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David Sweanor Talks on the Conspiracy Against e-cigarettes, Tobaco Harm Reduction, and Other Issues. 

David Sweanor, an advocate against tobacco use, has worked with organizations such as the International Union Against Cancer, the World Health Organization, World Bank, and the Pan American Health Organization.

He became interested in the issue of Tobacco Harm Reduction since the early 1980's in an effort to reduce smoking-related deaths and diseases.

Come early 1990's it was established that he vast majority of the harm caused by smoking was from the method of nicotine delivery rather than from the nicotine itself. There was increasing scientific understanding of the reasons people use nicotine. However, an “abstinence-only” policy aimed at a nicotine-free world was simply unrealistic. The focus then, is to deal with this delivery system.

Sweanor says: "There is also no longer any scientific doubt that combustion-based products are massively more hazardous than non-combustion products..." He explains that There is now a much greater awareness that there is a very pronounced continuum of risk depending upon how nicotine is delivered. We are also seeing greater (though still poor) availability of medicinal forms of nicotine and a proliferation of new nicotine products. There is also no longer any scientific doubt that combustion-based products are massively more hazardous than non-combustion products such as Swedish snus. My experience is that as soon as someone grasps the concept of the continuum of risk and recognizes that all nicotine use is not going to end anytime soon, the pieces start coming together. This comes at a time that many countries are moving toward regulating tobacco products and discussing the need for some form of comprehensive regulatory oversight of the full range of nicotine products. Clearly, any rational health-focused regulation will demand that we deal with issues of differential risks.

He further points out that "I think cigarettes have dominated the marketplace of most countries for so long that people have trouble even thinking of alternatives. Many of those who seek restrictions on non-combustion products, and certainly some of the companies selling them, see them as a way to perpetuate rather than replace cigarette smoking. When snus was positioned as a potential additional problem, rather than as a potential partial solution to a much bigger health problem, efforts to keep it off the market seemed logical."

We also have an issue with the tendency of our species to do something ‘because we can’ rather than to look at issues in a more comprehensive way that will better meet long term goals. It was possible to get laws banning a tobacco product that was not yet on the market, just as today it is possible to enforce existing drug laws to ban new recreational nicotine products. Had there been greater awareness of relative risks and a less risk-averse mentality snus could have been seen the way auto safety advocates saw Volvos – an agent of change for the marketplace.