On National Technology Day, Let’s Recognize the Power of Innovation to Reduce Smoking

January 6^th is National Technology Day, which recognizes the power of technology and innovation to change the world for the better and make a positive impact on the daily lives of millions of people worldwide. Just as technology brought the world air bags to make driving safer, technology has delivered tobacco harm reduction products to help smokers quit smoking deadly combustible cigarettes.

Sadly, as Calestous Jouma details in his celebrated book, Innovation and Its Enemies, it is rare that new technology gets an easy ride before becoming uncontroversial. It seems strange now that refrigeration was once resisted by certain sections of society, despite it now having all but eradicated botulism in the western world.

Likewise, the printing press and margarine were bitterly opposed by incumbent industries at the time of their invention. In the case of coffee (now seen as a daily staple for a vast amount of people worldwide), the struggle for its acceptance as a mild and innocuous stimulant which can bring pleasure took more than 300 years. Medieval thinking led to sellers and users in 17^th Century Constantinople being sewn up in bags and thrown in the Bosphorus, no less.

The public may laugh at the unenlightened way new technology has been resisted in the past, but the same Luddite mentality is still prevalent today when it comes to nicotine delivery options which can eradicate the well-documented lethal health risks from smoking combustible tobacco. 

It is estimated that more than eight million people die each year from smoking-related diseases around the world. Yet, wherever safer nicotine alternatives have shown their merit in attracting people who smoke away from their deadly habit, they are being vigorously resisted by politicians and public health organizations.

Sweden is close to becoming an official “smokefree” country (defined as less than five percent prevalence) due to the public’s use of snus – a smokeless tobacco product pasteurised to remove all carcinogens – to consume nicotine rather than smoking. The country boasts by far the lowest smoking and smoking related disease rates in Europe, yet snus is banned by the European Union. Cigarettes are not.

Japan has experienced a staggering 50 percent collapse in cigarette sales since heated tobacco – a vastly safer nicotine product than combustible tobacco – was introduced to the nicotine market in 2016. This, despite the Japanese government frowning on the new technology. The Netherlands has recently proposed banning tobacco-free nicotine pouches for no discernible reason. Interestingly, they have no plans to do the same to cigarettes. 

Vaping products have been declared to have played “a major role” in driving down smoking prevalence in the UK by the government’s Office for National Statistics. But, a former Australian health minister tweeted on New Year’s Day that citizens should quit vaping, which is already banned without prescription. She said nothing about smoking despite cigarettes being on sale across the country with no restrictions. 

Similarly, 480,000 die annually in the United States due to smoking-related conditions, but the raging battle is not about cigarettes. Instead, the Food and Drug Administration has denied market authorizations for over six million vaping products while cigarettes continue to be consumed by over 30 million Americans each day.

Even though it was technology that allowed for the mass production of cigarettes with the invention of a machine in the late 19th century that could mechanically roll cigarettes, technology will now save lives.  It is innovation and technology to reduce population harm by replacing the combustion of dried tobacco leaves as the prime nicotine delivery method that is being bitterly opposed, rather than sales of cigarettes which provide a comfortable, if unethical, income stream for governments worldwide. 

Restrictive laws, regulatory suspicion, and outright bans have often been used against products and processes we see as perfectly normal today and which have delivered spectacular benefits to global populations. Governments often retreat from supporting new technology, not because it does not work, but because politicians are unlikely to enjoy popular support.  

New technologies should be better celebrated in such a vital area as public health instead of making the same silly mistakes as those in our historical past. On National Technology Day, the power of innovation to reduce the harms of smoking should be recognized and embraced, rather than being resisted by those who should know better.

Martin Cullip is the International Fellow at The Taxpayers Protection Alliance’s Consumer Center and is based in South London, UK.