• March 28, 2024

Low-nicotine strategy questioned

 Low-nicotine strategy questioned

There is no evidence to support a global nicotine reduction strategy proposed by a panel of the World Health Organization, according to a story by David J. Hill writing on the University at Buffalo’s media information website and citing a paper written by a university researcher.

Hill said that a panel of tobacco researchers that guided 180 World Health Organization countries on developing constructive new regulations for tobacco products had recently advised some countries to consider a global nicotine reduction strategy.

This strategy would require that very low nicotine cigarettes were the only cigarettes sold legally.

The idea was that these cigarettes would have so little nicotine in the tobacco that they would not create an addiction to cigarettes.

The panel warned, however, that only countries with extensive tobacco-control programs should try this approach.

But a University at Buffalo (UB – the state university of New York, US) researcher has written in a paper published on July 1 online in the journal Tobacco Control that the scientific evidence to date doesn’t support such a recommendation at this time, even for countries with very strong tobacco control programs.

Lynn T. Kozlowski, a professor of community health and health behavior in UB’s School of Public Health and Health Professions, cautions that much more needs to be known about the effects of such an untested prohibition or ban of traditional cigarettes before any WHO nations implemented the recommendation.

“Countries need to appreciate that such a ban or prohibition of traditional cigarettes has not yet been assessed anywhere in a community with a representative sample that includes individuals with mental health or other substance abuse issues,” said Kozlowski.

Hill said that WHO had a panel of tobacco researchers, known as ‘TobReg’, that offered recommendations to members of the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

In addition to advising that countries allowed only the sale of low-nicotine cigarettes, TobReg had said that it would be important to have alternative, safer forms of nicotine products available.

However, Kozlowski said the reality in the world right now was that many countries banned less-harmful products. For example, Canada prohibited nicotine-containing electronic cigarettes, while the EU (outside of Sweden) banned snus. Both products were estimated to be more than 90 percent less harmful than were cigarettes.

Think of it this way, Kozlowski said: “Imagine a coffee lover who likes caffeine in his coffee. If only decaffeinated coffee – which has a little caffeine in it – could be legally sold, the aforementioned coffee drinker would perceive a prohibition on the product he prefers, even though decaffeinated coffee was still available.”

Banning a desired product could create contraband markets, as well as costs associated with enforcing the ban, Kozlowski said.

Moreover, the scientific evidence on the effectiveness of reduced-nicotine cigarettes “shows quite small effects of doubtful clinical significance” and had been conducted on samples that weren’t representative of smokers overall.

“Evidence of very small good effects on a few smokers should not be used to justify a disruptive and coercive cigarette prohibition,” Kozlowski said.

The full story is at: https://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2016/07/005.html