Reprint from Planet of the Vapes, by Dave Cross

GSTHR Speaks About Its Study

Posted 31st January 2023 by Dave Cross

GSTHR speaks about its new survey that reveals scale of consumer advocacy for safer nicotine products – and need for recognised role in global policymaking. POTV broke the news last week and is delighted to bring you further details about the state of consumer advocacy around the world.

• Most consumer advocacy organisations run by volunteers who successfully quit smoking using safer nicotine products
• All report significant activity and success despite lack of financial and human resources
• None report receiving tobacco or pharma industry funds – and total global consumer advocacy budget dwarfed by millions available to those advocating against tobacco harm reduction

The landmark global survey investigating the role and activities of consumer organisations advocating for access to safer nicotine products (SNP) and tobacco harm reduction has been released.

The new study was carried out by the Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction, a project of UK public health agency, Knowledge•Action•Change. The first of its kind, the research was published in Wiley’s open access journal, Public Health Challenges.

It reveals that there are 54 active consumer advocacy groups working around the world to raise awareness about, and promote the availability of, and access to, SNP, which include nicotine vaping products (e-cigarettes), Swedish-style snus, nicotine pouches and heated tobacco products.

Tobacco harm reduction is a potentially life-saving intervention for millions of people across the world. To those who currently use high-risk tobacco products, like cigarettes and some oral tobaccos, it offers the chance to switch to a range of SNP that pose fewer risks to their health.

Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction estimates show that these harm reduction options are now being used by an estimated 112 million people worldwide. Many SNP consumers may be unaware of the political, policy, and regulatory issues surrounding these products, despite bans or restrictions in many countries, but the last 15 years has seen the emergence of small grassroots advocacy organizations, set up and run by nicotine consumers, with most (36) only being established since 2016.

The research, based on a detailed survey, found that most organisations (42) were operated entirely by volunteers, most of whom had successfully quit smoking with the help of SNP.

Only seven of the groups had any contracted or paid staff (13 people globally) and for the last full year, the total funding for all organisations surveyed amounted to just US$309,810. This is in stark contrast to the millions of dollars spent on campaigns by actors such as Bloomberg Philanthropies seeking to limit access to SNP such as nicotine vaping products. The paper also notes that none of the consumer advocacy organisations reported receiving funding from tobacco or pharmaceutical companies.

Many of these organisations were members of four regional umbrella organisations covering Latin America (ARDT Iberoamerica), Africa (CASA), Europe (ETHRA), and Asia-Pacific (CAPHRA).

But even with the support of these larger bodies, this research found that individual consumer advocacy organisations are potentially fragile, concluding that groups must now transition from an initial start-up phase to a position where they are better resourced.

Yet, despite the precariousness of their existence, all of the organisations were able to report significant activity and successes in the promotion of tobacco harm reduction as a public health strategy, through information dissemination, media engagement and contributions to policy development.

The paper’s lead author was Tomasz Jerzyński, Data Scientist for the Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction project. He said: “This survey offered a unique opportunity to map these advocacy organisations for the first time and provide valuable insight into how they are operating all over the world.  The sustainability of these organisations is one of the main concerns that has come out of the data. All of these groups face challenges due to their small numbers of core workers and their dependence on volunteers.”

Speaking about the survey, another of its authors, Professor Gerry Stimson, Director of K•A•C and Emeritus Professor at Imperial College London, said: “This paper starkly demonstrates the major imbalance in resources available to consumer organisations advocating for access to safer nicotine products and those opposed to tobacco harm reduction, unfairly skewing the debate.

“It also highlights why consumer groups must be recognised as legitimate stakeholders in the policy sphere. These organisations have been set up, and are run by, people who have chosen to improve their own health by switching to SNP – people who have significant expertise to offer, and whose lives are directly affected by policymaking in this area.

“The views of safer nicotine product consumers must therefore be central to the development, crafting, and implementation of health policies going forwards – including at the next Framework Convention on Tobacco Control COP meeting this November, in Panama.”

References:

• Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction – https://gsthr.org/
• Knowledge•Action•Change – https://kachange.eu/
• Global survey of consumer organisations advocating for safer nicotine products – https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/puh2.58

For your viewing pleasure

https://bit.ly/3wgTieM

Holland vill nu även totalförbjuda nikotinportioner, alltså tobaksfritt snus, alltså All-White, alltså Zyn o Velo o On! o Loop o o o o Hela midevitten i en sälvante. Harmonisering ger rimligen förbud även i Sverige.

Den nederländska regeringen har inlett ett samråd om lagstiftning för att förbjuda nikotinportioner (All white snus, tobaksfritt snus). Samrådet avslutas den 16 januari.

Detta är en enkel konsultation att svara på, och det är viktigt att du gör det.

EU-kommissionen har redan signalerat att de vill ha ett EU-omfattande förbud mot nikotinportioner. Om enskilda medlemsstater, som Nederländerna, förbjuder påsar blir ett EU-omfattande förbud mycket mer sannolikt. Snusförbudet i EU tillkom genom en sk harmonisering och inget egentligen talar emot att försöka samma väg denna gång. Portionsförbud i hela EU kommer rimligen ge vid handen att det förbjuds i Sverige också – undantaget Sverige har i fördraget är ju snus och inget annat.

Nikotinportioner blir allt populärare, delvis som resultat av brutalt och direkt dödligt missvisande desinformation om vape och vape-produkter som ett bra sätt att sluta röka och eller använda nikotin i många fall. Det är moraliskt fel att neka människor som röker eller annars skulle rökt, tillgång till produkter som är mindre skadliga för deras hälsa, i många länder finns det i brottsbalken som ”mord genom slarv och nonchalans” ungefär, ni fattar.

Hollands regerings motivering för förbudet bygger på samma trötta gamla argument som vi ser användas mot vape. Förbudet bygger på ideologi, skrämselpropaganda om barn, smaker och gateway-teorier, inte på sund vetenskap.

Holländska regeringen har dessutom i praktiken redan förbjudit nikotinportionspåsar genom att endast tillåta 0,035 mg nikotin per påse enligt livsmedelsbestämmelserna, det här extra förslaget ser mer ut som ett illa dolt sätt att hjälpa Bryssel och andra EU länder att ta mod till sig och blåljuga så där bra som man faktiskt måste göra när man skall sälja in nyprat som t ex, krig är fred, död är hälsa och liknande. 

Detta förslag avser att utöka och befästa i lagtext nikotinpåsarna i sin tobaks- och rökproduktlag – detta trots att nikotinpåsarna varken är tobak eller röks. För vår del kan man nog säga att om Holland gör detta, så ökar risken dramatiskt att EU harmoniserar och då försvinner snus utan tobak för alla överallt i EU, inklusive Sverige. Om smakerna är borta i alla andra produkter i hela EU inklusive de mer moderna snusliknande produkterna utan tobak – vad är då sannolikheten att smaker i snus blir kvar särskilt länge? Undantag hit och undantag dit – ingen kan tvinga oss att gå emot vårt undantag, men tvinga oss att göra det själva mot oss själva, det finns inget hinder mot. 

Det är aldrig OK att reglera säkrare alternativ på samma sätt som tiopotenser skadligare produkter, åtminstone och extra särskilt inte så länge de farligaste varianterna av produkterna som cigaretter fortfarande är lagliga att köpa, ännu en nivå högre om det finns en uttalad ambition från landets politiska ledning att minska skador.

Vi hoppas så många som möjligt kommer att svara enligt nedan enkla mall, även om det bara är en kort mening som ”I quit smoking successfully with snus/pouch/vape/iqos where I could not with other methods” Det är not extra viktigt att skandinaver svarar för i nuläget är det 100 kommentarer men på en tidigare konsultation om förbud för alla rimliga smaker i vape produkter i Holland så var de uppe nästan 1500. 

Gasa! Tack på förhand – du behöver inte vara användare, du kan vara rökare, du kan vara nästan precis vad som helst för den enkla frågan egentlige är: I din släkt och bekantskapskrets med omnejd, hur många har dött i förtid av rökning? Hur många av snus? 

INSTRUX FÖR ATT FYLLA I 

1. Gå till: https://www.internetconsultatie.nl/nicotineproducten/b1

2. Eftersom du inte är holländsktalande, aktivera Google translate (eller din föredragna översättningsprogramvara) för ditt språk

3. Klicka på “Svara på detta samråd”

4. Du kommer då att se den här sidan (ja, fast på Holländska då förstås):

Det finns bara en fråga: “Vad tycker du om lagförslaget ovan?”

Du har två val….

(i) “Lägg till dokumentet direkt”
Välj det här alternativet om du vill ladda upp en PDF med din inlämning.

(ii) Eller så kan du skriva ditt svar i textrutan, där det står “Din reaktion” (det enklaste och snabbaste alternativet men kom ihåg att här i rutan gäller begränsningen 2500 tecken inklusive mellanslag – Bättre tidsekonomi att börja skriva den korta och sen expandera till ett dokument att bifoga – Bättre Ooumpff! Om du gör tvärtom, skriver ett dokument att bifoga och sedan korta ned till det allra viktigaste och bort med allt annat. Min blev mycket bättre på det viset men tog 3 gånger så lång tid – fan vad arg jag blev!!) Men bara en mening eller så och inget bifogat dokument är fenomenalbra det med. 

(iii) Om du har tid kan du göra båda alternativen.

5. Klicka på skicka

6. Ett e-postmeddelande skickas till dig för att verifiera ditt svar, glöm inte att klicka på länken i e-postmeddelandet, då visas ditt svar

Hjälp oss aktivera snusare och nikotinpåseanvändare i skandinavier nu denna helg, posta ditt inlägg på FB/Twitter/TikTok/Snapchat/Instagram/LinkedIn och se om du får med dig fler, tack på förhand! Många nyfikna vill gärna se som @inncoorg, @europethra, @nnallianceSW, @dadafo, @NorskDamp, @VapersFinland 

Thanks and credits to ETHRA and Damian with NNA Ireland for the English version of this document 

Nyttig läsning

INNCO om desinformation, smaker, fattiga länder

Misinfodemic Dossier

ETHRA:s brev till den belgiska regeringen: 
Säkrare nikotinprodukter bör spela en mycket större roll i den interfederala strategin för en rökfri generation 

BfR (German Risk Institute) rapport om nikotinpåsar:
https://www.bfr.bund.de/cm/349/health-risk-assessment-of-nicotine-pouches.pdf

INNCO PRESS RELEASE ON PMI-SWEDISH MATCH

For immediate release

11 November 2022

INNCO is outraged!

  A tobacco company that makes cigarettes just bought the first and only tobacco company on Earth that had stopped making deadly cigarettes

INNCO wishes to express its horror at the recent purchase, by Philip Morris International (PMI), of Swedish Match, the only tobacco company that has ever voluntarily quit making combustible cigarettes. INNCO, a non-profit alliance of 37 non-industry independent volunteer-led member organisations around the world, supports the rights of adult People Who Use Safer Nicotine (PWUSN) to avoid toxic forms of tobacco. INNCO members and leaders are informed ex-smokers.

To salvage something from this dumpster fire, INNCO calls upon PMI’s leadership to direct their vast marketing and distribution capacities to ensure that Swedish Match’s snus and nicotine pouch products – which do not cause cancer, heart or lung disease – are available, affordable and acceptable to all smokers in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

Eighty percent of all smokers on Earth live in LMICs. Not surprisingly, 80% of smoking-related deaths are there too. Many of those deaths are caused by PMI’s cigarettes. PMI now claims that it wants to shift to safer nicotine alternatives. There is some evidence that is happening – their risk-reduced products are now 30% of their revenues. But, when will that be 50%? Or 100%? It is time to set targets.

INNCO calls on PMI to consider the example of pharmaceutical companies’ drug and vaccine donation programs to LMICs. PMI needs to put its money where its mouth is and donate or subsidise Swedish Match’s vastly safer nicotine alternatives so that they reach a price-point that is affordable to all smokers in LMICs.

That will save lives. If saving lives is PMI’s real goal today, that is what they should do. INNCO believes that the cost of ensuring that safer nicotine harm reduction alternatives are affordable to smokers in LMICs is a rounding error for PMI’s bean counters (though doing so will kill their main cash cow:  deadly cigarettes).

PMI takes over Swedish Match – Don’t jinx this!

• Swedish Match currently sells a product made almost entirely from tobacco called ETTAN snus. ETTAN was trademarked and launched in Sweden in 1822 and has not caused a single recorded case of premature morbidity or mortality in the 200 years of uninterrupted production, sale and lifelong daily use of this product. Sweden has extraordinarily meticulous record keeping: Over 100 million user-years of observational data show no evidence of harms. A total of 8 snus products from Swedish Match were the first ever to be granted Modified Risk Tobacco Product authorization by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

• In 2019, Swedish Match was authorised by the FDA to stop lying to its customers. It can now tell them “Using [this] instead of cigarettes puts you at a lower risk of mouth cancer, heart disease, lung cancer, stroke, emphysema, and chronic bronchitis.”

• That authorization is for little tea bag-like products that actually contain cured ultra-low carcinogen tobacco leaf.  Swedish match also makes a similar product that contains only harmless cellulose, nicotine and flavour. There is no biologically plausible argument that these “nicotine pouches” are any more harmful than nicotine patches and nicotine gum which are on the World Health Organization’s Essential Medicines List.

. 

• There were 1.1 billion smokers on Earth 20 years ago, and there are 1.1 billion smokers today. INNCO notes this lack of progress. While cigarettes are, by far, the main cause of smoking-related death and disease, in some countries (especially in and around South Asia), millions of people use toxic forms of oral smokeless tobacco. According to the World Health Organization, cigarettes and these toxic smokeless products cause 8 million deaths every year. This is more than global deaths from HIV, tuberculosis and malaria combined.

• The FDA’s recent endorsement of harm reduction in the field of tobacco control does not sit well with some highly conservative health authorities including the World Health Organization (which continues to equate nicotine harm reduction with “industry interference”).

Responding to the purchase of Swedish Match, Dr. Charles A. Gardner, Executive Director of INNCO, said:  “INNCO is unhappy that PMI will now absorb the one tobacco company on Earth that had voluntarily stopped making death sticks (cigarettes). We demand that PMI “Do The Right Thing” by ensuring that the safer nicotine harm reduction products it just acquired will be affordable, acceptable and available for every smoker in every low- and middle-income country on Earth. This would save tens-of-millions of lives over just the next few decades.”

Dr. Gardner added:  “The WHO’s tobacco control efforts are largely funded by US billionaire Mike Bloomberg, a known harm reduction denier. This massive conflict of interest is ethically equivalent to letting an American billionaire anti-vaxxer influence the WHO’s vaccine efforts. Journalists would go nuts. An INNCO Dossier on this troubling issue is available here.”

Atakan Befrits, longtime activist, researcher and educator, co-founder New Nicotine Alliance Sweden (NNA Sweden) and INNCO, and Global Advocacy & Policy Analyst for INNCO, said: “Being Swedish and having lived-experience of quitting an extremely heavy smoking habit with Swedish Match products, honestly… I had hoped for a different outcome. Ever the optimist though, I hope the smart people in PMI and Swedish Match will do the right thing to save lives in low- and middle-income countries.

Mr. Befrits added: INNCO will stay vigilant and monitor developments. INNCO is often accused of working for big tobacco, but we don’t love the companies that addicted us to cigarettes, and we will continue to criticise them. We do love safer nicotine alternatives that helped us quit, and we know – from lived experience – how our health improved when we quit. INNCO’s Member Organizations in South Asia know very well the harms of both cigarettes and toxic forms of oral smokeless tobacco products. The marriage between a Swedish company that makes vastly safer oral smokeless products, and a big tobacco company that continues to make deadly cigarettes, creates strange bedfellows. But it could be an opportunity to kill two toxic birds with one harm reduction stone.

About us:  INNCO is a global community of ex-smokers helping smokers quit. We defend the rights of 112 million People Who Use Safer Nicotine (PWUSN). Safer alternatives include nicotine patches, gum and lozenges; nicotine pouches, nicotine vapes, snus and heated tobacco products. Smokers’ access to nicotine harm reduction is both a human right and a life-or-death issue. INNCO is a non-profit alliance of 37 independent volunteer-led Member Organizations around the world. We are funded by in-kind contributions and small donations from thousands of adult ex-smokers. Our Secretariat (but not Member Organizations or Governing Board) is supported by a $0.9 million/year grant from the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World (FSFW), a US non-profit 501(c)(3) private foundation with a mission to end smoking in this generation. The FSFW is funded by PMI. We are not comfortable with that. But we are transparent about it. In contrast, two unaccountable foundations (Bloomberg Philanthropies and Truth Initiative) spend over $200 million/year to oppose nicotine harm reduction.  INNCO demands that their grantees declare that as an obvious Conflict of Interest.

Short message to panel, guests, participants, students and interested general public in connection with CRISA 2022, Abuja.

Short 6.5 minute address for CRISA, Abuja, Nigeria October 27th. Panel hosted by Isaac Ogunkola Olushola with Clive Bates, Ethan Nadelmann and Essien Nsidibe

AtakanAbuja (kopia) – 01 – 01.mp4

The Professors video that he suggested I emphasise

https://1drv.ms/v/s!Ap2akuGGr9hNiEXu34WoFTOpo4kE?e=kvSamQ

Snus Day October 24th 2022 – Sayin’ Just sayin’

2022 Prof. Nystrom on snus 25 min 500MB EXCELLENT.mp4

Professor Fredrik Nyström of Linköping recorded live interview on safer nicotine products based in his own science and take on the science made by others. Interview made in Brussels last week and latching on to and underpinning work by many other friends of science, not least the fab crew at Cochrane TAG. Credits where they are due to both EPHI and Brussels Times. As the whole afternoon is available publicly I assume that taking a truly seminal bit and making it more lightweight to function on LMIC smartphones is only a welcome addition. Enjoy!!

Publishing excerpt from public webinar broadcast from Brussels (who have notified intention of keeping cigarettes and RYO on the market as before but to completely blanket ban all forms of nicotine pouches, tobacco or non tobacco containing) today to celebrate snus in general, snus similars too, and all other SNP’s (Safer Nicotine Products but should probably have been referred to as VSNP’s as in Vastly Safer Nicotine Products instead) and to celebrate and acknowledge International Snus Day, yearly on October 24th. Professor Fredrik Nyström of Linköping is a unicorn professor in that he comes into the discussion very late, from a very unusual angle that has all the requisites for making his research truly valid and interestingly untouchably credible.
Enjoy a 24 minute truly informative and simple to get tête-a-tête in the studio on recent research into non combustible, i e purer forms, of nicotine in relation to other habits, lifestyle choices, dependencies etc. from a person I truly admire who has not had reason or chance to adopt offensive and defensive buzzword nomenclature used on both sides of the Tobacco Harm Reduction chasm/divide/canyon.

My personal reflection being something of a buff for the different versions of human rights based approaches to legislation and regulation on this and other substances and habits is the following: I can see a situation where Professor Nyström would look incredulous at the notion of Tobacco Harm Reduction in any way being elevated to a human rights issue, simply because the question is so much easier to answer than that. As THR seems clearly not to be harmful on the level that is even relevant within the mandate and remit of public health; it is simply a question of either promoting safer choices to end smoking as accelerated fast speed as perfectly possible and doable, or pursue policy routes that clearly are idiotic in the extreme or potentially maniacally homicidal to human equivalent of 50 cents on the dollar. This easy to evaluate as the outcomes for continued smoking combustible tobacco are so very well known, as are the outcomes for using at least some of the available product categories of SNPs consistently for a century before and a century side by side the commercial industrially produced cigarette. For little Sweden in 2010-2014 the calculated yearly difference in fatalities between smoking combustibles and using SNPs was 12000:0<1

Document for meeting attendants who are interested

feb-10-nnaDownload

Genuine apologies, 14 years to get this far and then a messenger call from a colleague no less sneaking through carefully killed ring signals and all systems set to red, don’t disturb. O well, hell! Excellent to have this happen and to be a part of it, my main argument has always been and remains, we need a seat at the table. This is something we have effectively been denied through part malice, part blockage, part laziness and part authoritarian understandings of governance. Not for lack of trying I can assure you. It took ten years to get an invitation to a large anti tobacco (*industry*) conference in Sweden called “Air” and every single communication dutifylly noted with 5.3 compliant, non profit, non affiliated and non associated with industry. When we got there our name badges were very prominently marked “Tobacco Industry”. Our Public Health Agency and the National Board of Health and Welfare seemed geneuinely nonplussed at our irritation over this and just commented that we were fussing, after all we do say they same thing so we must be partners or astro-turf.

commission-meeting-all-3-sides-final-commentaryDownload

Dont hesitate to call on me, if for nothing else then to help you find who you really should be talking to, that I am very good at.

ab@nnasweden.org or atakan.befrits@gmail.com or if urgent then +46 764 156046 (This goes for self declared friend and foe alike :))

2 Videos together with EUforSnus on Parliamentary and Academic assistance toward dismantling human rights to best attainable standard of health and denying LMIC 300-400 million future premature fatalities preceded by lengthy disease and disability – affordable, appropriate and acceptable 95% harm reduction products, relieving health systems of massive near future pressure and expenditure

Updated / Downgraded depending on Slides Calabar main conference

pdfcalabarmainconfdeckDownload

Calabar pre conference slides

calabarfinalpreconf1Download