Tobacco Harm Reduction is a Human Rights Issue—6th THR Summit
Tobacco Harm Reduction is a Human Rights Issue—6th THR Summit
“Tobacco harm reduction is a human rights issue,” says Professor Konstantinos Farsalinos -a cardiologist and research fellow at the Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center in Greece- at the 6th Summit on Tobacco Harm Reduction (THR) in Athens.
Professor Farsalinos discussed the complex socio-political and ethical aspects of tobacco control in the 21st century, focusing on THR and the obligation of politicians, regulators, and scientists to have an open-minded, honest, and evidence-based approach beyond ideologies and prejudice.
“The truth is, THR is a human rights issue,” he said. “Harm reduction is not just about reducing the harm from substance use, but is also about addressing stigma, marginalization, criminalization, inequalities, and oppression — in an effort to protect health, dignity and liberty including the liberty of making informed personal choices.
“Unfortunately, today the anti-harm reduction hysteria is becoming an authoritarian form of political correctness for smokers and for scientists with different views. But we all should not forget the provisional nature of scientific knowledge ― that proper scepticism is the foundation of intellectual progress,” he said.
The Summit also discussed the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) region, observing that smoking prevalence remains very high, and harm reduction is received with scepticism.
In her keynote speech, Professor Sharifa Ezat Wan Puteh presented extensive and very interesting data about smoking and policies in the ASEAN region which is a political and economic union of 10 states in South-East Asia that represents a population of over 600 million.
“The region is no longer unanimously ‘anti-vape’ as it was a decade ago when vaping started to get popular,” Professor Wan Puteh said. “Today, several countries have made vaping legal while others continue outlaw it.
“Smoking and vaping measures differ by country, as harm reduction approach does; impact on smoking rates also differs widely, but smoking prevalence remains high.
The Summit concluded with a panel discussion between eminent experts representing THR associations to explore how they can collaborate to create new opportunities for the education of health policy experts, regulators, and the public as well as advocating for new research to generate more data, for evidence-based policies.
It gathered well-documented data, practices, and policies from all over the world, which are extremely important to persuade governments, regulators, policymakers, and the public to accept the value of THR, which is a rapidly evolving field.
On her part, Jeannie Cameron, representative of the UKVIA, said it’s not enough to generate data but it must reach policymakers and stressed that such data needs to be translated in a way that they can be understood in order to help them make evidence-based decisions.
Mary Stamp, Trustee of the New Nicotine Alliance of UK, shared that the need for the UK government to embrace harm reduction methods has been recognized, saying since 2015, the Annual Reviews of Public Health England have consistently shown that vaping is 95% less harmful than smoking, while in 2017 it has been estimated that 50,000 smokers quit smoking using a vaping device.
SCOHRE — the International Scientific Association of Independent Experts on Smoking Control & Harm Reduction — recognizes that harm reduction could make the lives of people better and has the ambition to try and get resources to build an Observatory of the smoking habit related to health outcomes in Europe
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