World Nicotine Forum concludes its annual activities

Ramallah - Ma'an - The activities of the World Nicotine Forum, which was hosted by the Polish capital Warsaw last month, concluded with several recommendations on reducing the risks of tobacco and the harms of traditional smoking, in the presence of a number of public health experts, policy analysts, parliamentarians, government officials, academics, researchers, product manufacturers, distributors, and consumer rights advocacy associations. Clive Bates, a tobacco industry policy expert, said that smoking must be tackled more seriously by using all possible means to help people quit smoking, including e-cigarettes, nicotine pouches, heated tobacco products, chewing tobacco, and other innovative alternatives to traditional cigarettes. Dr Colin Mendelson, Founding Chair of the Australian Charity Tobacco Harm Reduction, added that it is essential to improve access to all markets for harm reduction products, and reduce legal and tax restrictions, in order to help reduce traditional smoking rates and the serious health consequences it causes. Dr. Garrett McGovern, medical director of the Priority Medical Clinic in Dublin, Ireland, said policies that stand in the way of efforts to help people quit smoking through innovative alternative products must change. During the conference, a number of participants drew attention to the experience of Sweden, where smokers switched to using chewing tobacco, and smoking rates there decreased three times faster than in the rest of the European Union countries, in addition to New Zealand and Japan, where smoking rates decreased by half and a third respectively, after the spread of the use of heated tobacco products, which are among the less dangerous alternatives compared to the harms of traditional smoking. The European Commission aims to reduce tobacco use to less than 5% by 2040, but smoking rates fell by only 6 percentage points between 2006 and 2020, while some countries, such as Slovenia, saw smoking rates rise. It is worth noting that scientific research has proven that d iseases resulting from traditional smoking are caused by the combustion process that occurs during cigarette smoking, which produces more than 6,000 harmful chemicals, while innovative products such as heated tobacco can represent a better alternative to traditional smoking, as it relies on the technology of heating tobacco rather than burning it, which constitutes an alternative for those who do not wish to quit smoking, while stressing that it is not completely risk-free. Source: Maan News Agency