Experts dive deep into the connections between health, economics, and tobacco harm reduction. Discover how the economic burden of smoking affects individuals and societies, and how harm reduction products provide a solution for smokers—especially in low- and middle-income countries.
Transcription:
00:00:10 --> 00:00:18
Brent Stafford: The strapline for GFN this year is health, economics, and THR. Do you think that that connection has been made?
00:00:20 --> 00:00:44
Cliff Douglas: Oh, I think it has been made because economics is inextricably linked to health because of the fact that the incentives and the disincentives that are applied in the economic world have a direct impact on behavior and the accessibility and appeal of different types of products across the spectrum of, you know, different products based on their health and safety profile and so on.
00:00:45 --> 00:02:44
Konstantinos Farsalinos: We know that smoking is associated with substantial economic burden, not only on the individual level of the smoker, because cigarettes are quite expensive due to taxation, but also on the population level. The cost of health care, the cost of losing working hours and productivity, the cost of premature death, this is a tremendous financial, social, economic cost. We need to address the issues of economics into tobacco harm reduction. It makes perfect sense, tobacco harm reduction, in terms of economics. Don't forget that quitting smoking with harm reduction products is a procedure that is self-funded by the smoker. So, especially for low- and middle-income countries, and especially for these places where smoking cessation services are not really available, This represents the only opportunity for smokers to get some help and manage to quit smoking, because we know that quitting by yourself is the most popular but the least effective method. And there are many people in developing countries with very high smoking rates, but not only smoking, use of very toxic or unsmokeless tobacco products. And we have in our arsenal today harm reduction products that we can cover all needs of any type of smoker or tobacco user. We're missing a golden opportunity. I think this is the main message. And we shouldn't miss that. We have 8 million premature deaths annually due to smoking. We can't, I mean, we can't accept that. We need to do something about it. Harm reduction is part of the solution. It's a significant part, a very important part of the solution. It's not part of the problem. That's the main message.
00:02:45 --> 00:02:59
Gizelle Baker: But over the last two days, I think it comes very clear that those three things go hand in hand. And if we don't bring them together, you're going to have disconnects that actually end up negatively impacting the population.
00:02:59 --> 00:03:17
Carrie Wade: I absolutely think so. I mean, I saw sessions on the regulation. I saw sessions on the science and the THR and the health and the economics part of it, which is incredibly important because without the economics part, you can't have the THR and have it help move forward with governments, regulators, industry. Everybody's a player in that.