In this insightful discussion, Liza Katsiashvili, Andrzej Fal and Ethan Nadelmann tackle the growing misconceptions surrounding vaping and tobacco harm reduction. Learn how misinformation, fueled by media and powerful institutions like the WHO, is shaping public opinion and preventing effective harm reduction strategies.
Transcription:
00:00:09 --> 00:01:41
Liza Katsiashvili: First of all I'd like to thank GFN for this opportunity for like gathering consumer voices together and having a chance to talk about all the misperceptions around tobacco harm reduction. It's really sad to see that there's a lot of misinformation going on. We work when it comes to vaping advocacy and you can see how vaping is targeted by media and by different anti-vaping groups by misleading information and we also see that for instance highly ranked institutions such as WHO they also mislead public on tobacco harm reduction they don't want to endorse or include harm reduction in the strategy for different countries so media work, WHO, all of that combined, different countries just not wanting to endorse harm reduction, all of that causes this confusion about what harm reduction is generally, not only vaping, but also other less harmful alternatives. I think it's very important to have this sort of space where we can talk and we can debunk all those myths and we can communicate with consumers about that so that they stay well informed and they have a chance to actually listen to scientific evidence. There are also, of course, many pillars why this misinformation is happening, but it means that we as consumer organizations and as consumers, we should be more energized and active debunking those myths and talking about them openly.
00:01:43 --> 00:01:48
Joanna Junak: And what currently causes the most misunderstanding in the field of tobacco harm reduction?
00:01:48 --> 00:03:13
Andrzej Fal: Well, I think that as most understandings of this world, this is caused by lack of knowledge of some people, so lack of education. And well, at some point also here, we do not have at some point, I say, 100% proofs. Because we do know that all the harm reduction techniques, they're in our hands, in labs, so the bench science, they produce less harmful substances. Well, tobacco smoke has around 7,000 harmful substances and from one of the replacement therapies we have 20 or 50 substances at reduced concentrations. But this is the bench science. We need to prove it in real life, so we need to be accepted with the ongoing prospective trials every introduced drug or therapeutic device being introduced to the market to show and present that this harm reduction is a reality, not only chemical, but also physiological and medical reality. And then I think convincing those who make the decisions about introducing to the market, about level of taxing, about preferences, well, they will understand themselves without further questions.
00:03:14 --> 00:03:15
Joanna Junak: Thank you. Thank you so much.
00:03:15 --> 00:04:30
Ethan Nadelmann: I think there's really probably three variables. The first is that the fact that big tobacco plays such a big role and that the big companies have now bought the companies like Swedish Match or they bought Juul in the past or Enjoy. I think the suspiciousness of big tobacco and the reluctance to look at them as playing a much more complicated role now is a major factor. especially among younger people. I think that secondly, the funding that Michael Bloomberg and some others provide, I think he did a lot of good in his funding to try to reduce smoking. But his shift over the last five or six years, or whatever it is, to opposing tobacco harm reduction may well, in fact, probably will result in more lives lost than the lives that benefited from his previous campaigns against smoking. So that's really difficult. And thirdly, people find it difficult to separate tobacco and nicotine. I mean, it's remarkable that even physicians in my country and many others just can't understand that when you remove nicotine from tobacco, it so much dramatically reduces the harms. So I think those are probably the three major variables.
00:04:31 --> 00:04:31
Joanna Junak: Thank you, Ethan.