A safer alternative for 1.3 billion people
THE World Health Organization (WHO), in its latest fact sheet on Tobacco, indicated that tobacco smoking kills up to half of its users, causing the death of more than eight million people each year, seven million of which are the result of direct tobacco use while around 1.2 million are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke.
WHO also highlighted that the enormous socio-economic burden and the alarming impact of smoking-related illnesses on the global public-health ecosystem each year. “
The economic costs of tobacco use is substantial and includes significant health-care costs for treating the diseases caused by tobacco use as well as the lost human capital that results from tobacco-attributable morbidity and mortality.”
Meanwhile, according to the study, Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2019 tobacco kills over 163,671 people each year in Pakistan. Almost 31,000 of these deaths are due to exposure to second-hand smoke, less-harmful alternatives.
Since many health experts are trying to find a viable solution to this global dilemma – fortunately, a simulation study has suggested that the promotion of electronic-cigarettes (e-cigarettes) as a harm-reduction policy is a viable strategy, given current evidence that e-cigarettes offset or divert from smoking.
This study was recently published in the Harm Reduction Journal while other international research also shows that e-cigarettes can be a viable option to reduce (or quit) the use of tobacco and minimize its health hazards.
Researchers in Queen Mary University of London have also found e-cigarettes to be more effective than Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) in “achieving long-term smoking reduction and cessation”.
The National Health Service in the United Kingdom has made a well-researched claim that e-cigarettes are 95% less harmful than smoking, while the National Academies of Science, Engineering & Medicine in the USA have also concluded that e-cigarettes are likely far less hazardous than smoking.
However, many distorted media reports by malicious activists or political lobbies, are misleading the public, and the regulators to consider e-cigarettes as ‘more dangerous’ than smoking. While on the other hand anecdotal evidence suggests some have successfully used e-cigarettes to give up combustible smoking.
The risk of death can be lowered by e-cigarettes, primarily because they have less toxins like carbon-monoxide and tar, created by the combustible cigarettes.
All this evidence should inspire the tobacco consumers to make use of this technological solution as an alternative to fulfil their nicotine-craving.
Another research states: “given their lower risk relative to combustible tobacco, e-cigarettes have potential for harm-reduction.”
Hence, e-cigarettes can also help in avoiding addiction – a growing concern in Pakistan too, as it threatens the life and progress of our younger generation.
Fifteen of the most influential experts of Tobacco-Control in the USA (Society for Research on Nicotine & Tobacco – SRNT), have declared e-cigarettes as less harmful to adult smokers.
They have published a neutral research paper in the American Journal of Public Health, endorsing the e-cigarettes’ ability to save lives as a better alternative to combustible cigarettes.
They have argued that “because evidence indicates that e-cigarettes use can increase the odds of quitting smoking, many scientists encourage the health-community, media and policymakers to more carefully weigh vaping’s potential to reduce mortality attributable to adult smoking.”
Nicotine – being the main addictive element of combustible cigarettes, is only as harmful as caffeine which is the main option used in NRT.
Combustible cigarettes deliver nicotine through a toxic cloud of ash and carcinogen-ridden smoke while e-cigarettes have eliminated these two hazardous components of smoking.
However, despite being a viable option for reducing addiction in society, e-cigarettes are not completely risk-free.
That said, there is no doubt that e-cigarettes are less harmful than traditional cigarettes and it is worth smokers’ time to make an attempt to switch.
—The writer is contributing columnist.
