history that Derek Yak was speaking about at the start of the FCTC, and also Professor Kayat from France, who was speaking about the Charter of Paris, two very different... multilateral agreements, but one that looks at a very humanitarian approach to cancer and death and disease and involving and thinking about the patient. And one that's very clinical, the FCTC that, you know, sort of says quit or die in essence. You know, I found that very interesting. I mean, I also found the talker from Canada who was doing the keynote this morning, some of the things he was saying were very profound and putting things into language that were an example of what really is going on at the coalface and how to interpret it. So they're the only two things I've seen so far, so that's all I can comment on.
01:56 - 02:21
[Barnaby Page]
So two things that they both highlight. Great. Yes. And yeah, I'm totally right. I thought one of the most interesting things in our FCTC session was about the history of it, and particularly some of the points made about Article 5.3 and the article itself versus the elaboration or guidelines to the article. And, you know, a lot of the sort of fears we have about Article 5.3 actually, it seems, exist in the guidelines rather than the article itself.
02:21 - 02:34
[Jeannie Cameron]
Well, the legal obligation for the governments is actually what is written in the treaty. The guidelines are only guidelines that you may or may not want to adopt. And I think it's reminding them that that's their obligation, not what everyone else wants.
02:34 - 02:38
[Barnaby Page]
So, Sam, enough of me. What about you? What were your highlights?
02:38 - 03:22
[Sam Tam]
I think the emphasis that we need more tobacco harm reduction research, especially in countries with low to middle income countries, there's more information. I would say we've seen globally, there's a lot of misinformation being spread around about vaping and the harms of vaping. But in essence, I think... More work needs to be done. Misinformation needs to be addressed. And I think there's a great opportunity for that. And I think meeting with a lot of people from different countries and associations, I think we can help one another and stop some of the misinformation being spread about vaping.
03:22 - 04:05
[Barnaby Page]
Well, that's been a pretty consistent theme, I think, of GFN for some years. And, of course, it is the global forum on nicotine. It's not the global forum on e-cigarettes or pouches or tobacco-heated products or whatever. But one of the problems that a lot of people in this space face, of course, is that conflation, that confusion between nicotine and smoking, very much in the eye of the public health community, sometimes in the eye of regulators, and, of course, in the eyes of the general public. So, I mean, coming from your point of view, Sam, from an advocacy point of view, how do we correct that? How do we address it and let people understand that nicotine in itself is not really the issue here, smoking of combustible products is the core public health issue?
04:05 - 05:12
[Sam Tam]
And we always have this conversation, right? It's not, you know, people don't die from nicotine, it's they die from the combustion of tobacco. And it's important for us, you know, to highlight that, you know, when we talk about substance use, which was mentioned over and over again, at GFN is what are the key points to addressing, people consume nicotine, for instance, because they have an addiction. And I think it's important to highlight there are safer alternatives out there for them. And I think it's important for us to highlight the importance of harm reduction in general, whether using vaping, whether it's nicotine pouches or snus. And I think government needs to change their position and to promote harm reduction alternatives. And in Canada, I just want to highlight Canada's moving towards that approach. They're incorporating harm reduction as part of their tobacco strategy of reaching a less than 5% smoking rate by 2035.
05:12 - 05:38
[Barnaby Page]
Now, just to follow up on that for a second about Canada, is that something you think that is coming from, if you like, the traditional tobacco control community within the Canadian government? Is it something that's coming upwards from the world of consumers? Is it perhaps something that's coming from the harm reduction movement elsewhere? Of course, harm reduction began very much with HIV injectable drugs and so on. Has that kind of informed those decisions?
05:38 - 06:23
[Sam Tam]
Well, I think Canada is unique because there is a bit of a divide between our government and tobacco, or I would like to say nicotine control groups, as we like to refer them to now. You know, they don't, you know, their position is different. They don't believe in, you know, harm reduction. They believe you either quit or you die approach. And that doesn't work today with our government. There is constant struggle between government and those groups, including health organizations. But I think the position is clear. Canada wants to potentially be the third country in the world to be smoke-free. So they've changed their approach in 2023, and I think that's the course that they want to take. Great.
06:24 - 07:57
[Jeannie Cameron]
I think there's some interesting analogies at the multilateral level when you look at this and what you were saying on tobacco harm reduction. You look at the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. They're both very similar in multilateral conventions about 10 years apart. And yet the world is very happy in the energy industry to look at all the harm of fossil fuels, and a move to renewables, which are less harmful in terms of the environmental issues. But when you look at our issue, which relates to smoking and moving away from smoke to less harmful forms of nicotine, it's not embraced as universally as it is with the Framework Convention on Climate Change's treaty. So I think that's really interesting. And also, I think what you were saying about nicotine, I think, I do think in the future, the way governments look at nicotine, when you look at its therapeutic benefits, which is something... It's emerging to be spoken about, but the benefits in terms of its cognitive benefits, reduction of... or certainly used for Parkinson's disease, certainly being looked at in terms of Alzheimer's, dementia. It's used for Tourette's, it's used for many sort of the big global issues where nicotine has an impact. So long as it can be disassociated with smoke, which as you said, is what is doing the harm. And we know that's the harmful thing. So let's get rid of the smoking, but keep the nicotine.
07:57 - 09:20
[Barnaby Page]
Well, absolutely. I mean, you know, to quote famously Michael Russell, who is, of course, the guy after whom, you know, the oration at GFN each year is then, people smoking for the nicotine and dying from the tar. Virginia, I wanted to mention, I wanted to ask you something specifically about government perspectives on this. And let me give a little bit of background first on some research we've been conducting for some years at Tamarin, the publisher of EASIC Intelligence and Tobacco Intelligence. We've done surveys of MEPs, members of the European Parliament, on their attitudes toward novel nicotine products in general. And there's quite a range of attitudes, as you would imagine. And these vary to some extent according to political affiliation, according to what kind of product you're talking about, et cetera. So it's not a wholly clear-cut picture. But one thing that does emerge very clearly from it time and time again is the more people know about these products, the more sympathetic they are. Opposition, to a large extent, seems to be bred out of ignorance, or perhaps ignorance is bred out of opposition. It could work that way as well. Now, you, of course, have worked in government in Australia. You've been very close to government-level policy-making through things like the FCTC. And I believe you now, in fact, are a parliamentarian yourself in Alderney, in the Channel Islands. Is that right? Yes. So is that your experience? Is opposition uninformed? Is that the simple problem?
09:20 - 10:42
[Jeannie Cameron]
I think when it comes to the UK, for example, well, anywhere really, I think most politicians have a lot to do. They're very busy. They're going from thing to thing very quickly. And so to get the depth of understanding that is often needed in areas like this, it's going to take a bit of time. So unless they have an advisor or someone who's giving them a briefing from their departments, the relevant departments, that is well-informed, they're really not going to get that information. Politicians very often are driven by what they see in the news, in headlines. And as we all know, especially in this area, it's probably the same for almost every area that we don't have the depth of understanding about, but in our area where we do have the depth of understanding, you see the headlines, you know a lot of it is junk news and not true and not based on any science, but that's what they're hearing and that's what they then take away. So I do really think, as has been spoken about earlier today, the education of getting things into politicians before the issue comes across their desk or before they have to do it is very, very helpful to broadening the debate and getting the issues better understood.
10:42 - 11:08
[Barnaby Page]
Sure. So let me follow up that, Jeannie, and then we'll get Sam's perspective on this as well. Let's just imagine that you had, you know, that you were given the task of changing the minds or at least improving the attitudes, shifting the attitudes of policymakers. How would you practically set about it? I mean, for example, would you go through consumer organizations? Would you go through the media? Would you go to politicians directly?
11:08 - 13:06
[Jeannie Cameron]
Well, I think you certainly need a bit of all of those things. However, when I look back to early days when I was a political staffer, one of the things when I worked for a cabinet minister for telecommunications, I remember him coming out and he said to me, I've got to go into the chamber this afternoon and I need to know what to say on how to privatise the spectrum. And I kind of went, oh, and I looked at him. For a start, I didn't know what the spectrum was, let alone how to privatise it. We're talking the 1990s here. And so what I did in those days, because it was before the internet, we didn't have Google or anything, I went to a filing cabinet and found what had been submitted to us. And I found... a paper that had been written from someone about this particular thing and that became what i then wrote about so to to draw that to this i think in my view it's it's not waiting until things come up like um tobacco and vaping bills in the uk or somewhere else it it's about constantly always finding reasons to educate whoever is the relevant decision maker and the policy makers who, or the advisers to the policy makers, and really doing a proper stakeholder map, seeing who are all of the relevant entities that may have an impact on any decision that you think is relevant and gradually just educating them over time. So when that moment happens, you know, well, they can go to Google these days, but... when that moment happens, they have something already sort of formulated in their head rather than just always waiting for, oh, we now have this we need to react to. Because you're not going to get in. It's a slow building up. And I think that works generally in my experience on any issue, really.
13:07 - 13:10
[Barnaby Page]
So it's being proactive and laying the groundwork rather than just firefighting, as it were.
13:11 - 13:11
[Jeannie Cameron]
Yes.
13:11 - 13:18
[Barnaby Page]
Now, Sam, you've obviously been involved in a very hands-on way in things like this. In Canada, how has it worked for you there specifically?
13:19 - 15:29
[Sam Tam]
Well, in Canada, we engage government quite often. And I think it's really important when we talk about education is there's a lot of misinformation, as I mentioned. Sometimes when we meet with government, they don't have all the information that they need, and they do require education. And a lot of times, the information that's being given to government is not necessarily accurate. One of the things that we found is that every federal government agencies don't really talk to one another, right? Their own different departments, they're in charge of different things. So when it comes to taxation with vaping, excise taxes, Finance doesn't talk to Health Canada. And what we've done over the years is really to have that, put that alignment together, getting all stakeholders involved to talk and to create better policies. So, you know, we've been very fortunate enough to, our association meets with the government on a quarterly basis. And we have these discussions about policy and how we can focus on harm reduction, how we can focus on better sensible policies to ensure that we don't over-regulate. And that's one of the major concerns that we're seeing from all over the world, is over-regulations, right? Regulations that stifle innovation, regulations that stifle harm reduction. And we need to make those changes. And I think there's an opportunity, you know, for other countries to do the same work that we're doing here in Canada, which is really... to uh to engage government and present to them there's a need between private and public sector to work together and what was mentioned earlier you know when i heard about the interpol of you know not not being able to attend who which is quite really interesting is because you know our organization works very closely with the federal government on matters of illicit trade. And we work very closely with the RCMP, with Interpol, with the Canada Revenue Agency, with the Canada Border Security Agency, and even with US Homeland Security. But there needs to be a partnership between private and public sector in order to have better policies in place.
15:29 - 16:00
[Barnaby Page]
Sure. And let me just ask you about the WHO as well. Now, of course, Jeannie has just chaired quite a long and fascinating session about the WHO, as we said. You know, I think it's generally sort of taken as read that the WHO has a fairly substantial input into at least the philosophy behind THR regulation in lower and middle income countries, if not the actual details of the implementation always. Do you find the WHO and specifically the FCCC are a factor in Canada.
16:01 - 16:42
[Sam Tam]
um you know it's interesting i always get read the article 5.3 when i meet with government but i think um um you know there is a mutual understanding uh from uh from our our health agency that um you know we as whether it's the vaping industry or the tobacco industry we will always be called upon um to the point that uh there's information sharing right when there's updated new policies or new regulations that we do our best to educate the industry so There's an understanding where everything, we do the normal disclosures, but I think the government understands that if there's any issues that we need to involve all stakeholders.
16:42 - 17:23
[Jeannie Cameron]
And Canada was, in fact, I'm not sure if you're aware, the government that stood up at one of the COPs to try and stop what the WHO was doing in closing the public gallery. So Canada spearheaded, you know, it's a public right and we, as the Canadian government, cannot say to Canadians that you can't sit and watch us do our policy work in this sort of sense. But as I mentioned in that talk, you know, there was no other governments that supported Canada's position, but Canada did lead that. It's done quite a few things over the last 20 years, both positive and negative, but more positive than negative from the government perspective. Sure, sure.
17:24 - 17:37
[Barnaby Page]
Well, we're coming close to the end of our time now, so I'd like to have a couple of really quick questions to end up with, like just a minute each. Let me start by asking, perhaps Jeannie go first, what are you hoping to learn about most at GFN this year?
17:38 - 18:24
[Jeannie Cameron]
I think what I'm hoping to learn about, there's a lot of new things emerging, like, for example, synthetic nicotine. I find it fascinating. I think it's a really interesting area because it is definitely not tobacco. And if there's... There was a session earlier which I heard about which, you know, where they make the synthetic nicotine via a biochemical process and it's... It has all the properties of nicotine, but it isn't actually from a tobacco plant. And I think that's the area I'd like to learn more about, because then you can genuinely say that your product is tobacco-free. And then all the ESG stuff about the carbon footprint that comes from it. I think that's an area I'd be really interested to learn a lot more about.
18:25 - 18:26
[Barnaby Page]
Great. So synthetic nicotine.
18:27 - 19:13
[Sam Tam]
I think for me, this is my first time at GFN and I really want to learn from everyone's experience and meet as many people as I can. When it comes to synthetic nicotine, it's definitely a very interesting topic. We've seen that start to actually, we start seeing a lot of products that are being manufactured globally around the world are using synthetic nicotine. And I think I'm interested in learning what additional innovation that the industry is creating, because we are vaping in any safer nicotine products. There's a lot of innovation involved in it. So I'm here to learn more and hopefully meet new colleagues and friends that we can share our experience together.
19:13 - 20:14
[Barnaby Page]
Great. And of course, in addition to synthetic nicotine, we now have as well the emergence of nicotine analogs, which are not strictly speaking nicotine, but if you like, nicotine substitutes, which may well be a topic to take up with some of the scientific delegates here. So from my last question, we've got about three, four minutes left, I think, I'd like actually to go back to the title of today's, I think it was today's opening session, What's So Scary About THR? And actually, I'll give my answer first. What's so scary about THR? Well, I'd simply knock the HR off there and say it's what's so scary about tea? People confuse tobacco harm reduction with tobacco. That is the essence of the problem. For many, many years, for decades and decades, from the late 19th century to the early 21st, really, nicotine was synonymous with combustible cigarettes. You couldn't have one without the other to all intents and purposes. But maybe you don't agree with me. Jeannie, why don't you pick one? What's so scary?
20:14 - 21:01
[Jeannie Cameron]
I do think the word tobacco in tobacco harm reduction is scary because people who aren't as well associated with us, they hear tobacco and then... to some harm reduction, then it's like, well, what is that? And even when I was checking in for my flight here, I had this discussion with the lady and I spent the time educating her. I got out some nicotine pouches and showed her and, you know, but people just don't know what tobacco harm reduction is. So maybe we need to, you know, nicotine benefits or something else or some other form of way to describe it. But it's not a scary thing once you understand it. When you put the analogies, like I said, with the fossil fuels to renewables, when you, you know, safe sex, condoms, you know, all that sort of thing. It's not scary when you explain it.
21:01 - 21:03
[Barnaby Page]
We could call it nicotine harm reduction, couldn't we?
21:04 - 21:04
[Jeannie Cameron]
Yes.
21:04 - 22:43
[Sam Tam]
Sam. It's interesting. I agree. I mean, tobacco harm reduction isn't scary. Canada's always been doing a lot of things very interesting. Canada never uses the language tobacco harm reduction. In a lot of the discussions with government, we've changed the concept to harm reduction or a lot of less harmful alternatives. And even if we look at the new approach from Health Canada, they've changed our tobacco strategy to include harm reduction and smoking cessation side by side in regards to helping Canadians reduce smoking rates. So, you know, and they mentioned their vaping, you know, any tool that's harm reduction in their category, including vaping, They encourage Canadians to use less harmful products. So it's not scary. I think for Canada, we understand that concept. And I think it's important that, you know, Canada should be speaking up more and talk about their approach and what the government's doing. And I think it's something worth celebrating. One of the important issues that I talked about that the government just recently launched was really a new youth prevention and education campaign. Because the government understands that a lot of times youth are vaping because of social pressures, experimentation, stress, and all these issues. And the government's moving towards more focusing on prevention and education. And that's how we're going to reduce youth vaping rates in our country. So we're excited to support that initiative. And I think, you know, as, you know, tobacco, I mean, harm reduction isn't scary at all. But, you know, I think, you know, the word tobacco is probably the issue.
22:43 - 22:58
[Barnaby Page]
Absolutely. Hence the Global Forum on Nicotine, not the Global Forum on Tobacco. Well, our time's up, I'm afraid. We need to get back, obviously, to the main program in the conference rooms now. So thanks very much, Sam. Thanks, Jeannie, for joining us. You're welcome. And I believe the commentary teams will be on screen again later.