‘People Need To Know Safer Nicotine Products Available’

Stakeholders comprising industry players and scholars, who have conducted different researches on nicotine use, have harped on tobacco harm control using alternative products to reduce the impact of nicotine.

Clearly, when people smoke a cigarette, they inhale nicotine and other chemicals released by combustion. Currently, the world has about 1.1 billion smokers and tobacco is said to be responsible for about 8 million deaths globally, every year.

Nicotine is a naturally produced alkaloid in the nightshade family of plants and is widely used recreationally as a stimulant and anxiolytic. As a pharmaceutical drug, it is used for smoking cessation to relieve withdrawal symptoms.

Also a dangerous and highly addictive chemical, nicotine can cause an increase in blood pressure, heart rate, flow of blood to the heart and a narrowing of the arteries (vessels that carry blood).

Nicotine, which of course, is one of the chemicals in tobacco, can also contribute to the hardening of the arterial walls, which in turn, may lead to a heart attack. The need to mitigate the health challenges associated with nicotine use is at the heart to the drive for tobacco harm control.

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Speaking at separate sessions during the just concluded Global Forum on Nicotine, one of the stakeholders, Ben Kesley of Cambridge Design, said “One of the first steps to adopting ENDS (Electronic nicotine delivery systems), is to get smokers to understand that cigarettes are a risk and they need to move away from tobacco.

At a session on ‘Reducing Harms from tobacco in LMICs – Challenges and Opportunities’, Kesley noted that people understand smoking is harmful, but they don’t think it’s harmful to them because they’ve not been ill. Then, once they do understand risks associated with smoking, they need to realise it is bad for them and want to change their behaviour.

While emphasizing the need for tobacco harm control using alternative products, Kesley harped on the need to get people, especially cigarettes smokers, to “know what safer nicotine products are out there”.

Another scholar, Dr Konstantinos Farsalinos who underscored the need for tobacco harm reduction recalled, “The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control clearly mentions harm reduction but the real application of harm reduction in smoking has been minimal and largely unacceptable by the tobacco control movement, with exceptions of course.”

He described those opposed to harm reduction, especially advocates of tobacco control as ‘becoming an oppressive, intolerant and authoritarian form of political correctness, not only for smokers but also for scientists who have different views than they-tobacco control- have.”

E-cigarette use, commonly called vaping, is fast becoming a popular alternative to cigarette smoking. It works by heating up a mixture of nicotine-containing liquids that can be inhaled.