World Health Organization Needs to Embrace Harm Reduction for World No Tobacco Day

Today marks the 35th anniversary of World No Tobacco Day (WNTD). Since 1988, the World Health Organization (WHO) has used the annual date to inform “the public on the dangers of using tobacco … and what people around the world can do to claim their right to health and healthy living and to protect future generations.”

Unfortunately for the millions of smokers around the world and  the millions of adult consumers of less harmful alternatives to smoking, the WHO remains steadfast in its opposition to tobacco harm reduction.

Gearing up for WNTD, the WHO published a Question-and-Answer e-cigarette page on May 25, 2022, on their website. Not an organization to let alarmism go to waste, the WHO refuses to acknowledge that e-cigarettes are less harmful than combustible cigarettes.

For example, in response to “Are e-cigarettes more or less dangerous than conventional tobacco cigarettes,” the WHO responds to that both tobacco products and e-cigarettes “pose risks to health.” The global health agency doubles down and states that many factors can cause risks and “may include the potential for abusing or manipulating the product.”

Numerous public health groups have found the use of conventional e-cigarettes to be less harmful.

In 2016, the Royal College of Physicians found the use of e-cigarettes “unlikely to exceed 5% of the risk of harm from smoking.” In 2018, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine reported that “using current generation e-cigarettes is less harmful than smoking.”

In October 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued marketing orders for e-cigarettes finding that they newly-authorized vapor products “could benefit addicted adult smokers who switch to these products … by reducing their exposure to harmful chemicals.”

The WHO’s denial of the power of e-cigarettes to reduce smoking rates could have disastrous effects. For the past two years, the Consumer Center at TPA has published 50-state analyses on smoking and vaping issues in the United States and have noticed how e-cigarettes have been more efficient in reducing smoking rates among young adults than other measures, including tobacco lawsuits.

For example, in 1998, among current adult smokers, 26.2 percent were 18 to 24 years old. In 2008, this had decreased by 15 percent to 22.3.

In the years after e-cigarette’s market emergence in the early 2010s, smoking rates among young adult current smokers decreased by 46.4 percent. Indeed, in 2010, among current smokers in the U.S., 17.8 percent were between 18 to 24 years old. In 2020, only 9.6 percent of current smokers were 18 to 24 years old.

Further, since 2018, when the U.S. surgeon general issued an alarm about youth e-cigarette use, smoking rates among adults aged 18 to 24 years in the U.S. have decreased by 23.5 percent, with an average annual decrease of 12.5 percent.

On the 35th anniversary of WNTD, policymakers need to stand against the WHO. Given the public health agency’s opposition towards e-cigarettes, the WHO either is in the business of protecting tobacco or it doesn’t care at all about persons who smoke.