New Delhi - Vapers have asked the WHO to give the world's one billion smokers fair access to 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 Monday’s public taxpayer-funded service meeting.
Consumers protested at a nearby conference. “Representing the millions of us who vape instead of smoking and advocating for the one billion smokers who deserve access to safe tobacco alternatives, we take this day as 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 England, the USA and the 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 taken a hard line against vaping products. A paper by an anonymous author in the WHO Secretary-General’s office in Geneva 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 tell us for sure, we wouldn't have seat belts, helmets, clean gasoline or healthy food,” Mr. Pinlac said.
“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 the world’s smokers are smokers. “This is a problem for developed countries. While Western Europe, the UK and the US have embraced e-cigarettes and smoking rates have fallen dramatically, smoking rates in developed countries are on the rise,” 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.
