New Delhi - Vapers have asked the WHO to give the world's one billion smokers a fair chance to access safe alternatives to tobacco.
Officials at a closed-door meeting between the WHO and the health ministry in New Delhi this week are considering banning e-cigarettes despite knowing they are far safer than tobacco. They excluded vapers and consumer groups from a taxpayer-funded public services meeting on Monday.
Consumers protested at a nearby conference. “Representing the millions of us who have vaped instead of smoking and advocating for the one billion smokers who deserve access to safe tobacco alternatives, we call today The Delhi Declaration, asking the WHO and our country’s representatives at COP-7 to allow us access to safer tobacco alternatives,” said Tom Pinlac, president of The Vapers Philippines.
E-cigarettes have been confirmed by the UK government to be 95% safer than smoking. They are available across the UK, USA and EU, and according to a recent study published in the journal Addiction, they have helped millions of smokers quit. They have recently become the most popular way to quit smoking in Switzerland.
Ironically, it is the Swiss-born bureaucrats at the WHO who have been clamping down on vaping products. A paper by an anonymous author in the WHO’s Geneva office is the basis for this week’s talks. Despite acknowledging that e-cigarettes are “less harmful than tobacco” and that smokers who switch to e-cigarettes “represent a contemporary public health achievement,” the paper recommends banning or strictly regulating e-cigarettes.
“If we kept waiting for science and medical research to make everything certain, we wouldn’t have seat belts, helmets, clean gasoline or healthy food,” said Mr. Pinlac.
“E-cigarettes are actually safer than tobacco. Banning them would show contempt for public health and would cost us dearly. Caring for young people is important, but that should be done through balanced and appropriate legislation, not an outright ban,” he said.
The demand for safer alternatives to tobacco is growing in Asia, where two-thirds of smokers live. “This is a developed country problem. While Western Europe, the UK and the US have embraced e-cigarettes and smoking rates have fallen at a rapid pace, smoking rates in developed countries are steadily increasing,” said Nilesh Jain of the Vapers Association of India.
This article was published on thestandard by Manila Standard Business and translated by The Vape Club.
