A safer alternative exists - but why is it so often treated differently? When harm reduction depends on meeting people where they are, where do smokers fit in? The answer may challenge some long-held assumptions about nicotine, choice, and public health.
Transcription:
00:00 - 00:28
[Brent Stafford]
In an interview we just had with somebody from the National Harm Reduction Coalition, that exact issue was brought up, was that there's a hypocrisy when public health will do whatever they can to recognize the autonomy and dignity of a hard drug user, while at the same time absolutely stigmatizing a smoker or a safer nicotine user.
00:28 - 02:49
[Paddy Costall]
I think it's interesting, yes. There's an awful lot of investment gone into that. But that is the illicit market. That's an illicit... Rightly or wrongly, drugs are criminalised, etc., etc., But the people who are engaged in that kind of behaviour are much better thought of in a lot of ways than people who use legally available products, whether that be tobacco products or alcohol. They're people who bring it on themselves and are morally weak. It is a paradox. But you know, these poor people are using drugs, you know, it's all to do with this. And it is, yes, don't dispute that. People who are smoking, They're going to die. Most of them, 50% of them are going to die as a result of a smoking-related disease. We can stop that, or they can stop that, but they need help to do so. In fact, the only help they need is for the state to stay out of the way. Just get out of the way. Let people... People are doing something which they're paying for. Not a single taxpayer has been harmed in this process. and it's it's i can't get my head around it after all these years i still i don't know why i'm doing it i mean it's i i have such a frustrating time with this because you know you do get the shoots of growth like you know argentina was a shock to be honest explain for our audience what happened in argentina i mean argentina took a decision the argentinian authorities took a decision to sensibly regulate the vaping market they did it based on the economics on the health on everything else on the on you know law enforcement etc and they've done it in an in a proper organized fashion and they've taken people with them And it's a model. It might not be perfect, nothing is. But it was like the UK model was moving in the right direction and then the Secretary of State for Health suddenly says, I don't like these things. I don't smoke, I don't vape, I don't like it. Tragically, of course, he's now no longer the Secretary of State for Health, but the new one's as bad.
02:50 - 03:00
[Brent Stafford]
The EU commissioner, he's been making some headlines recently about his plan to eradicate nicotine. How doable is that?
03:01 - 03:38
[Paddy Costall]
It's pie in the sky. It's nonsense. Prohibition, oh God, if we go back through history, look at America in the 1920s and 30s. What did it achieve there? It produced a whole generation of psychotic gangsters like Capone and others who made a huge amount of money. Lots of people died. And where did we get to? We got to the repeal of the Volkstead Act and everybody started drinking again. That was a real... And the prohibition has never, ever... Prohibition's never worked.
03:39 - 03:50
[Brent Stafford]
Yeah, I mean, the conversation around hard drugs, right, is prohibition. We're still... There is a prohibition. But that seems to be, though, that it's lessened
03:51 - 04:45
[Paddy Costall]
in a way i think that the thing the thing with drugs is drugs is much more embedded into kind of cultural and political issues in the sense that people look at why people use heroin or use crack cocaine and they try to address the reasons for that People look at tobacco in isolation, they look at it as smoking. No one asks why do people smoke? Nobody seems to care about any of that. How could we make it so that it's less attractive and people won't do themselves as much damage? Well, there's a very easy way of doing that. Give them what they want without the danger. But it's not looked at in the same way as drugs. It's looked at as an isolated, standalone issue with no other factors influencing it.