As the debate rages worldwide over whether tobacco alternatives are truly committed to harm reduction, industry leaders are calling on the World Health Organisation (WHO) and government to reconsider regulations and tax on these products.
Those in the tobacco industry say these products should not be taxed the same as cigarettes and instead, governments should take a risk-based approach.
These were the views of industry leaders during this year's Global Forum on Nicotine titled “Tobacco harm reduction: Here for good“ conference in Warsaw, Poland and during the Phillip Morris International (PMI) open day in Lausanne, Switzerland, recently.
British public health advocate Clive Bates, who has worked on tobacco policy for a number of years, said the WHO had an opportunity to address "what is still the largest public health crisis in the world".
Yearly, around 8m people die of tobacco-related deaths. In SA, 20.3% of the population smokes.
While industry leaders have expressed that these alternatives are not free of risk, Africa Check has determined claims that nicotine alternatives are 95% less harmful than cigarettes remain unproven.
Bates said civil society, governments and health regulators could make things better by endorsing this transformation by establishing risk-proportionate regulation. For example, high taxes on cigarettes and zero to low taxes on vaping products.
"It’s true we don’t have 50 years of data but the point is people talk about these products. Because we don’t know everything, they assume we don’t know anything and that’s not the case.
"There’s been a massive advance of science. We have much more highly developed toxicology. We can do things like exposure bio-markers, so we can’t have 50 years of data but we can measure toxicants in people’s blood, saliva and urine and we can see the quantity of toxicants.
"Everything we detect as harmful about smoking is either not detectable or detectable at very low levels compared to smoking. Although we don’t know how that will play out for disease we can be pretty confident that these products are much less harmful," Bates said.
Tobacco company Philip Morris International's senior vice-president Gregoire Verdeaux argued that the WHO was unfairly influencing governments to regulate these products by unfairly "comparing them to clean air".
"Regulators and health institutes need to open up to the topic and that’s the important point and not compare these alternatives to clean air but in the real life of a smoker comparing them to cigarettes.
"From there you get to a point of comfort because for an adult smoker it is preferable rather than cigarette."
Verdeaux said a consequence of governments not making these products easily accessible was that people turned to the black market, which meant they consumed unregulated products.
During SA's hard lockdown, the government banned the selling of cigarettes, which saw an upshot in the illicit trade in cigarettes.
"SA is still recovering from the prohibition experience which shot up the illicit market to 37% at the time of lockdown," Verdeaux said.
"The lesson learnt from the SA experience is once a market has gone completely illicit for a period of time, it’s very difficult to get it back because other illegal or informal distribution networks have taken place.
"Everyone loses, including government and legit companies, except the illicit traders, and consumers are exposed to non-tested products and social health [risks], and the economy of the situation is not good."
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