Public health’s assault on vaping and safer nicotine products isn’t guided by evidence, it’s driven by fear, outrage, and a profound misunderstanding of risk. At GFN 2025 in Warsaw, David Zaruk, the “Risk-Monger,” reveals how emotion overrides science in policymaking. From the misuse of the Precautionary Principle to the denormalization of entire industries, Zaruk argues that activist zeal and WHO dogma have turned nicotine into a moral battleground, sacrificing harm reduction and leaving millions of smokers without safer options.
Featuring:
DAVID ZARUK
Environmental-Health Risk Analyst
Author, The Risk-Monger
@zaruk
risk-monger.com
Transcription:
00:10 - 00:41
[Brent Stafford]
Hi everybody, I'm Brent Stafford and welcome to another edition of Regwatch on GFN.TV. We're here in Warsaw, Poland for the 12th edition of the Global Forum on Nicotine, the annual conference on safer nicotine products and tobacco harm reduction. Got a really good conversation today that we're going to have with David Zarek, who is otherwise known as the Risk Monger. And I'm here with David Zarek, who's somebody I wanted to speak to for some time, otherwise known as the Risk Monger.
00:41 - 00:42
[David Zaruk]
Thank you, Brent.
00:42 - 00:44
[Brent Stafford]
What is that, the Risk Monger?
00:44 - 01:38
[David Zaruk]
I started about 15 years ago when I was teaching a course to journalism students on social media, and I thought I better do something myself. And since I was an expert in risk communications and risk management, I thought I could write on this theme. And I started to notice that I was unveiling a lot of interesting subjects on environmental health risks that people knew were a little bit strange, but nobody was talking about them. And so I generally make people feel uneasy with facts and information that gets in the way of their beliefs and volitions. But I thought there wasn't anything to do with facts and beliefs. It's emotional, in fact. Emotion always seems to win. In fact, that's the wonderful thing about risk is that I can see all the facts on something like vaping and the safety or on power lines and the fact that there's no risk to cancer, but I'll never buy a house near a power line.
01:38 - 01:48
[Brent Stafford]
Well, risk is really the key term, isn't it, for vaping? It's a relative risk and so many in public health don't seem to want to talk about that. Exactly.
01:48 - 02:39
[David Zaruk]
The problem with today's regulatory domains, they tend to want to have everything nice and clean. We expect everything to be 100% safe and certain, and if it can't be safe and certain, then we take precaution. Maybe explain a little bit about your background for the audience so they are situated. Well, I started out in the domain of risk in the 1990s when that was not considered a very important field. In fact, risk had always been considered a four letter word. And so what we have at that time was a community mostly of either toxicologists or philosophers, people involved in decision theory who were writing among themselves. And I found myself at home with these people trying to understand this justified logic of how people make decisions.
02:41 - 02:45
[Brent Stafford]
So based on what you know, how risky is using a nicotine vape?
02:46 - 03:29
[David Zaruk]
Well, nothing is 100% safe. And I think that's the important thing to realize. Our risk-averse population today demands that everything is safe with certainty. And if it's not, then we must take precaution. COVID was a good example. We weren't certain about this pandemic, so we locked everyone up until we were certain. But there are degrees, what we should be considering instead are degrees of safety or safer. And it's quite clear that something like vaping or other types of innovative new nicotine products are much safer than the old smoking combustibles that leave a lot more carcinogens and risks in people's bodies.
03:31 - 03:34
[Brent Stafford]
So harm reduction is considered a relative risk?
03:34 - 03:45
[David Zaruk]
Yes, it's a basic risk management tool. You lower exposure to a hazard and in doing so you reduce the risk as low as reasonably achievable. The question here is what is reasonable?
03:46 - 03:53
[Brent Stafford]
So you're based in Europe? Yes. So do the Europeans, say at the EU level, do they understand harm reduction?
03:54 - 04:45
[David Zaruk]
For certain things they do and in fact I think unfortunately what they consider is within a more social position so they will understand harm reduction on dealing with methadone for example for heroin addicts or needle distribution. They will understand harm reduction on dealing with alcoholism but tobacco has a bit of another darker history that they're struggling with for harm reduction I think. And what do you think that history is? Well, it has a lot to do, obviously, with the large number of people who are still smoking as well. But you have to understand the cultural elements too, because Europe is not one single culture for tobacco use over the last 50 to 100 years, the last 500 years.
04:45 - 04:51
[Brent Stafford]
But certainly actually some countries in Europe are quite well known and associated with smoking.
04:51 - 05:25
[David Zaruk]
Oh, and the wonderful image of the Frenchman with a cigarette hanging out with the glass of wine and that. But I think that there's a certain degree of hypocrisy that's going on with a lot of policies towards alternatives to smoking as well. What do you mean hypocrisy? Well, that we would demand certain conditions before we regulate on a new vaping product and prior to regulating on it, the conditions would be almost impossible to meet. So people keep smoking.
05:26 - 05:41
[Brent Stafford]
There's a term, and this is one of the big reasons why I wanted to talk with you, is because we've tried to get our heads around this. It's hard to explain, I think, to some people, but what is the precautionary principle and how has it been applied to vaping?
05:41 - 06:28
[David Zaruk]
Well, there are many different definitions of precaution. In fact, I think I've seen studies of up to 15 different types of definitions, and some would say that vaping is a very precautionary approach and should be promoted, but that doesn't fit the main policy that the European Commission uses, which is essentially based on a concept from the book that was released by the European Environment Agency, Late Lessons from Early Warnings, which says that until you can prove that something is safe with certainty, you must take precautions. So the burden of proof has been put no longer on trying to prove that something is dangerous. Now you have to prove that something is safe. And safety is, once again, an emotional concept.
06:28 - 06:37
[Brent Stafford]
That's what's so stunning to me is that they won't let you try to prove it's safe anyhow. So it's a catch-22. Exactly.
06:38 - 07:40
[David Zaruk]
So I think when we look at precaution as well, precaution is a, it's not risk management, it's uncertainty management. And for many policymakers, what you want to do is throw something back into the tall grass. Come back to me when you're certain. And you can play this regulatory game with anything that the public may be opposed to. The public is afraid of GMOs, so they'll send all these demands for policies and studies. And when they come back, say, okay, well, that's good, but you have to prove to me still this, this, and this. And that way they don't have to bother confronting difficult issues where there may be controversial groups, activists campaigning against certain products, chemicals, other things. And very much so today when we see vaping as a alternative to smoking combustibles. There's a lot of noise from the activist community and they're the ones that are putting pressure on the governments. So just keep pushing it back into the deep grass.
07:41 - 07:48
[Brent Stafford]
So those anti-tobacco organizations and groups, are they actually mongering risk?
07:49 - 08:13
[David Zaruk]
Well, they've created fears and they've created uncertainties and confusions about something which is a far safer product and that's their goal basically is to stop the development of alternatives that would continue to allow people to use nicotine products. What they want is a complete cessation of all nicotine products.
08:13 - 08:21
[Brent Stafford]
So where is there at all any modicum of proof that nicotine is harmful?
08:22 - 11:09
[David Zaruk]
Well, I've had about three coffees today. And coffee is addictive. Nicotine is addictive. Many products are addictive. But the question is, when does an addiction or an addictive substance become a problem? And I think the problem for nicotine started with its connection to tobacco products. I don't see them looking at banning coffee. The caffeine that's in the coffee is in fact desired, it's wanted. Perhaps if we raise enough noise, the governments will start to look at it and maybe they'll start taxing our morning brew with the same joy that they'll tax nicotine products. So what then makes a risk righteous? Righteous risks is a different type of risk field. When you look at different forms of risk management, an economic or a financial risk is managed in a certain way, you reduce your exposure to a harm. An environmental risk is the same thing. So it's about identifying a harm or a hazard and reducing exposure. Now, there are certain risks that don't have any real harm or exposure in a scientific or an economic or a financial sense, but rather in a moral sense. So someone may feel that a moral outrage towards a particular practice And it doesn't matter how much the facts or the evidence supports your substance or your product. You're facing a problem today of what I would call the righteous zealot who does not want you to be part of the part of the debate, part of the economy. And we see that today with a lot of industries, a lot of chemical industry pesticides. They're also fighting now a moral outrage, even though they may provide all the scientific information needed for their products to be on the market. And that's a danger today because it's not about facts anymore. It's not about the science. It's about an industry that doesn't have a right to exist anymore, according to a large group of activists. It's a post-capitalist strategy, I think, today more than anything else. So now you're talking about the tobacco industry. Well, the tobacco industry is a rather large, with a large legacy of problems. I think today more the nicotine product industry should be considered something different. And I think that's where you could begin to see evolutions in the debates that are going on with the activists.
11:09 - 11:22
[Brent Stafford]
So you wrote in one of your great blogs, by the way, I don't want to say it was a defense of big tobacco, but it was certainly one that argued that it's a legal product. They have a right to exist. Continue that for me.
11:22 - 13:44
[David Zaruk]
The point here is if you want to stop this product, then ban it. but unfortunately the revenue streams are still quite attractive for them so they're not going to but they're not going to at the same time give them the same rights as other industries to be at the table and I think that's one of the rather interesting evolutions that came out of the last 20 years is the denormalization of the tobacco industry and when I think it was around 2012 when the framework convention had a paper and they said that they could not accept e-cigarettes or alternative products because it would overturn the success they've had in denormalizing the tobacco industry. What was sad at that point is that none of the other industries raised any fuss about this. So we could easily denormalize today the fossil fuel industry and this is happening now. So people from companies like ExxonMobil are no longer able to go and lobby governments because they're considered now not an acceptable industry. The WHO now is extending this strategy from their non-communicable diseases unit to all commercial determinants of health, which they deem as health harming industries. So the food industry, the drinks industry are health harming. Chemicals, plastics, fossil fuels. Big Pharma. All of these are deemed now as to be under the same strategy as the tobacco industry. I think that's quite positive for the people who are looking for alternatives to nicotine because now suddenly they are not the only ones that are being attacked. Before the industry would always look at Tobacco and say well, that's not our problem like the second slowest zebra in the herd the lion is happily feeding on someone else today and So it's not our problem tomorrow note that lion will be hungry again And so I think now industry particularly the food industry has woken up to realize that they have to start playing the keeping the herd together and
13:44 - 13:52
[Brent Stafford]
Well, isn't it strange? Most people don't know this, but of course, big tobacco owned big food for some time.
13:54 - 15:48
[David Zaruk]
Well, it's an interesting approach because when you look at, for example, I believe one of the interesting cases was Philip Morris had bought Kraft and it was meant, I think, at the time to diversify because things were looking pretty dark for the future of the tobacco industry at the time. And so they looked at it as diversifying away. But the way people look at it today now is they're saying that they got into the food industry to create more poisons, to create more sickness. And everyone nodded their head and accepted that as a logical answer. And I'm afraid that's a rather unique way of looking at how industry does things. But in any case, looking at food industry as the next new big tobacco is creating a sense now where industry has to realize that they can't just close their eyes to how regulators, particularly the WHO, mistreats one industry because they're capable of doing that now to every industry. Once again, this is post-capitalism strategy. It has nothing to do with science or products that we use every day and products we rely on. Now, is post-capitalism anti-capitalism? It's Marxism. In fact, what you see in environmentalism today, particularly with some of the use of climate change, it's a strategy to create degrowth, to create a post-capitalist society that no longer is built on developing new products or advances because we're destroying the planet. we're destroying health and so we have to look at how the industry is destroying all the human health and creating these pharmaceutical products as well, which is creating further problems if we just commune with nature. So it's Marxism without the proletariat now. It's the... Back to the landers.
15:49 - 16:11
[Brent Stafford]
Yeah, it's back to nature, exactly. So if we recognize that with inside, say, you know, the vaping industry and the science and debate around it, that there's a lot of misinformation and that the science doesn't seem to be truthful, at least, you know, anymore. Has that happened in other areas?
16:11 - 16:56
[David Zaruk]
We see this whenever we have the emotional campaigns that are being run particularly today more and more with the shifts in the media where it's quite easy to put your campaigns out to your your captive audience which you can then grow. So we've seen this, I mean, with pretty well every field in environmental health fields from this view against plastics, the view against different pesticides, chemicals, food additives. I believe the WHO recently referred to infant formula companies as the new big tobacco.
16:58 - 17:10
[Brent Stafford]
I think it was just today I was reading an article in the Telegraph about microplastics and how evil they are, but yet they're so small that you can't even see them in a microscope. But we know they're there.
17:11 - 19:39
[David Zaruk]
We have to look at this within a larger picture. How is this suddenly a debate that's defining and controlling the narrative? How have we had 30 years of climate fear keeping at a high level? It has a lot to do with the amount of money that's pouring into these debates right now. A lot of money coming particularly from certain foundations or groups of foundations. are going in to fund studies that are directed to find a certain answer. They're going into NGOs. They're going into funding organizations that then fund media. And so we see today more and more a lot of investigative journalists are spending more time writing grant applications and writing articles. So David, tell me, how does Protect the Children come into play here? Time was, you should never use a child. In fact, we don't want children to be working in the factories or in the fields. We don't want children to be in any way, they're vulnerable to be open to abuse. And yet we put them to full employment use in the field of lobbying. And I wrote an article, must be about 10 years ago, called How to Use a Child. And I was critical of how particularly some of the climate NGOs were putting their children up to talk about the fact that they don't have a future. This is well before the days of Greta. And I felt that there was something unethical about that type of behavior. Somehow that's gone now. Somehow we have now a policy that it's all about the children. And if we look at what's happening in the United States now with the Maha movement, Make America Healthy Again, the first executive order was to look into chronic illnesses for children. And everything is focused now on the child. And so we're not having a rational discussion anymore. Everything is related to what is going to affect the children. And of course, tobacco products, particularly the history of tobacco products, had been focused on children. But if we look at the nicotine alternative products, it's usually aimed at smokers who've been smoking for 15, 20 years. These aren't children. And by taking the debate away from them and focusing back on the children again, it's a bit of a distraction and irrationalization of the arguments that should be front and center in this discussion.
19:40 - 19:45
[Brent Stafford]
About protected children, is there something cynical or even immoral about that?
19:45 - 20:21
[David Zaruk]
Yes. We don't want children to be working. We don't want children in any way to be exposed. But then we'll go and we'll try to get children to stand up and speak their mind, whether it is about vaping products or about climate change. or about chemicals, and we'll feed words into them. And the younger the better. We could tell our kids to write a letter to Santa Claus to get gifts, and the kids will do it. We'll tell our kids to write a letter to our MP to change the law on something, and they'll do it. And I think that's abusive behavior.
20:23 - 20:29
[Brent Stafford]
Let's talk a little bit about the WHO. How have they been handling this file?
20:30 - 21:49
[David Zaruk]
On vaping products you mean? I think the, well it goes back to their original position that must be dated back to 2012 that they don't want to have a, they want to stay and keep it with the tobacco industry, big tobacco. And I think that's a sad strategy to take because at that time, most of the companies were smaller, innovative companies who were coming up with new vaping technologies. And I think it would have been a more interesting discussion to have with the smaller companies. If we compare today how the movement, and WHO itself tends to follow what's happening on the ground, and a lot of it is financed by a lot of deep-pocketed foundations. We can speak about Michael Bloomberg, but there are a lot of groups today doing that. So they're generally following the views on the ground that are happening with a lot of these movements. And I think one of the things that's happening more today is that view against industry and against large companies and it's become a widespread WHO policy as I mentioned before now to remove any health-harming industries at all.
21:50 - 21:56
[Brent Stafford]
Should there be room for big tobacco to redeem themselves?
21:57 - 22:53
[David Zaruk]
I had a comment this morning where if we look at the cannabis regulations and many cases where it's being deregulated or good case in Canada legalized, that is a very good example of harm reduction and people have embraced that policy of harm reduction because it allows the substance to be better monitored, controlled and avoids a lot of organized crime getting involved. However, what would happen if a large tobacco company decides to move into the cannabis market? Would the same people who are promoting the legalization and decriminalization of cannabis, would they be so favorable again? Or would they want to stop this product because big industry is taking over? So we have to look at this as a question. Is this really a question about facts and about harm reduction? Or is it a fact that we don't want industry?
22:52 - 23:12
[Brent Stafford]
Could it be that there's also some teleology involved here? They've seen an end game. They have that goal and very religiously are moving towards it. Of course, these products have switched the telos. It's now end of, you know, end all nicotine. They're a little discombobulated.
23:14 - 24:56
[David Zaruk]
We've got to get in the mind of a zealot. A zealot doesn't really worry too much about whether something they're doing is for the better or not. They're concerned about winning, and winning at all costs. And it's a bit sad to see this, that they will promote some strategy that will lead to millions of deaths. You see this with a lot of the move towards agroecology, which is not just organic farming, but peasant agriculture, essentially, and it will lead to millions of deaths. But that's not their concern. It's about winning. The fact that they could stop vaping may lead to millions of deaths from returning to tobacco smoking. That doesn't matter. When Zealot runs a campaign, they'll do everything they can to win. And unfortunately, people will die from that. And this is the challenge that I think the nicotine alternative community is facing, that they're battling people who want to win and integrity is not as important as winning. It's interesting to see the question of whether someone who didn't smoke and starts to vape, whether they will then suddenly decide, you know what, I think I'm going to start smoking. It's a bit like somebody with the latest smartphone technology deciding, you know what, I think I'm going to go back to my beeper. It doesn't make sense. But it's an argument because they were close to winning. They were gradually getting the numbers down. They were assuming that everybody would fall in line and that nicotine would be removed as a substance of concern for them.
24:56 - 25:12
[Brent Stafford]
But I guess the question is that they don't seem to be willing to pat themselves on the back and say, job well done. So even if they were able to get rid of all nicotine, would tobacco control evaporate? It sounds to me that they will just morph into the next thing.
25:14 - 26:11
[David Zaruk]
If you look at the research community, a lot of the people who were researching before on tobacco safety started running out of work to do. And so many went into food safety, which is why today we have all the debates about ultra-processed food and additives. because there's a large amount of regulatory scientists who are losing their jobs. So we begin to see now a redirection of this attention now from the tobacco research into the nicotine research, but it's a different field. And it's a question, should we have toxicologists doing this? Should we have addiction scientists deciding on health policy? Like you have an opioids, for example. They're not public health specialists deciding on painkillers today. It's addiction people. Their outcome is going to be completely different than if another group of scientists were to be involved.
26:11 - 26:30
[Brent Stafford]
You know, some of the researchers in Canada that were responsible for a lot of the research that was anti nicotine, anti vaping, that kind of thing. They also are doing all of the research that says alcohol causes cancer and are pushing for warning labels on alcohol. So isn't that the next thing?
26:31 - 28:30
[David Zaruk]
It's, I mean, everything's going to be happening all at once and it's not enough scientists to cover all of this. But at the moment, I think we have too many scientists who are having to, you know, fund grant applications for these studies. And it's very easy to publish now and you get these predatory journals, you can publish anything to justify your funding. So we have to go back to what is considered a significant risk. You can find a microplastic and you could say this may have an effect, we don't know. We have technologies now that can detect presence of substances at the nano scale. we don't understand what that means and the technologies are far more precise than our understanding of it and yet we're living longer there have been fewer serious diseases we're treating the diseases more intelligently we we we continue to somehow feel like it's going in the other direction we need that negativity i think to spur investment and research to continue this but it's We have to look at what we've achieved in the past and how much we've done to improve, not just in the field of nicotine alternatives, but everywhere. CO2 emissions were emitting far less than 20 years ago when you could look at per energy produced. health, we're producing much better foods, even though people tell us that it's not, and much safer foods as well. And yet we continue to have a much more critical activist community that wants to scream and chase any ambulance they can. That has to do with the media, it has to do with social media, it has to do with the sort of negativity that is built into a certain population. But we should celebrate our achievements. We don't.