Watch this insightful Spanish-language session from the Global Forum on Nicotine 2025 #GFN25 featuring experts from across Latin America and beyond. The discussion explores tobacco harm reduction (THR), the fight against misinformation, and the role of communication, science, and consumer advocacy in shaping healthier public policies.
Transcription:
00:13 - 90:12
Welcome to the GFN session in Spanish. Here we are gathered with people I highly respect not only in tobacco harm reduction, which is not only used in tobacco harm reduction, but also in other areas, as well as in the medical field, such as with Dr. Diego Verrastro. Additionally, we are with Mr. Miguel Garcia, who besides being in charge of content creation, is also in the field of psychology and business coaching. Gina Reyes, who is also employed in the area of communication, especially with Asobap Colombia and ART Iberoamerica. Mr. Miguel, what was your last name, Miguel? Okumura. Okumura, really? Well, Roberto has arrived too. Miguel Okumura, who is from THR Brazil, which is a consumer association, Mr. Julian Quintero, Director of Acción Técnica Social of Colombia, and Dr. Roberto Sussman, who is a researcher at UNAM. So, if you want, we can start. Let's start, Diego, if you want to start with the panel. Well, let's see, today we are all gathered here not to diagnose something we all already know, like misinformation, fake news, and all that, but to see what we are going to do from now on. Yes, we are halfway through the year, and the idea is for all of us to think about making a kind of, I like a checklist of what new strategies we need to have in communication. And as you rightly said, Jeff, we come from the scientific side, the communication side, and the content media side. And my first question for everyone is, at what point did you realize that medical and scientific data was not enough and you had to become, whether activists or doctors or scientists, communicators? Good afternoon, I am Miguel Okumura from Brazil, THR Brazil. I am an electrical engineer by profession and I just want to say that to clarify that I am not a doctor, meaning I am not from the medical field and I am truly someone who became an activist. And your question is very good because who regulates those devices and who has the duty to regulate not only nicotine, but anything that could harm the body is Anvisa. In Brazil, it is Anvisa. Anvisa is a very strong, very large, very important institution in Brazil. It has a lot of power in its hands as well. And during the pandemic, we saw Anvisa do a a very strong defense of science. So looking at that example, I thought when it comes time to talk about vaping, it will be easy because they are on the side of science. They are on the right side. I say that because during the pandemic, we had a presidency in the executive. The president of Brazil is known to be anti-science, Jair Bolsonaro. known for denying vaccines and everything and he as president had put a i mean he had the power to appoint the president of one of the directors of an visa who the director would be. Yeah, we defended science. I said, oh, we've won this battle. But it didn't happen. It wasn't even close to happening. When public consultations began, we saw that we were already playing a game with the cards that were already set for us. There was a process they had to go through. But despite going through this process, it was just protocol. The decisions were already made. When the update for the RDC started, they tightened regulation against vaping by redefining the meaning of propaganda, showing the equipment counts as propaganda. So we ended up understanding that science is no longer enough or needs to be done. We need to talk to people. We organized ourselves and spent four hours talking about consumers, with consumers saying that science had to be respected, had to be listened to. It was all online. We did a great movement getting people there. And that's when we understood that they're very good at cherry picking. We're the champions of cherry picking in Brazil. And that's where we noticed that it wasn't just science that was needed, but more had to be done. We needed to provoke an impact in these institutions. Anvisa won a prize from the World Health Organization for all that regulation. Which is ridiculous. I don't want to spend a lot of time more, so I'll give away the mic. Yes. And there was people involved in education, involved in education on decision makers, for example, in Columbia, along with Juliana and along with Gina. and how we've talked about changing. Because just like you said, science is a lot of times not enough. It can be a conversation starter, just like Roberto will talk about in a couple of minutes. But Gina, can you comment on your process to demystify things, how we can direct and amplify these measures. Yes, first of all, thanks for the invitation. And I will talk more about my personal experience. How I started all of this is because I experienced health reduction For more than 30 years in my home, I had no idea what this was all about, what harm reduction on tobacco was. But... But about six or seven years ago, I arrived at my house. I wanted to find out more about what all of this was, what these alternatives were. I started not just to investigate, but I also started to notice that this works. I have a medical problem, a medical issue, and the doctor told my husband, do you smoke? Yes. If you want to help your wife, you have to stop smoking. But I know that for many people, it's very hard. People, it's their habit. It's hard to leave it from the night to the morning. That's what the situation my husband faced was. So he started with this alternative. And I said, okay, this is just as bad. This will harm me. That was my original position. But when time went by, I noticed that not only did Francisco's husband, my husband's life improve, but also the life of everyone around him. So that's why I wanted to find out more about this. Francisco was already fully involved activist in all of this and I said okay let's see what this is all about I started to investigate and that's when Francisco formed this group in Colombia and then in Iberoamerica and that's when we started to work alongside each other I started to notice that evidence exists the information is there media have decided to ignore all of this, to follow this narrative of fear. mainly doing francisco and and i is that we talk from from our heart with the data in our hands but what we need to do is grab this information and make it more digestible more humanize it not just showing graphs but showing lives that have generally changed. I'm an example of this. I've experienced this for a long time myself. So I feel that there's a lot of strategies available, but we're always in a constant war trying to fill gaps There's a news article that pops up, so we have to go and attack it. But we're not doing enough to bring out information because we're constantly in this race to defend ourselves. So I feel like there's a lot of alternatives. And we do do it. We've created campaigns. There's so many strategies that we could use, but what really works for us right now is to show stories and the information that we have, try to translate it and make it more easy to read for everyone else. Roberto, you come from science, you come from tough numbers. And through Provape Mexico, we've known about you, informing everyone about vaping. When did you become a communicator? Well, I'm no longer at Provape Mexico. I wanted to clarify this. It's important for me to say this. I'm a physicist. I have a career of more than 30 years. I work at the Autonomous University of Mexico and I come to this world as a former smoker. I smoked for 43 years in my life. I occasionally enjoy a cigar, very rarely. And I started like many other people. I tried out these devices. Not because I wanted to stop smoking. I was a happy smoker. I didn't have any major problems. But on one occasion at a Congress in Dallas, there was an ice storm. You couldn't walk on the streets. So we had to be locked in at the hotel and you couldn't smoke anywhere. So I was very anxious. One of the worker hotel workers who's Mexican told me, buy this e-cigarette. You can smoke that in your room and no one will notice. This was in 2013 and I bought a couple of e-cigarettes that looked like real cigarettes. There were metal tubes. I went up to my room. And I used it, I set it up, and I felt horrible. It looks horrible, but it took away my anxiety. That kept me away from e-cigarettes for three years because I enjoyed the act of smoking. There was another similar occasion another place where I couldn't smoke in India. And that's where I found an e-cigarette that you could change the liquid and all of that. And that turned me into a dual user. And I slowly started replacing due to the practicity. and because my throat was also asking me for it. I felt the softness of the sprays rather than the toughness of the smoke. That's where I noticed, just like a couple of people described, that I thought they should take over. And I understood the science very quickly, because it's physics, the difference between combustion and non-combustion. Spray. It's essential. It's ABC. 2 plus 2 equals 4. I understood it immediately. But well, just like everyone else has said, this didn't happen. There was politics involved. And for a long time, between 2018 and 2022, I was an activist with Juan Gito, with Tomaso Gorman. We created Pro Vapeo Mexico. And to shorten the story, in 2022, I retired from activism because I'm not very talented being an activist. And there's people that do it much better than me. And I don't have enough time. I have a very demanding career. So what I did was investigate as a professional in sprays, which is physics. And from that point onwards, it's very important for activists to take into account the fact that the scientific justification for harm reduction is solid as iron. Absolutely solid. Two plus two equals four in this case. And this doesn't mean that there's not many articles going around, because one of the things that I've done is review other articles, not just have my own experiment with a French colleague who's got his own lab, also review the experiments that have been done before. And we've seen that many of the articles that say there's a lot of dangers, talk about metals, that there's formaldehyde here present. It's just rubbish. Say how much there is and then watch doses. Because if not, there's toxic components to a person. They won't understand. You have to say how much. And if they don't know, you have to say, sir, what you're saying doesn't make any sense. It's irrelevant. So it's important that when you have to convince people that you do so with the utter conviction that you're right, because you have the possibility and the resources based on science to say all of this clearly. Harm reduction science is solid. Every article that says that they've found dangers always have A deficient methodology speculation. Those studies on cells on rats. Cells taken from smokers or from vapers. Our studies are idealized in a lab. They give a biological plausibility. I find, for example, DNA. That could produce cancer. Okay, I find it in vapes, but that's biological plausibility. It doesn't mean that vaping causes cancer. You can buy a lottery ticket. If you don't buy a lottery ticket, you'll never win the lottery. Buying a lottery ticket doesn't guarantee that you'll win it. Those preclinical effects that are found and that are talked about as being dangerous and all of that, simply plausibilities. There's not one study that can effectively prove that vaping is dangerous. It just doesn't exist. And just like with peanuts, for example, we can find people that will fall gravely ill or die because they've eaten peanuts. In every product, you'll find some cases, but those cases have to be taken as statistics. So the truth is they emphasize on all of this because there's this lack of information which puts everything into doubt. Anyone that puts this into doubt is wrong. They're not based on science. Of course, as has been said, science is ignored when politics are involved. You can be right based on science and then you'll still be ignored and the media will keep disinforming. I'll finish quickly, but that doesn't matter. Even if they shut us up and all of that, we have to be aware that the science, the scientific investigation, the methodology, the ports, bully the fact that there's a very significant reduction of the danger. Something very interesting I find about how Roberto champions the idea of making the information more digestible to explain to people, which was what Gina was just saying. So I want to ask you, Miguel, talking about all of this roberto just said the importance that people have this knowledge and understand it and what gina said about making it more digestible for them to understand there's a lot of people with different needs communication needs which which means that we need different ways of transmitting the message. How can we talk to these different types of people? I believe that other than thinking about how we can communicate, we have to think who we will be communicating to. Talk about harm reduction is so broad. We can talk about the economics, industry, the culture, the health, the science. So many times we've failed what our target audience is. For example, I went into a chamber of deputies. You arrive at science and they won't care or they won't understand you. Do you understand me? So we create a Bible on harm reduction. We keep it under our arms. And once we meet someone, we talk about chapter one and we repeat what we always say, but we don't analyze who we're talking to. You have to first analyze the market, the audience, and based on your audience is how we build up our speech. Which topics will they understand and how you have to speak to them for them to understand you. So you get all this information through. Many times we arrive... civil society with all our data and people just get bored. When you do it in a different style and you joke around and you've got interactions, you can get the message through, but you've got to get the way that you do it right. We're so technical sometimes. We're so aware that they lose interest quickly. Obviously, there's... freaks like us if we analyze people everyone that's here all of us are people that got into all of this without knowing what we were getting into it became our passion later we took an interest and we end up defending something different each time which is what's incredible at this society people from the whole world you create friends we reach an identification but we all fight for different things some fight for science some fight for medicine Some fight for health, some fight for rights, some because we want to defend our friends, but no one's got the right to come and tell me how I should live my life. If we analyze it nowadays, we don't have the capacity in our hands to choose what we have to do with our lives. They make us think we do. but those at the very top are the ones that determine all the policies that determine how we can live our lives. And that's what's tough. So I consider that every time we have the opportunity to talk to someone, we first have to see who we're talking to, what language and what cultural level they have to see how we can speak to them. a message through. Julián, you're very quiet. So the next question will be for you. You come from harm reduction on other substances, right? You've crossed the bridge to dedicate yourself to nicotine. Do you see something in parallel with a fight on other substances and nicotine in terms of communication? What challenges did you face before? Have you faced any? good evening to everyone thanks for the invitation it's it's great to see all of you here can we get the presentation on and i'll answer the questions you have just two minutes but don't worry i'll take only five but let's see The conversation on nicotine has fascinated us because it's much more complex than the conversation on harm reduction on illegal substances. It's been very tough to get into the conversation on nicotine. And we've said this, it was easier in Colombia for me to analyze ecstasy with a youngster or a syringe with youngsters and telling them that harm reduction on on nicotine with a vape as possible. So what we've done is put them all on the same level. When we started talking about nicotine, they didn't like it that we assimilated it to, that we talked about it at the same time as heroin. They asked us to do it at different times. So talk about harm reduction and risk. I will just take five minutes for this presentation if you understand what I'm talking about. As many of you know, we're Acción Técnica Social. We talk about harm reduction and risks with different substances, for different positions, for different elements. So we have different projects for self-cultivating cannabis, the handing in of syringes. So to communicate on this subject, we're reminding them of the damages and the harms of prohibition. Every time they want to ban vapes, we talk about the dangers of prohibition. And the two big things that happened in Colombia are the structural damages, which is that related to destruction of the state by mining the society, but also the dangers of consumption. But on the other side, innovation has always faced resistance within science and within the experience of the consumer. As we're innovating constantly here, we'll always face some resistance. It's about fighting against this resistance. And also, the experience of the consumer is always above everything. People have to be there with us. And the communication of nicotine and harm reduction in general, we don't have to get caught in the narrative that it's healthier or it's better. Why? It's harm reduction because it's less harmful. We don't have to say that it's better. And we don't have to fall into this trap We say that device, smokeless devices are less harmful, but it doesn't mean that they aren't harmful. And the other thing that we did was put all of this conversation in that whether the substance is legal or illegal, anything in excess has the same effect. Something else we've talked about is the failure of traditional media in terms of their economic and moral interests. The media are in crisis. We know all of this. There's more and more evidence that respond to political interests or respond to economic interests. And above all, there's a huge crisis in traditional media makes us understand what they consume, what people consume. Our public inform us about what the traditional media say. People used to be on the prime time at 8 PM because the people that actually want to listen to me, they're probably watching Netflix or somewhere else right now. So understanding this was very important for us. And there's some, some data hit there on the rights that 51% get their information from the, from social media and 28% get it from TV. TV has dominated for 60 and 70 years, and they're no longer dominant right now. So that's important to understand. And it's a chaos that it's causing. And the other thing that's important is our relationship with the industry. Everything that we worked with, the UN, Save the Children, Carrefour, all of this is very important Philip Morris too so it's a variety so we have to be tough when the industry has bad practices and we talked about this where with a delivery system for example denouncing that you bought something and you got a free vape so these These things are negative for us, so we have to bring them up and hold them accountable too. Something else is right to speak directly to the consumer, not to the people that decide for them. So we speak directly to the consumer. Yes, it's important to talk to doctors and all of that, but at the end of the day, we have to speak to consumers. And there's plenty of strategies. We're always available to talk. And we talk to vapers as equals to them. That's important in communication. For a friend to see us as one of them. Many people talk about vaping have never vaped. They've never smoked a cigarette. They've never consumed any substances. And so medicine and psychology have now lost the monopoly on their interpretation on drugs. They no longer have this monopoly because they've always talked about dangers and they say that everything's harmful. So that's why they failed because danger is the only way of convincing and harm has failed. In recent conversations we had in recent debates, we're finally talking about pleasure, finally talk about satisfaction, talk about what nicotine is giving me, that I'm willing to take the risk of either dying through smoking or of abusing a device and having a negative consequence. It's time to talk about pleasure and talk about the rewards and put them on the table. and analyze them alongside other substances and what consuming more than one substance can do to you. What does someone do after consuming heroin is smoke five cigarettes in a row. What happens when someone consumes ecstasy at a party? They just get stuck onto a vape. So nicotine is close to and related to many other substances. So we have to be very aware and very specific on how we, and the fact that we can say that vapes and these devices should not be an entryway to, into these substances. Therefore people are already consuming the substances and to improve their quality of life. And finally is a change of narrative. It's a long-term project due to the disinformation, due to a prohibition, due to the moralism. So the changes cultural and generational. For us that talk about harm reduction in nicotine, these changes won't happen in five years. It won't happen in 10 years. We're just starting to see the results of what we started to talk about 10 years ago. It will be very long-term. This will have many downfalls and many uprises. Some advances that we'll fall back to. We'll have to... To trust the science, trust the cultural change and trust in the experience of consumer. Thank you very much, Julianne. And you remind me of something about this changing conversation, which Julianne just mentioned. It's very interesting to see how the media have changed, how all of this has changed. Just like Miguel was talking about before, because you participate in these subsets, but in a way, in a more empowering way of, of empowering small content creators, creating a community to battle this fake information, false news and creating empathy within users. Yes. When I was trying to quit smoking, my story with tobacco I learned when I was a little child. I think it's a problem with my generation in Brazil. We know that smoking is bad. We learned that. But many people learned the lesson because they had studied about this, because of health campaigns. Other people learned this because of pain, because of the... suffering to see relatives suffering. I know my generation is not very keen on smoking, but one thing is what you learn and the other thing is what you do or what you leave. So I always thought that Smoking would never be a problem. But when I was studying engineering at an elite and Spartan university, I found that it was a means of escape. Smoking was a means of escape. So I started smoking. And when I got to know vaping, I thought, that's really... Nice, that's really dangerous, but they have the idea because the idea in Brazil is not that vaping or smoking is bad, but nicotine is bad. That's harmful. That's what we learned in Brazil, the whole playbook. refers to that. And you'll find that in other parts of the world, that nicotine is the bad product. The negative thing is nicotine. So that was integrated into my DNA, in my soul. So when I got to know vaping, I couldn't believe in it. Why? with a change six for half a dozen. So I was writing my thesis and I started studying vaping issues and I wanted to find scientific journals and articles and the like. So the first thing was that the authorities in Brazil were talking about that. And I thought maybe this is not a good thing, but then I found out what the United Kingdom was stating and I thought, OK, there's something wrong. There's one side which is not telling the truth, which is lying. So I had to start to do deep research to accept baby as an alternative. And it took me another year to be able to start using. I like gadgets. I know myself. I like smoking gadgets, but I was really careful. I didn't want to change, as I said before, six for half a dozen. So I found out that it's so difficult to carry out research because I know I'm privileged. I went to very good schools. I went to a very good university. I learned how to do research, but that's not the normal thing for people. So I started this project by purpose. So what happened to me at the beginning was the technology issue because I'm an electrical engineering. So, I mean, technology in itself. So I thought it was a very powerful tool to stop, to quit smoking because I had tried to quit smoking for two years. And throughout those years were terrible years for me. I left university. I didn't know where this anguish was coming from. And that was because I was trying to quit smoking in the wrong way. So when I understood this, I thought I need to let other people know. I need to speak out. So I started my project, Vaporaket, which simplifies that. And also in Brazil, people, I speak a lot. Sorry. I know I have a podcast, so I like talking and that one is ready. But the point is difficult questions have no answer. Easy answers. So if you're talking about something complex now and people tell you, you should do this or that, that's wrong. The person is wrong. It's not easy to talk about that. So the project means that I need to sit down. I need to talk about vaping with that person. Always exploring. how the person was, how the person started smoking, vaping, how the transition was, how the life was transformed afterwards. And I started realizing that all the stories were similar. In fact, international stories are similar. Our stories here are similar. So to try to find similar stories gave me fuel to start talking to different people. So I just realized we cannot keep on talking for our own circle. So there were certain issues that I was not able to answer because I was not an activist at that time. Sorry, I was a person talking about vaping. So we started sending emails even to the industry, because I don't know what you think. Because I was aware that the tobacco companies didn't like this, because we started talking with toxicologists. The first one was a student. And then I managed to meet people like Ingrid, who's here today. She's renowned. toxicologist in Brazil. She's a member of the academy. So in Brazil, if you are a member of the pharmaceutical academy, you're immortal because it means you are a very special person. So I started to see that we have to talk about this. We need to be clear and simple about this and straightforward and show our example, just to show or lead by example. So we had to show there's a problem. We do have a problem. This is not 100% safe, but it's a tool that is used in other places. Why can't we use it? Why are we so different, resilient people? because a worldwide science cannot be applied to us. Aren't we entitled to the same rights as other people have, let's say, in the United Kingdom and in other parts of the world? So starting by wondering this, I couldn't try to answer the questions. I had to find the people who would help me to answer these questions. And that was the path. So the example started to inspire other people. Nowadays, for example, The toxicology Brazilian society has started giving speeches within the university talking about harm reduction. And so many years ago, we were thinking that we were the only crazy people who were talking about this. So now we have... the Harm Reduction Science and Technology Association. So we are represented by them. We feel supported because we thought we were the only crazy people talking about that. So we learned that example speaks by itself. So whatever we do speaks by itself. So we have to do this with lab because we can only start by this. Within your four last speeches, you just answered to my different questions. So I see the way in which you are trying to communicate harm reduction. just to put at the same level or just to play the same field as the consumers. So we have to have the same speech when we talk to regulators or politicians. Do we have to change the speech? Do we have to generate micro learning for politicians? Do we have to make it so simple for them to be able to understand the message? That's a question. How do you think we should change the topic or the message? Or maybe you have done so because you have already spoken to politicians. What's your experience? We need to think about public health, harm reduction. We have been talking about it for ages. We thought, OK, yeah, you need to improve the way of living of a person and things like that. But this harm reduction is impacting other daily aspects of life. This is how we deal with politicians. It's not only a public health problem, it's also living together, safety. If we talk about smoke, which is really important, for example, in flats, in building blocks, there are people who smoke a lot cigarettes, for example, and people have called us and just say, could you please help us sort this out? Because this person can smoke within. his apartment because now it's a problem with for neighbors or for in the corridors because this goes beyond public health so it's it's a matter of living together so we need to think about that and in Colombia the things that the regulation in terms of illegal substances. So people think that in Colombia, this is only regarding to people who consume heroin or cocaine or whatever. No, it's just a regulation because people want to get rid of illegal market. What's going on in Australia? It's something that we're all looking at, the situation in Australia, because extreme prohibition is leading to a chaotic situation of a cartel war. So Mexico is just... leading to that. I think you have already mentioned this because there's a control in terms of selling these devices. So this is in the hands of the mafia. So we need to just separate ourselves from harm reduction. We need to include other scenarios, safety, the social scenario. and living together. And they like to talk about money. For example, American people love to talk about money. So if you just think how much money you're collecting in terms of taxes and the like. So for example, cannabis tax, they have collected so much that they had to go to return money to citizens because that was set forth by the law in force. So I think those are strategies that We need to think. And this just extends beyond public health. I love your point of view. And I think we should follow that to try to switch, to change the message, to keep on moving. Are we doing this together? That's what we have to ask ourselves. Are we getting the expected results? So we shouldn't just leave that just to self-asking. our own strategies. One strategy which has worked in Brazil is just to occupy every single space that could be occupied. For example, if we talk about a drug debate, the consumer could take part. So we need to be there. We need to be present. I'm not going to mention every single thing because I will give you the floor to you as well. But we need to think about this because many people in Brazil, many regulators in Brazil are not aware of what's going on with the vaping, nicotine, alternative products. It's not the same as in Europe. So maybe America can show something. So we don't have full data because people who are opposed to this are not honest, are dishonest, not all of them. But those who attended the Senate in Brazil, they're dishonest. They changed the graph. They increased the scale. They changed the data. So we need to show international experience. We need to try to be in every single space we can. So we started to generate a debate, and that has really worked. We also found that something worked. And this is basically to talk, to speak out about rights, the rights people have to choose freely. I cannot understand, still now, why they have to tell you what you should do with your life. If you want something, you need to try. You need to fight for that. And then you see which the results are. But it doesn't mean that the government or the politicians should tell you, no, we're going to ban this. This shouldn't be like this. So we have just realized that this will not get to any point because it's always talking about black market chaos. And the black market is not interested in the consumers. So it's a long-term task. We need to keep on creating communities, strengthening ourselves. We need to work with people who are aligned with us, who are just striving in the same way. So this is a matter of teamwork. We are not so many people, but the ones who are working now 24 hours a day and are passionate about this. We need to keep on doing the same. We need to keep on campaigning spreading information, we need to make it easier to read or user friendly, we need to talk to a regulator, a politician would be the same to talk to a medical doctor who doesn't have the same tools. So we need to start to repair this or just to change this. So this speech, so as to say it, can reach every single person, but we need to work hard and we need to get to know how we can manage to get the message reach these people. We need to work with the media. I'm working as a community manager in a magazine, it's a digital magazine, and we are looking at at fighting against misinformation. So we need to keep on working on a daily basis by fighting, arguing. We publish articles all the time, but the most important thing is to keep on working together, hand in hand. Maybe it's something very tiny, but maybe infography that you can publish in the social media, which are user friendly. We need to create platforms to include some videos so that politicians, if they don't have time, they can watch it, let's say, part by part. in sequences, so it's easier for them to read it. So we need to work hard on this. So we need to keep on working like this. That's the most important thing for us. I don't think that if we think of what we have been doing now, we have evidence, we have the science. That's the truth. So we are fighting against something that exists. This is absurd, if I can put it that way. So we have been playing a game against these people opposing, which is a war that seems that will never end. So I think my son will keep on fighting for the same thing. Why? Because we are fighting against lies. Lies come from imagination, which is infinite. So we are explaining what we are not. We are not worse than smoke, worse than cigar, but we are talking about what we really are. So if we keep on fighting against all those lies, if people keep on having imagination to change statistics, estimate this is never ending. So we need to be strong on who we are, who's the opposition. So let's not promote the opposition. So sometimes people say, oh, look at this, look at what they publish. So we all start attacking them. So we start just telling them, don't lie, don't lie. But sometimes We are accomplices of those failures, so we need to concentrate and focus on who we are and to try to find allies, because empires have always been defeated by alliances. You need to share what's going on in your own country because then you go back to your country, to your own world, instead of working with bigger projects in which you are joined together in order to have a wider outreach so that the public opinion can understand what you're saying. Can I say something else? And that's what you said about asking for help. I think that should be the priority, the main strategy. The first time I spoke as an activist, I asked for help, and I don't manage to see how much help is available at the moment. You don't need to discover the will, because the situation in Brazil is critical. Our neighbors are facing critical situations at the moment. I'm asking them, what are you doing? What have you been doing to help us? So we need to ask for help. So people come to us. I never thought that Ingrid would be somebody who's helping the Brazilian community. And when I asked her why? She said, because they're consumers, there's just popular need to do things in the right way. So this all comes from the help we have been asking for. So that's great. Julian, I think it's fundamental when you talk about these projects and the fact that you have gone from a situation in which you have thought that it was only a fact of being reactive to misinformation in the media, to stigmatization. Now, instead of being reactive, it's just proactive. And you're proposing a debate, as the one you have mentioned, about different things. Which strategies do you think that could be implemented to change from being reactive which we can see so many times in THR society or groups, to be more positive or to propose new ideas. I think we were tired of giving our opinion because opinions are subjective. So people would say, I don't give an opinion, so I let the others, social media detectives, they just think, They can do whatever, but they are not just prepared for the historical moment. They are not updated to see what we're living nowadays, because if they're not censorship, it's a matter of hate. So we are just... fed up of giving opinion. So we went from opinion to evidence and we started compiling or gathering evidence. So we started at the beginning, having certain conversations from people. So you just check the right platform. So we have social media with so many followers, hundreds of followers. So the last conversation we took part with Alejandra and the likes were about censorship in social media. So it was closed because we were talking about marijuana or cocaine or heroin. So we just reported this, we have our own speech, we made a complaint, so we just managed to get to reach the goal, and then we started just being stronger about our opinions, and this has not been closed. And people would ask us, how did you recover your account? And we just said, we just complained about this, and so we managed to go back. So you need to be an amplifier of what people is living in this conversation, what people is living every day. So that's what we managed to do. And the other thing is that you need to work hard. And you can see so much work behind what is not in the social media. So we could receive a reply from a petition we submitted to the government four or five months ago. But I remember the answer. would like to receive something, we receive eight pages with a reply with every single detail. So there's so much job, so much work behind it. So you need to plan. You need to sit down and say, what are we going to ask the government? So we need to gather information and evidence and make the most of the platforms and just leverage the platforms. That's what we have. been doing, you have to measure, you have to listen to people, to know what's going on, and to make the most of the platforms available to you to do your best. So you need to contact public officials, the government. You need to ask them, and they need to reply. So in terms of being reactive, when you have all the information, first have information, you can take your time to publish that. So we're not a means of communication. We are not a journal to be competing for the audience, let's say, but this happens to the teams, which is full of young people and they are in crisis. Oh no, my social media account has been closed. And I just said, okay, don't worry. We're a project which works with people. dealing with politicians, assisting to meetings, attending meetings, and who have social media to reply, to answer to people who only use a social media platform. There are three different things that we do have to be positive and not reactive. Oh, that's great. I don't know whether to get involved in this topic, but well, I would like to talk in terms of communication of the pink elephant we have here, which is children consumption, kids consumption, because there is a speech organized by the opposition with which this happens. What you're just saying, Julian, we are panicking, so you need to go out and reach the public. I never listened to, I never heard any activists or doctors saying that everything was safe for children. People who are dealing with DHR, we We always said that people who don't smoke shouldn't start vaping. It's not for kids' consumption or for children's consumption. But there's evidently something that we're doing wrong. The message is not definitely right because the audience don't understand. We're the main advocates for this. So this made me think. Are we doing this right? Which should be the new strategies we should be implementing so people can get the right message that we're really worried about children's consumption? Is there any kind of negligence in terms of marketing because marketing promotes? Is there a lack of regulation? Are there any methods promoting this? Because we know teenagers love to do research to go beyond the limits. So if I say this is not for underage, am I promoting them to try this, to do this? I just want to know your opinion. This is another subject which I think is absurd. This is a war that we get involved in that one. They are setting this war to us, and we are fighting here. Because when they say this will be harmful for children, we can talk about football, American football and the like, because they're all attractive and they can all be harmful. So what about being a fireman, a policeman, astronaut? Because all the children want to be that and they're all dangerous professions. So this is a matter of life. It's not harm reduction system. Whatever thing we do can be attractive. But this can be a social problem. So as a social issue, it should be treated like that, not as harm reduction. So we need to think that the main responsible people are the parents, the family, not a product which is in the market. So the state should provide. the right information so that the population is informed about this. And then we need to know what's going on. But it's a matter of information. It's the obligation to inform, not to ban. But the thing is that the government is making a stigma on it. So we shouldn't be taking this because it's a society problem. It's a social problem. I think just to look for the guilty party maybe to cover things. So because they start with this speech, the children's speech, to ban. So as a mother, my daughter already knows what a vapor is. And she told me that at school, there's this and that person who's vaping. And what did you tell her? That this is an alternative for people who want to quit smoking. And that's exactly the message. So that's what we need to do, to spread the information so that people, no matter if they are parents who are the main responsible people to educate their children and to let them know if you are vaping, let's say I don't know what vaping would be like. But the important thing is that the person has the information. And what the media are saying, because the media, let's say, we have been seeing in the last month that we, because we attended a social event, that they were not aware of harm reduction. They had no idea about alternatives. And we saw people smoking there. And we would tell them, do you know anything about this? No. Are you aware of this alternative? Yeah, I know, but I've been told this is worse. Why do you think it's worse? Because that's what the media says. are saying. So Juan Carlos, this is really sad because there's so much evidence and people are not allowed to take a decision, a personal decision, because they just digest all the information that's been submitted to them. So we need to work hard on this issue. And in Colombia, Iberoamerica, We just say, no, that's not an alternative for underage people. It's just for people who want to quit smoking. Please, I don't want to be crucified. I understand what Mike is saying. that it's a duty of the government to spread information. It's about parents. But I do think the THR of Brazil are not talking to parents. I know DHR Brazil are not talking to children, because we do know it's an adult debate, adult use. But we can educate children without lying to them, telling that nicotine will kill them, and to let them understand that there is a risk. And no matter which the risk is, we need to educate them in terms of harm reduction, baiting, without making an apology of baiting. And I think there's a lack of action. I do think that's for adults. That's not for children. But who's talking to children to let them know this is not for you? Because in Brazil, we are trying to teach something. We educate on something. This is really problematic. So Ingrid is helping us. There's people working directly with teenagers. So I don't have all the data. They are not available. I have a spoiler. which refers to Sincha, who's a researcher. And she said that when we started, we were worried about this being a problem. Now we have started, we are certain that it's more than urgent. The debate about drugs, illicit drugs, for example, It's for adult use, when a person chooses to use that. But they do talk to young people, and they are explained that that's not something right. The debates about HIV, sex, and things like that, those are subjects or topics for adults. But you need to start communicating these without lying to adults. young people because you cannot wait until a person is 18 years old when you start teaching this person about vaping and harm and things like that. You need to tell the truth. And you need to be careful on how you talk, because it's a typical thing of teenagers to challenge what you're saying, to try to everything, especially when you ban something, when you ban access to something. So we need to start this action. So if we don't have a well-planned action, they will hit us. They will punish us. And if we do things wrong, yeah, we will be crucified. So we need to have the courage to start talking where the problem lies. I'll pick up on three points. First of all, the parents, the families. When we worked with schools and we asked children where they saw it first, it was at home. Who gave it to me? My uncle, my brother, my cousin. So first of all, we have to take that into account. When they reach our services, it's because they're already consuming. So why do you do it? Because you failed. You failed at prevention. I don't do prevention. You do prevention. I do harm reduction. So that's not our problem. The second thing is that the industry has bad practices. And we've seen how in Colombia, in front of a school, they set up a publicity cart where the main character is a reggaeton singer done as a comic and they gift them away. So the industry has bad practice and we have to make them accountable for it. And thirdly, It's a fact that the conversation with kids, with adolescents especially, kids are very, very strange cases, but adolescents are more prevalent. And they talk about kids starting vaping when they're 12. How many? Their percentile is so low, but they love saying that it's 12-year-olds. And they say no. And... But they try illegal substances at 18, at 16. But the message there shouldn't be on the substance, but on the construction of an identity during their adolescence. All of us want to become adults, and to be adults, we take on behaviors that adults have. So it may be a babe, it may be a certain hair color, it could be a piercing or a tattoo. So in the industry and with the state, we have to normalize certain things for it not to be part of their character, so they don't aspire to consume it. And they say, oh, you use drugs to fit in. And yes, I ended up fitting in, and it ended up working, and people started respecting me in my friendship group. It's part of life. There's not much we can do about it. So they'll look at anything that represents rebelliousness or a forming of character. They'll just look for any object. It doesn't matter if it's a vape or a piercing or whatever. You have to understand this moment in their lives because they want to fit in. And we want to avoid these products being something aspirational for them. I wanted to ask if anyone in the public had any questions. Yes. Thank you very much. My question is for Julian Quintero. First of all, it's a pleasure to have you here. You've got such a long experience in harm reduction. Seeing you here and talk about harm reduction on tobacco fills me with pleasure. I'm going to talk about that. There's a couple of questions, but I want to say one of my experiences before. In the harm reduction conference in your country, I found someone from Mexico, a government employee who works on harm reduction. And to my surprise, it was sad that when I found this person, he asked me, oh, who brought you here? And I told him, no, I'm coming for a satellite. event and he told me, oh, you come with a fake harm reductionist. So do you find a certain stigma coming from other harm reduction people on other substances? Have you found this? Have you experienced this too? And if you find them, what can you tell them? Of course, of course, every day. the relationship with industry and why are you involved in all of this? And when I got into this topic, we knew what we were getting into. And then we've always been very transparent. We've always set everything out on the table. We've worked with the pharmaceutical industry in terms of medicine. We've worked with the alcohol industry. which is the most harmful thing, as we've said before. We work in the nicotine industry. But if you're transparent, if you lay everything on the table, time ends up making you right. And everyone that used to criticize us seven, six, eight years ago, they're getting into the conversation on nicotine now. So that's key, being transparent, trusting what you do. And that's the way we're going. Any substance, whether it's legal or illegal, in excess is bad for you. And that's what we're working on. You have to relax. You don't have to build up great movies and fantasize about the big enemy. Work with dealers. Imagine what I'm talking about. My analysis of substances comes, dealers come to me with all their bags and they ask me, what does this have? What does this bag have? Imagine if I can work with them, why would I be scared to work with people that work legally? It does make me laugh sometimes when people worry too much. There's a report coming out this week on someone that cooks to CB on our websites. And he asks what this does to you, and he asks us a lot of questions for his clients. I'm waiting for the mic to be turned on. Thank you. Hi, I'm Ignacio Leyva from Chile. For those that don't know Julian, He's like a super rock star in Latin America in terms of harm reduction. I know he's very modest, but I greatly admire you. Having said that, I also wanted to ask about something similar, but go further into the issue. In our case, in case of the harm reduction activists, we have this stigma that's very deep into... deep regarding our harm reduction on tobacco compared to other substances that they accuse us of being close to the industry, which isn't true. So despite all advances that we've had, what can we do, the activists that aren't close to the industry, in terms of global tobacco harm reduction? to convince everyone that this is just as valid or at least just as valid as the harm reduction that's been done in other areas. What can you do? What can we do in your experience? I think that science fights with science. Evidence is very important here. So one thing is having the evidence and putting it into regulation, but we also have to be patient. This doesn't happen from one day to the next, just like you said. We had a conference in Colombia and Getting the conversation in there was very tough. And it was tough because Bloomberg funded the conference too. And they would say, oh no, how can we talk about harm reduction in this sense? And that's what... allowed the topic to be talked about so many people talking about the people that just didn't have an interest people that saw that saw that this worked so you have to be patient you have to have the evidence communicate it listen to the users and not get involved in these conversations about about you being a part of the industry or you working with them Because you just end up just answering other people. You end up getting involved in something you don't want to get involved in. And this does happen. And I wanted to add that maybe through you, we could convey a message regarding a scientific data that we didn't have the opportunity to communicate at harm reduction 25, and it's that 90% of drug users is a user of traditional cigarette. That means that one out of every two drug users will die due to something caused directly by tobacco. And that's something that could open doors, and due to the lack of participation that we had, we couldn't raise this awareness. But I think this argument could be very important to make people understand that we're not a part of the industry but instead that more people die due to tough drugs people that use tough drugs die more due to cigarette use rather than the use of the hard drugs themselves they're more likely to die from tobacco than the drug I think that's a great entry point if us or if you or if us that are in this scenario, talking about tobacco health reduction, want to make other harm reduction substances fall in love with us, I'm sure they will, because we're close to them. And what you said is very definitive. So I wanted to give you that data so you could spread it around. There's people that are in the first step of detoxing for three weeks let's say you ask to be able to smoke a cigarette rather than consume the hard drug that you you're rehabbing for if you ask for the door to be open the door has to be open for you you retire from the treatment immediately and they ask to do this to do this for nicotine so there's programs and we've seen that say because they're extremely strict with a detox and nothing is nothing you can't have alcohol you can't have nicotine but in some cases they decide to do give us these cigarettes so they can keep them in the program so if we can relate this this could be a very important push Most people that consume drugs also smoke, just like you said. The right number is 80%, sorry, not 90%. And some people that are in charge of rehab facilities are now allowing vaping too, which is important. Well, I wanted to say something to Ignacio and to Julián that in my experience, I had to speak in front of the Senate. And I was thinking, what can I tell them? Because right here you spoke about this and they don't know what harm reduction is. So I simply spoke as a toxicologist setting the data up, putting the graphs and the rations, and I spoke in a very simple way, but without the possibility for them to answer me. Because every number I put on the on the presentation had a reference at the bottom and I wasn't talking about tough science talking extremely in depth I spoke about deep things but very simply and something else I wanted to say is that I didn't give them the opportunity to answer or to generate a fight I spoke firmly especially due to the time that was given. Do you know what happened at the end? The floors opened up for questions. And all you could hear was silence. No questions. We don't have to fight. I was listening to this. And if they're not interested in the topic, we'll never talk about this. Thank you, Ingrid. We're kind of short on time. Just to close up, can we briefly, did everyone understand? Briefly, talk about the future, speaking about the future. If you had to choose one direct action, that was financed back plausible to improve the communication in each of the areas? Just one. Which one would it be? What would you propose? Are we doing everything right? Are we not? What would you improve quickly? I would back up a tough pilot of granting noncombustible devices to people that use other drugs in problematic contexts. I'd back this project with heroin users, 100 users, 100 heroin consumers and supply them with electronic devices. And give them six months, eight months to see if their lives change or not. If their health improves or not. That's a good project that we could also use. But apart from what Julian said, which I think we could steal his idea. It's also basically to keep working with information that we have. Can you hear me? Yes. And what I was saying is what we're interested in is that politicians, doctors, a lot of people should listen to us, but many times we don't have a way of accessing them. So what would be important is if we could finance a small platform which has a lot of small videos, just summarizing some of the evidence, a scientific investigation, which would be, which could be short, easy, just two minutes. Cause we know that in the day to day life of a politician or a doctor doesn't have enough time and their, their lives run very quickly. So just videos that they could watch in an elevator or quickly, and for them to understand what's being transmitted in that message. I think that's what should happen because in social media, people just scroll and scroll and scroll and information is just lost in the way. We've lost some of the reach in that sense. So if we could direct this to the politicians, platform for something for mothers too, so they understand the product. That's just something that comes to my mind. The difficult part is just saying one idea. I would love to be able to enter universities more, to talk with people, talk with medicine students, talk with students on health in general to form a new generation of professionals that are more human and that they could see harm reduction with the same eyes that we look at harm reduction. I'm not saying that the current generation is lost, but I think that This change will generate other changes and it will be a snowball effect. Well, since I've thought about it for many years and every time I say it, people call me an idiot because it won't end up happening. But I still think about it. We have a very strong competition. We have everyone that's against us. We have great economic strengths and they can just keep spreading lies constantly. And as Hitler said, if you say a lie a thousand times, it'll become true. I've always thought that we should create an international movement, an international vaping day for all of us to go out on the streets. As Latins, we love parties, coming out in every sense of the way, creating a party so that people can see that people that look for home reduction and users are healthy people that you see us on the streets. We arrive at home smelling of strawberries. So we're normal people, but we should come out and inform people. We should be on the streets, all of us on the same day in the whole world. So the media have to generally find out what's behind us. Once it comes out in every media, it'll be news. It will reach everyone and reach the society. that maybe don't know what harm reduction is. I would love that. And it's still in my mind. So hopefully it does happen at some point. Well, thank you very much to everyone that's participated and everyone that's been here listening to us. It's been incredible, as per usual. And I don't know, Diego, if you want to say something else. Yes, thank you very much to everyone. And a brief thought. Everyone from your sector, from wherever you work, if we're doing the right things, if we're communicating properly, if the subject that we're talking to is understanding us, and we have to do this constantly, We shouldn't just believe that we're doing everything properly, because the doubt that you generate in yourself will allow us to keep evolving further. And that's what this is all about. People keep evolving, and all of us from tobacco harm reduction have the need to keep evolving in our message. That's what I wanted to say, and I know we're on time. So that's all finished. Thank you very much, everyone.