E-cigarettes are “part of the solution and not part of the problem”. This is the message launched yesterday to the Minister of Health Beatrice Lorenzin by the Italian Anti-Smoking League (LIAF), through a document signed and delivered by the Scientific Committee for Research on the electronic cigarette in the field of public health, which includes representatives of the international scientific world including including Umberto Veronesi of the IEO.
The LIAF met in Rome and sent a clear message to the government just a few weeks after the negotiations of the seventh session of the Conference of the Parties (COP7) organized by the WHO, which will be held in November in New Delhi to define and strengthen the global battle against the devastating consequences caused by tobacco use, which still today it causes about 700.000 deaths a year in Europe alone and 6 million worldwide. The WHO, according to which in 2020 there will be 1 billion smokers in the world, is pushing to hinder the spread of e-cigarettes and alternative products: but the experts are not there and invite Minister Lorenzin (who, like the LIAF itself , is excluded from the New Delhi event) not to follow that path.
Effective approaches are needed to rapidly combat smoking and reduce the consumption of tobacco cigarettes. The time has come for tobacco control policies go beyond the usual methods of awareness, prevention and total cessation of nicotine use, to approach a new concept of tobacco harm reduction that should be seriously taken into consideration by the scientific community and institutions" In this regard, a study published in the journal European Addiction Research has shown that tobacco cigarettes are much more dangerous and that electronics are 95% much safer than the former. In short, electronic cigarettes, which they do not contain tobacco, are to be exploited as potential opportunities for public health.
“Regulatory authorities – continues the document delivered to Beatrice Lorenzin – who support measures based solely on the precautionary principle, could have the undesirable effect of implementing the consumption of conventional cigarettes. Excessively restrictive measures on e-cigs they can protect conventional cigarettes from competition from other products less harmful". Positions also shared by other international studies, such as that of the Royal College of Physicians of London, which stated that "electronic cigarettes are not a gateway to smoking for non-smokers, because the use of electronics is limited almost exclusively to those who use, or have used, tobacco”.
Yet the WHO does not agree and is avoiding open confrontation by excluding hundreds of interlocutors from the COP7 in New Delhi, including various government institutions, such as the Italian ministers, and also part of the scientific world such as the LIAF itself. WHO DG Margaret Chan even recently stated that “all governments should ban e-cigarettes or electronic nicotine delivery systems”. This position is in line with what the same organization has claimed in the past. In fact, according to a 2015 release, “only a few e-cigarette brands have been investigated, and most contain nicotine, an addictive substance. Vapor often contains substances that can cause cancer (such as formaldehyde), but at levels 1-2 times lower than tobacco smoke. E-cigs are therefore less toxic than traditional cigarettes, however there is still uncertainty as to how much less toxic they actually are. Evidence shows that e-cigarettes are dangerous for young people, pregnant women and people who do not use nicotine”.
Reason Foundation, an American think tank, claims however that documents released last week by the World Health Organization, in advance of the Delhi meeting, show that WHO worked in secret to limit access to new technologies that have allowed millions of people to quit smoking. Article, written by Julian Morris, vice chair of research at the Reason Foundation, reviews the work of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), a treaty created by the World Health Organization in 2004 that seeks “to protect present and future generations from devastating health, social, environmental and economic effects on the consequences of tobacco smoke and exposure to tobacco smoke”.
Since the FCTC went into effect in 2005, the number of smokers in the world has increased, mainly in China and other poor countries which were the main target of the FCTC itself. The author argues that a fundamental problem of the FCTC is to be bound to the idea that the only way to reduce smoking is to “quit or die”. For this reason, WHO "is very skeptical about the potential of new technologies, such as vaping devices (also known as electronic cigarettes), to reduce the harm associated with smoking". Too skeptical, according to the world of science, which promises battle. The appointment in New Delhi is from the 7 12 Novemberbut behind strictly closed doors.
