“
“The opportunity we have is to fundamentally change the course
of public health history, relegating cigarettes to history’s ashtray.”
Professor David Sweanor, of the Centre for Health Law, Policy
and Ethics at the University of Ottawa, was a speaker at GFN. As
a lawyer, he was involved in the regulation of tobacco products
and in lawsuits against tobacco companies.
He said: “Consumers in many countries including Sweden,
Norway, Iceland and now Japan have shown they move to
alternatives to cigarettes when they get an option to do so.
“Imagine what would happen if people get access to a broad range
of low-risk alternatives to cigarettes, if they get information on
relative risk, and if they’re nudged toward those options through
intelligent, risk-proportionate regulation?
“The opportunity we have is to fundamentally change the course
of public health history, relegating cigarettes to history’s ashtray.”
There were a number of positive vape discussions including
Louise Ross who managed the Leicester Stop Smoking Service
from 2004 to 2018. She spoke about her initial resistance to
accept vaping as a health care professional and explained how
she came to realise the huge potential benefit in embracing the
new technology.
Her team subsequently rebranded themselves as the first
e-cigarette-friendly stop smoking service and she now challenges
those who work against tobacco harm reduction. Her speech,
‘Pragmatism versus dogma: freeing the inner vaper in smokers’
called for increased government and general practitioner support
for e-cigarettes and for service providers to monitor the use of
smoking-related language around vaping.
Italian tobacco harm reduction advocate Riccardo Polosa gave
a talk entitled: ‘Smoking, Vaping and COVID-19: what does
the science tell us?’ Polosa successfully lobbied the Italian
government at the start of lockdown to keep vape stores in
Italy open during the pandemic to avoid Italian e-cigarette users
switching back to cigarettes. His talk highlighted the science
behind smokers being reportedly more susceptible to the disease
and if the available medical data confirmed this.
Tim Philips, managing director of Tamarind Intelligence from
Spain spoke about ‘How the 2019 US developments will impact
the global vape market for many years to come’ and Marina
Foltea, founder of Trade Pacts investment consultancy from
Switzerland gave a talk entitled ‘Demystifying the right to health
in the context of e-vapour markets regulation.’
GFN is usually funded by registration fees but this year the
organisers bore the costs and opered an open door policy.
Consumers, policymakers, academics, scientists and public
health experts all took part alongside manufacturers and
distributors of safer nicotine products. The organisers believe
that fostering discussion and engagement of all stakeholders
involved in tobacco and nicotine use, control and production it
is the best way to enact true, sustainable change both to the
industry practices and public health outcomes.
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