A new report highlights the potential of nicotine products like vapes, snus, and nicotine pouches to reduce tobacco-related deaths worldwide, showing evidence linking their use to declining cigarette smoking rates in several countries.
RT’s Three Key Takeaways:
- Safer Nicotine Products and Smoking Declines: The report highlights strong evidence linking the rise of nicotine products, such as vapes and snus, to reductions in smoking prevalence in several countries.
- Global Availability Expands: Over two-thirds of the global adult population can now legally access at least one form of “safer nicotine product,” with the number of users rising to an estimated 144 million worldwide.
- Public Health Potential: The report underscores that tobacco harm reduction, if fully realized, could lead to rapid decreases in smoking-related mortality.
A new report from United Kingdom-based public health agency Knowledge-Action-Change highlights the potential of safer nicotine products, such as vapes, snus, heated tobacco products, and nicotine pouches, to reduce tobacco-related deaths worldwide by accelerating the decline in smoking rates.
The Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction report uses the latest evidence and new data projections to assess the current global tobacco harm reduction situation as well as its potential to rapidly reduce tobacco-related disease and mortality.
The report shows there is strong evidence for an association between the rise in the use of safer nicotine products and a corresponding decrease in smoking prevalence in a number of countries across the world.
Expanding Access to Safer Alternatives
Tobacco harm reduction encourages people who smoke and who either cannot, or do not want to stop using nicotine, to switch to safer products, including vapes (e-cigarettes), tobacco-free nicotine pouches, Swedish-style snus, and heated tobacco products. Legal access to a range of safer nicotine products offers potential to improve the health of the billion people who smoke worldwide, according to the report.
Research undertaken for the report shows that more than two-thirds of the world’s adult population—in nearly 130 countries—can now legally access at least one form of safer nicotine product but adds there is massive scope to capitalize on the opportunities offered by tobacco hard reduction.
Global Uptake and Regional Insights
The report includes a new estimate on the global number of vapers, which has increased to an estimated 114 million compared to 58 million in 2018. Another 30 million people are using other safer nicotine products, meaning the report estimates there are now around 144 million users of safer nicotine products worldwide. However, access to combustible tobacco products, known to kill up to half of all users, remains legal for 100% of the world’s adult population.
The report takes an in-depth look at the situation regarding smoking and tobacco harm reduction in Latin America and Eastern Europe and Central Asia. It also focuses on four countries that have enabled tobacco harm reduction to drive down smoking rates—the UK, Japan, Norway, and Aotearoa New Zealand—highlighting the different paths each has taken to achieve dramatic reductions in smoking prevalence.
“If fully realized, tobacco harm reduction has the potential to rapidly reduce the global number of smokers. This would deliver one of the greatest public health gains of the 21st century,” says Harry Shapiro, executive editor and lead author of the report, in a release.
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