Research Articles

Hierarchy of Harm Reduction Disagreement (July 27, 2021)
Before 2020, I knew very little about tobacco control. My knowledge did not go beyond what most people know - that cigarettes are bad for your health and could kill you. Subsequently, tobacco harm reduction was a foreign concept to me, although it made logical sense. I volunteered in Lesotho with the Peace Corps; the idea of harm reduction was often used when referring to the HIV/AIDS crisis. Although I did not know much about tobacco control, I was aware that harm reduction had been proven to work in other fields of public health. Click for detail

Tobacco Harm Reduction: Time to Change Attitudes (July 26, 2021)
In a speech I gave to the Global Forum on Nicotine in June, I noted that when it comes to harm reduction, policy lags far behind the science. For years, decades, even, politicians and health authorities who should know better have ignored, derided and undermined such measures, stuck in a past in which the tobacco industry played a big, bad role. Click for detail

ARI Newsletter (Volume 1, Issue 5) (July 14, 2021)
Back in 1998, the WHO launched World No Tobacco Day (WMTD) to highlight the dangers of combustible smoking, strengthen global efforts to get smokers to quit and provide an international platform for new anti-smoking policies. Click for detail

UK Health Agency Reaffirms the Power of Vaping to Help Smokers Quit (July 02, 2021)
On June 25, the United Kingdom's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published new draft guidelines encouraging health care professionals to disseminate clear and up-to-date information for smokers who want to use vapes to quit cigarettes. Click for detail

World No Tobacco Day 2021 Shows Tobacco Control at a Crossroads (June 15, 2021)
Back in 1988, the World Health Organization launched World No Tobacco Day (WNTD) to highlight the dangers of combustible smoking, strengthen global efforts to get smokers to quit and provide an international platform for new anti-smoking policies. The idea was for the organization's member states to present a united front in the fight against tobacco, and their message was stark: quit, or die. Click for detail

ARI Newsletter (Volume 1, Issue 4) (June 10, 2021)
More than 30 years since the first World No Tobacco Day(WNTD), there are still 8 million annual deaths attributed to tobacco use and more than 1 billion individuals still smoke. Click for detail

Potential deaths averted in USA by replacing cigarettes with e-cigarettes (June 02, 2021)
Introduction US tobacco control policies to reduce cigarette use have been effective, but their impact has been relatively slow. This study considers a strategy of switching cigarette smokers to e-cigarette use ('vaping') in the USA to accelerate tobacco control progress. Click for detail

On World No Tobacco Day, Foundation for a Smoke-Free World Urges Smokers to Quit or Switch to Harm-Reduction Products (May 28, 2021)
NEW YORK, May 27, 2021 - More than 30 years since the first World No Tobacco Day (WNTD), there are still 8 million annual deaths attributed to tobacco use and more than 1 billion individuals still smoke. These facts are proof that health policies and actions have not been adequate. Click for detail

Cessation, The Right to Health (May 20, 2021)

About 1,300 million people still use tobacco. One billion of them smoke cigarettes, and many of these want to stop. Every day a smoker over 35 continues to smoke they lose about 3-6 hours of life, thus for the estimated 500 million current adult smokers 62 million days of life are lost every day.

ARI Newsletter (Volume 1, Issue 3) (May 18, 2021)

In a report released on March 31, 2021, the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Vaping has called upon the UK government to make the most of Brexit by challenging the World Health Organization's opposition to vaping at the upcoming Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) Conference of Parties (COP).

Report Details Failures to Scale Up Tobacco Harm Reduction in Asia (April 20, 2021)

On April 16, the Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction (GSTHR) released its newest report-"Tobacco Harm Reduction: A Burning Issue for Asia"-detailing how countries in the region have largely failed to consider safer nicotine products (SNPs) to combat the smoking-related death toll.

ARI Newsletter (Volume 1, Issue 2) (April 12, 2021)

Imagine the outrage if an international non-governmental organization (NGO) focusing on drug abuse called for naloxone manufacturers to not sell their products in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) on grounds that it would confuse regulators and the public, suggesting instead that they focus on ending opioid abuse using only regulatory and educational approaches? How would NGOs in these countries react if this international NGO went further and called on governments to ban the use of naloxone? Recall that naloxone is about 85-95% effective in preventing death from an opioid overdose.

Bringing Everyone to the Tobacco Table (March 27, 2021)

In his new book, Good Business: The Talk, Fight, Win Way to Change the World, Bill Novelli describes, among other things, opportunities that may arise from working with a cancelled industry. Ultimately, however, Novelli's inconsistency on this stance reveals the power of cancel culture to stifle dialogue and impede clearheaded action.